ABOUT
Our Story
Hi, we’re Darren and Shelli, the proud owners of Russ’ Bus, our home from home when we’re on the road exploring, come rain or shine!
Like many of you reading this, we’re busy professionals – well, Shelli is at least, Darren just does a damn fine job of pretending to be both busy and a professional! – trying to squeeze in some quality time around all of the things “adults” must do to keep everything ticking over. You know the sort of thing: driving the kids to their clubs, shopping, paying bills, cooking dinners, actually doing our jobs…and the list goes on, and on, and on, and on.
Russ’ Bus is our first campervan, and hopefully last as we want our bus to keep going as long as we do! We didn’t go down the self-build route because, well, we’d make a really bad job of it; we’re not called Bodge-it and Fix-it at home for nothing you know! No, we got Dan and his amazing crew over at Three Bridge Campers to do it for us. Okay, so they weren’t the cheapest company out there, but they were totally on board with what we wanted and they certainly delivered!
RUSS’ BUS?
Sadly, back in 2018 – a few short weeks after his 48th Birthday – we lost the gentle giant that was Russ, Darren’s big brother.
As you can imagine, losing Russ at such a young age was a real shock to us and really hit home that we really should be making the most of our time on this mortal coil while we can.
The idea for Russ’ Bus came to us while discussing what we wanted to do once we’d sorted out Russ’ affairs, and the idea of getting a van converted into a camper was first hit upon. What better way to enable us to get away more often? So. we put a chunk of the money towards buying a van and getting it converted in honour and memory of a wonderful young man.
So that’s the “Russ” bit of the name covered but what about the “Bus” bit, as it’s clearly not a bus?
Way back in the 80s when Russ left school, he tried his hand at a number of different jobs/careers, none of which really clicked with him. It wasn’t until applying for a job at Maidstone & District to be a bus driver.
You would have thought that for someone as quiet and shy as Russ was, talking to and dealing with the general public all day would have been the last thing you’d want to do wouldn’t you? Nope. He loved it, so much so he drove buses in London as well before moving up to Yorkshire to work for the Harrogate Bus Company. Harrogate Bus Company were absolutely amazing after Russ passed away, naming one of the busses after him (see the photo below), which we’ve seen out and about round Harrogate and Knaresborough.
And that’s why our camper is called Russ’ Bus, in honour of someone who we dearly missed every day.
So there you have it, the story behind why our campervan is called “Russ’ Bus”. We’ve got a pendant with a very small amount of Russ’ ashes that permanently hangs in the bus, which means we’ve got Russ with us on all of our travels and adventures.
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Go for it now. The future is promised to no one.
Wayne Dyer