Jim Lindsay's diary:
Farewell to Edinburgh as our journey began. We actually started on the evening of the 13th so that we would have plenty of time to get to Dover for the following evening. Our last night in England was at the Duke of York's Military School. All the coaches had been parked neatly in a line on the vast parade ground but Edinburgh, because we had to be different, parked facing them from the other side like an inspecting General. We bought a football in Dover and somebody liberated the plastic leg of a shop window dummy from a dustbin. Both football and leg were to travel with us. For most of us, this would be the last night in a conventional bed until well into our return journey.

First night on the road by Liz Y

Three days before the NASA astronauts boarded the Apollo 11 spacecraft for their historic voyage to the Moon and the world watched with bated breath, Comex bus KNK 358G took off without fuss from the cobbled streets of Marchmont for a 9,000 mile journey across the rugged landscapes of planet Earth.

The evening of 13th July found us ready for the road, equipment, supplies, sleeping bags and belongings duly stowed on board the bus. News of this modest event was published and immortalized with a photo in the Scotsman, the edition no doubt preserved for posterity somewhere in the paper's archives.

It was still daylight when we left. The first stage of our expedition was to take us the almost 470 miles from Edinburgh to Dover. In terms of distance this was one of our longer stints on the road. It was also our first all night marathon. As far as I remember, the long overnight journey on relatively good roads of the UK in the 1960s was quite uneventful, devoid of unpredictable challenges we would face in the East. I guess most of us slept when darkness fell and this phase was like entering the tunnel at Haymarket, but emerging hundreds of miles to the south. Only the driving crew would remain alert.

Specific details of when and where we stopped and how long the journey took are lost in time, but perhaps we can piece together a rough timeframe. We know from the mechanics that Comex coaches were regulated to prevent speeds in excess of 50 miles per hour, something they were instructed not to change, although they were taught how to do it.

I have a hazy memory of pulling into a deserted car park in the early hours, a shadowy outline of the group drifting in twos and threes across the tarmac and of strip lighting in an anonymous, off-road service station where bleary-eyed travellers took a break, sipped hot drinks, availed themselves of the toilets and hit the road again, a Western caravanserai.

We stopped for crew changes and in the morning for breakfast. Sunrise down south is around 5 a.m. in July. I guess we were in the Midlands by then. When exactly we reached London, I don't recall. There is at least one photo*, a partial view of Big Ben and the Palace of Westminster, perhaps from the direction of Blackfriars Bridge or maybe Waterloo, a cloudy day. From there, it would take a couple of hours to reach Dover.

The school where we convened with the other contingents on 14th July was a boarding school with pupils on leave for the summer. We had beds for the night, dormitories, a roof over our heads. Ahead of us, the following day, lay the English Channel, life on the open road, one amazing journey, one hopeful aspiration for better understanding and friendship across the planet.

* see photograph by Al B below