00:00Hidden in the Kent countryside within the winding roads lies a warehouse ready to take
00:06you on a journey back in time. Friends of the East Kent looks after historic Kent buses
00:13and each one tells its own story. Now this bus used to travel around Ashford and you can tell
00:19it's not particularly made for tall people but at the moment it goes around with different events
00:24and lives here at Friends of East Kent and even the bell still works. So the Friends of the East
00:30Kent
00:30are a charity set up in 1999 to promote and educate the history of the East Kent Road Car Company
00:38all the way through from the early days through to what it is now Stagecoach. The five we've got here
00:44they're all from 1951 up to the 1970s. The latest one we've just bought brings us up to a new
00:51generation because it's a 1992 bus and it really tells the next side of the story, the next chapter
00:56of the story of the East Kent history. The newest bus is called the Leyland Olympia and the charity is
01:03currently raising thousands for it to be brought back to its original style. The charity says each
01:09vehicle acts as a time machine with each visit to an event bringing with it a bus full of memories.
01:16We can't go to a single event without at least five or six people coming up to us
01:20reminiscing. It's not just the history of the buses but it's also people's personal history of them.
01:27We've got owners here who have purchased the buses that they used to ride on. One of our members she
01:33comes to all of our events that the X Dover one's at and her dad used to drive it in
01:40service back in
01:41East Kent days so it got a lot of attention from her and quite a few of our buses have
01:47been used for
01:48members weddings so we'll get people go oh yeah I had that as my wedding bus so I had this
01:53for
01:53you know on my first day of school or there's a lot of history and I love listening to it
02:00when we go to
02:00different events and people talk to us it really cements in why we do this. You can just looking at
02:08the
02:08blinds of where they used to run the services that they used to provide the the communities
02:13they used to serve that it's so rich in history that it needs preserving. Friends of the East Kent
02:20say they're always looking for volunteers and members to get on board. Chloe Brewster for KMTV in Woodnersboro.
02:28also
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