Chalfont Coaches (National Express contractor) CD32 (BV69 KPN) in Dunstable - 14 Apr 2023 (P1150047)

Friday 14 April 2023 (1156) – Chalfont Coaches CD32 (BV69 KPN) seen travelling along High Street North in Dunstable when working the 0935 National Express service 707 from Heathrow Airport to Birmingham. It is a Caetano Levante 2 bodied Scania K360 new in November 2019.

I snapped this photograph merely because it evoked memories of past coaching days when, in the days before the motorway era, this was the main A5 road from London to the north. Various coach services would travel this route regularly including Yelloway, Ribble, Standerwick, Scout, Midland Red, United Counties and so on.

This is one of the very few scheduled coach services to pass this way these days.

The route of service 707 is Heathrow (Terminal 5 and Central Bus Station), Hemel Hempstead, Luton Airport, Luton, Milton Keynes, Northampton, Coventry, Birmingham Airport and Birmingham.

The large building just ahead of the coach is now the Dunstable Conference Centre. The building was originally the Union Cinema which opened in September 1937 and had seating for over 1400 cinemagoers.

Quite likely that the film ‘High Noon’ released in 1952 starring Gary Cooper was screened here. Cooper’s father was brought up in Houghton Regis near Dunstable and emigrated to the United States in the late 1890s. His English mother wanted him to have an English education and so for a few years he attended Dunstable Grammar School later returning to the U.S.