The Queen Mary 2

In early 2003 Arriva London was approached to see if it was feasible to take a London Routemaster bus to St Nazaire in France. Given that we had experience of taking a Routemaster bus to Cannes on the French Riviera, two years in succession, this wasn’t going to be a problem.

No two bus hires are ever the same so it was important to understand exactly what the clients requirements were, the client on this occasion was Cunard.

They wanted a traditional London bus to collect VIP guests from St Nazaire airport and transfer them to the shipyard of Chantiers de l’Atlantique, where the Queen Mary II was under construction.

The bus left London on the morning of March 15 2003 and travelled the 186 miles via Portsmouth and the Cherbourg Peninsular to St Nazaire in southern Brittany. The following day it collected its distinguished guests and safely transported them into the dry dock for the mast stepping ceremony of Cunards QM2.

Despite being dwarfed by the largest passenger liner in the world the bus attracted a huge amount of interest from locals and guests alike. It was estimated that it would need 41 similar buses to line the entire length of the ship.

The bus returned to London the following day without a hitch, another example of Arriva delivering something out of the “ordinary”.