A TRANSPORT of delight, or at least of the utmost nostalgia, the Eden Bus Company will soon be back on the road.

For almost 70 years, until being bought by Arriva in 1995, the red and ivory coloured fleet was familiar throughout south Durham and beyond.

Now the name, rights and livery have been bought back from Arriva by former Eden driver Graeme Scarlett. "We'll be operating in the old colours and applying for runs very shortly. It's incredibly exciting to have the Eden going again," he says,

The West Auckland based company was started in 1927 by George Summerson, with a 14 seat Chevrolet for which he paid £500. His brother Bill came aboard soon afterwards, joined in time by their sons Barry and David.

There were no unions, because the workers trusted the gaffers, no time clocks, because the gaffers trusted the workers and no subsidies, either. "Anyone can run a bus company spending the taxpayers' money," George once said. "When you're spending your own, you care more where it goes."

They ran from West Auckland to Spennymoor, won the licence from Bishop Auckland to Newton Aycliffe when the new town was little more than a few 1940s prefabs, had a market day service from Shildon to Stockton and later, a bit out of the way, the town service in Birtley.

Chiefly, however, the Eden was marked by the friendliness and loyalty of its staff - drivers like Arthur Place who covered the Spennymoor run for 40 years, clippies like Jenny Laskey, Vi Richardson, Lila Black and Joyce Elsbury who retired together in 1982 with a collective 117 years on their ticket.

They knew all their passengers and almost everything about them, could smoke, smile and issue tickets simultaneously and could disarm a drunk with a suitable word, even if the word was "Off".

Though conductresses have gone for ever, though the Eden will no longer stop at every corner - "the insurance companies wouldn't allow it," says Graeme - the friendliness, he insists, will be the same.

He first used the Eden to get to school, when the kids knew it as Daisy - some days 'e comes, some 'e doesn't - or Mightetta, as in "Looks like we might etta walk".

"It was really a very reliable service with a high reputation," says Shildon based Graeme, who became an Eden driver after gaining a PSV licence in 1979 and is also a brass bandsman and professional musician, a regular on the Mighty Wurlitzer at Blackpool Tower.

He now owns Graham's Handy Buses, a three vehicle company chiefly operating a shuttle between Bishop Auckland market place and the ASDA supermarket, plans to buy more buses and has already set up a website: www.geocities.com/edenbusses/home

Two s's? "Shildon spelling," says Graeme.

"I don't like to see family firms go to the wall and was gutted when the Eden went. I can hardly wait to get it going again. It was the sort of company where everyone knew everyone and I want this to be the same. It's amazing how many people still talk affectionately about the Eden."

They'll return with a new slogan: "The Eden, we're back - but in your hearts we've never been away."

THE Eden also briefly joined with Darlington Transport to run the DART service from Bishop Auckland to Darlington and Middlesbrough. The Darlington bus wars were beginning to rumble.

An American website, spotted by John Briggs, recalls the day when mayhem hit the market town streets:

"Queues of vehicles of all three companies stretched for 400m through the town centre, with many unsavoury aspects of 'on the road' competition in evidence.

"Timetables were disregarded and buses frequently altered routes, depending on what the opposition was doing.

"Buses cut in front of one another, went up one way streets in the wrong direction, ignored passengers standing on less well served stops to get to the more lucrative stops first and waited for longer than they were supposed to.

"Conditions for some residents were so bad that they barricaded the road and refused to let any buses through."

There were 300 bus movements an hour along the High Row, most of them almost empty. Since time flies more quickly than a town centre bus, it was ten years ago this month.

SHILDON lad like Graeme Scarlett, John Robinson rings seeking details of the 84 mile Hadrian's Wall Trail, which opened last week between Wallsend and Bowness and is expected to attract 20,000 coast to coast walkers each year. John, record breaking martial arts man, doesn't plan to do as the Romans did, however. "I want," he says, suitably sponsored, "to be the first person to do it barefoot."

BENEATH the headline "Taking the Mikado", we wrote on April 16 of Gary Winn's reworking into Geordie of Gilbert and Sullivan's best known opera.

The Geordie Mikado is booked for five nights and a matinee next February at the Gala Theatre in Durham; auditions are from 1pm this Sunday at Gilesgate Comprehensive School in Durham. Workshop from 10am.

Singers or sponsors are equally welcome. Gary, a microbiologist at Bishop Auckland General, is on 01388 458119.

He has two months to decide if his dream, in which Nanki Poo plays cornet in the Titipu colliery band, can go ahead.

Durham City Council declined to help because he lives in the Wear Valley; Wear Valley council refused because the show will be staged in Durham. "I'm still struggling for financial backing," admits Gary. "I can only live in hope."

RETRACING the journeys of John Wesley, sponsored for Christian Aid and doubtless reminded of the hymn about the steep and rugged pathway, 15 Methodist pilgrims are this week walking from Allendale in Northumberland to Richmond, North Yorkshire.

The steep and rugged pathway, it will be recalled, was to be trod rejoicingly. We must quickly pass over, therefore, the bit in upper Weardale which looked so fearful they didn't tread it at all.

Today they walk from Barnard Castle into Swaledale, embracing a 2.30pm Ascension Day service at the county boundary on The Stang. On Tuesday they reached Newbiggin-in-Teesdale where the little chapel is said, believed even, to be the oldest Methodist chapel in continuous use.

Charlotte Osborn, wife of the Newcastle Methodist district chairman, had earlier swollen the funds by £70 by swimming in the river at Low Force.

Newbiggin chapel was opened in 1760, chiefly to serve London Lead Company workers and their families. The land cost a fiver, the building £61 13s 5d. It remains much cherished, not least by the brown-eared bats discovered in the roof during recent restoration. They are also properly proud of a new banner, showing Wesley on horseback in the Dales and made by Craft Works!, a Barnard Castle-based group for adults with learning difficulties.

On Tuesday, to speed the pilgrims' progress, they held a "Lead Miners and Chapel Folk" evening - the chapel full to overflowing, the fervour remarkable, the roof, just replaced, fair lifting all over again.

There was a little drama about how the Duke of Cleveland gave land for Bowlees Primitive Methodist Chapel - "on ground that grew nowt but styanes" - a song about the London Lead washer boys who earned fourpence a day, memories of William Dowson from Middleton-in-Teesdale who at 26 became a Methodist minister in the West Indies and at 30 died, still rejoicing, of yellow fever.

Leo Osborn, walking with the Rev Graham Carter - chairman of the far flung Darlington district - had earlier somewhat sceptically addressed Newbiggin's claim to be the oldest chapel in continuous use.

The claim, he said, was "as good as many and better than some". It went down like a London Lead Company balloon.

* The walk ends at 4.30pm tomorrow with worship in Richmond Methodist church. The Christian Aid North-East office is at Haldane House, 49 Burdon Ter race, Newcastle-upon-Tyne NE2 3AE.

* The octagonal Yarm Methodist Church, dating from 1763 and said to have been John Wesley's favourite chapel, has an open day on Saturday from 10am-4pm. Former deputy Prime Minister and Wesley biographer Roy Hattersley, speaks there tonight.