YOU kindly published letters and reports last autumn which led to the crowdfunding of an endangered Wensleydale bus service (the year-round Sunday DalesBus No 856 Wensleydale Flyer that runs between Northallerton and Hawes/Gayle).

The success of this fundraising, combined with a very substantial offer of sponsorship from Acorn Stairlifts, has now secured the future of the important 856 service for more than a year.

At much the same time, another Sunday DalesBus service – the summer No 830 Northern Dalesman – achieved national television coverage in All Aboard! The Country Bus. The programme showed the bus travelling through spectacular Dales countryside from Richmond, through Swaledale, across the Buttertubs Pass to Hawes and on to Ribblehead and Ingleton.

In fact this was only part of an amazing through route, which started at Middlesbrough and included Darlington, Richmond, Swaledale, Hawes, Ribblehead, Ingleton and Lancaster. Meanwhile a second bus started in Morecambe and did the journey in the opposite direction, thereby making many interesting journeys possible.

Now, although the bus from Lancaster is fully funded for 2017, the future of the 830 from the North-East is uncertain. Although half the money required for this summer’s service is in hand, a crowdfunding website has been set up (through a registered charity) to try to raise the rest.

Donations may be made anonymously and even the smallest will be a useful and much appreciated contribution to connecting towns and villages, coast and countryside.

The crowdfunding website is dalesbus.org/supportbus830.

Ruth Annison, Askrigg