58 Years of Service 
The Year 2000 was millennium year and it was also the golden anniversary year of Grays Travel. The coach business was started in 1950 when the late Ernest Henry Gray left Wharncliffe Silkstone Colliery where he had spent 32 years of his working life and bought his first motor coach a second hand Austin with a Duple body at a cost of £2,116. Ernest's love of mechanised transport started with a motor cycle and he drove the model T fords of Doctors Richie and Allott and local businessman Mr Charles Allott in the early 1920's, before buying his own motor car, being about the fourth man in Hoyland Common to own one. Whilst working at Wharncliffe Silkstone Colliery he drove the pit ambulance and when the colliery decided they no longer needed a permanent vehicle, he started a part-time private taxi service. He liked large cars so his taxis tended to be Rolls Royce Phantoms, Austin Shieldlines, Austin Mayfair's, Daimlers and Wolseys. In the 1950's and 60's he bought imported American cars and many local brides will remember being taken to the church in his Buick Chrysler and Cadillac.
The coach business did well in its first two years so much so that in 1952 a brand new Commer Plaxton was bought at a cost of £2937.10. Most trips in the early days were local. Trips into Derbyshire and the Dukeries were popular, as were trips to the coast. A London weekend was considered to be long distance and a major undertaking.
A lot of contract work was undertaken in the early years. Ernest's contact with the Coal Board saw him running miners to work on all three shifts to the pits at Skiers Spring, Barley Hall and Thorpe Hesley. Local school children knew him well from the trips he took them on and he will be well remembered by many handicapped children in the area who he took to the High Green Training Centre for many years.
In 1966 at the age of 21 Stephen Ernest Gray became a partner in his fathers business and they worked along side each other up to Ernest's death in 1983. In 1989 Stephen took over the business of N & R Coaches Elsecar and split the business into two parts, Grays Luxury Travel Limited and Grays Coach Holidays. The Limited Company being the coach hire division and Grays Coach Holidays selling coach tours to the public.
Grays celebrated their Golden Jubilee in the year 2000.