A RURAL bus service which has not run in years is set to re-launch this month for one day only.

Oxford Bus Museum will be running the free vintage bus service between Witney and Long Hanborough (where it is located) on the August 28 Bank Holiday Monday.

The service will leave Witney Market Place every 30 minutes from 10.55am until 3.55pm and run to Long Hanborough railway station and the museum.

Museum managers said: "This will be a great opportunity to experience a typical Oxfordshire country bus service as it would have been in the heyday of bus travel during the 1960s."

Up to four vintage buses from the museum will be in operation, re-creating the 53 service that ran along this route during the 1960s.

All the buses will have a conductor aboard, dressed in period uniform and wearing a vintage ticket machine to issue passengers with an authentic paper bus ticket.

Jonathan Radley from the bus museum said: "Amongst our many transport artefacts, we have lots of bus timetables and I was looking through one from 1965 recently and saw that route 53 linked Witney and Long Hanborough, so got the idea that we should re-create that route this Bank Holiday Monday.

"It’ll be a great nostalgia trip for older generations, whilst for young children it’ll be the chance to experience a rural bus service as it would have been when most families didn’t have a car and the weekly bus trip into their nearest market town was an adventure."

For more information about the event and the museum visit oxfordbusmuseum.org.uk