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A loving husband’s romantic gift to his wife is just the ticket – the double-decker bus where they first met.

Ken Morgan was a young RAF airman when he caught the eye of an 18-year-old conductress working on the country bus route between Gloucester and Cardiff .

Ken, then 22, began chatting to pretty blue-eyed conductress Shirley on the Red and White Route – and now they are about to celebrate 60 years together.

Lovingly restored

And Ken has splashed out £12,000 to buy the same Red and White bus, which is now kept in Barry , after discovering it had been restored by a transport enthusiast.

Ken, now 82, and wife Shirley, 78, love going for a country spin in their “on the buses” romance decked out in uniform.

Ken said: “That bus journey on Route One in 1956 changed my life forever.

“Shirley was a trainee conductress on the bus I got on. I thought she was beautiful and I wondered if she had a boyfriend but I didn’t dare ask. We chatted almost all the way of my 60 mile trip.”

For the next few weeks Ken took the same 60-mile journey ride on the Red and White Route one bus which cost two shillings and sixpence.

He finally plucked up the courage to ask Shirley out as she took the fares on the bus on the morning service.

First date at the cinema

“Shirley was my first and only girlfriend. I found the courage to ask her if she had a boyfriend and she told me she didn’t,” said Ken.

“I asked if I could take her to the cinema and she said yes. Funnily, Shirley missed her last bus home on our date and had to walk a mile in high heels to her to get home!”

Ken left the RAF – and even trained to be a bus driver to work with Shirley before the pair wed in 1959.

Shirley became a full-time mum to their three children and Ken went to work as an aircraft engineer with Pan-Am which took him all around the world on jobs.

Ken said: “Working on the buses with Shirley really was some of the happiest times of my life.”

Ken was amazed to see one of the Red and White buses in a transport museum – and found a collector who had saved another one from the scrapyard.

Labour of love

Ken said: “I offered to help restore the bus. It was the same fleet 1749 which we met all those years before. It was a real labour of love.”

After a year of restoration the owner offered to sell it to Ken and Shirley for £12,000.

“It was just wonderful and took us right back down memory lane to the days when we first met,” he says.

Now Ken and Shirley travel to Barry from their home in Ashford, Middlesex, to take nostalgic trips around their old bus routes in their 1949 Guy Arab double decker.

Between trips, the bus is kept in a heritage bus collection in South Wales.

“We are a good team and it’s been so nice in our retirement years to play driver and conductor again. It reminds us of our courting days,” said Ken.

“We had such great times. I still adore Shirley as much as I did back then.

“I’m her carer now - she has had a new pair of knees and isn’t so steady on her feet but we still have lots of laughs together.”

Delighted Shirley said: “We’ve had a wonderful life together and we still have great days out on our Red &White bus.

“We both believe in destiny and meeting Ken on the bus that day in 1956 was just meant to be. I still have my original conductress badge and wear it with as much pride as my wedding ring.”