Godon's final journey on £500,000 crane

Gordon's coffin was reverently placed on the family business' latest, biggest and most expensive acquisition - a 120 ton-capacity crane.

The vehicle had cost the company nearly 500,000. Gordon, dying of lung cancer but gamely continuing to work until almost the last, had seen the new five-axle Grove. But he never had opportunity to drive it.

Yesterday morning, his cortege moved off from the Thorne Crescent depot where Gordon, 73, had worked since he was a schoolboy to Eastbourne crematorium.

His most unusual "hearse" was so huge that Gordon had to do one last time what he had done so often in his working life - follow the approved Abnormal Load route.

The family tribute was, said his son, Paul, and daughter, Margaret, what he would have wanted.