Wigan Album

I remember Alan the driver he used to take a big group of us to Walsingham in Norfolk for quite a few years. A very nice chap.

No chewing gum spat out or litter just thrown down around there, and also looks to be a nice place for those Pigeon and bird haters to live too - not a feather in sight.

It was Walls's coaches when I was a child in Ince, before it became Grayway's. Many a Walls's coach-trip to "t'luminatons" was "got up" in September by a lady in Pickup Street/George Street and we went to her house with our payments. Oh, the excitement to children whose families were many years away from owning a car. Since living in Abram, my daughter and I went on many a trip with Grayways on Bank Holidays when she was in her teens in the 1990s, (she's 42 now!), and they would pick us up and drop us off in Platt Bridge...so convenient and some lovely days out!

I must confess, now retired these tours look more inviting that the airport ordeals!

Colin they are brilliant and a change from the Airport! I have been on quite a few coach trips in Europe . Only on the condition there’s an overnight stop over. Last Summer I went to Rocamadour in the Dordogne and visited the village of Oramour-Sur- Glane where the Nazis massacred 643 villagers just as DDay had started. Unforgettable. It’s nice going by coach for a change.

I forgot to mention the village has been left as it was when the massacre happened on the orders of President de Gaul. It’s haunting to walk through to see how it has been left….

Yes Irene,Wall's was in the next row from where I lived growing up in Manchester Road,remember it well.Use Grayways regularly now as well.x

When working at Potter's Herbs at Leyland Mills in the early 1970s, the management hired a Gray's coach that on weekday evenings would take the workforce to the town centre, and the driver was very often a man named Mick, and I'm sure that's him who's sat on the bench in the square.

The paint or livery on their coaches was grey until they took over another coach company, with Wall's being mentioned it must have been them, though I'm sure it was also another company too, they later then became to be as in the photo.

I've got it wrong and got two coach companies mixed up, it was from Standish and a Kenmore coach that would take the Leyland Mills staff to Wigan centre, and not a Grays as I said previously, sorry about that.

How do Shearings keep getting resurrected, it isn't so very long since they went bust, and not for the first time either, and yet they are on TV advertising coach trips again.

Shearings have ‘amalgamated’ with Leger Cyril. It was Shearings I went with to Rocamadour and Oramour - sur-Glane. But they still use their own coaches. Leger are better coaches.

in 2020, Leger bought the 'brand' of Shearings, not the company. Many of Shearings' coaches were stored in a compound on the Brdley Industrial Estate in Standish while they were sold off.

I still get separate brochures for both Shearings and Leger Reverend and different phone numbers to ring when booking. There’s always more Shearing’s Coaches when reaching the departure stops. It’s as if there’s some competition between them. This year I’m trying a company in Leyland going up to Scotland. It’s been highly recommended.

They call themselves the Leger/ Shearings Group, Veronica: https://www.legershearings.com
Any 'rivalry' is simply a marketing ploy.

According to the History page on the Grayways website, the original Grays coach company ended up in the hands of Shearings.