WHEN former Bolton MP David Young died, his widow Vera knew exactly where he wanted to be buried. But to fulfill his wishes, she had to make a 600-mile round trip -- to lay him to rest in his beloved Scotland, in the same grave as his first wife Grace.

The trip took her on lengthy train journeys to Dumbarton, where funeral directors had already taken the body of the 74-year-old former Bolton South East MP.

Then she travelled a further 100 miles by car, in a cortege which took him alongside Loch Lomond and through the Grampian Mountains to be buried in the little cemetery at remote Tighnabruaich by the Kyles of Bute.

"David would have loved that journey," said Vera, back in her home in Harwood.

"We had often discussed his funeral arrangements, and it was all written in his will. We'd gone to Scotland several times before he became ill, and visited Grace's grave," said Vera, aged 58. "He loved Scotland and we stayed all over the country. David's father came from near Tighnabruaich, and he had been on holiday there as a boy, so when Grace died, she was buried there."

David Young was born in Greenock, Glasgow, educated at Glasgow University and at St Paul's College in Cheltenham. He joined the Labour Party in 1955 and embarked on a political career that finally brought him to Bolton in the 1970s where he was first elected to the old Bolton East seat.

He had a volatile political career and became a hard-working MP for the new Bolton South East constituency in 1983. He retired from political life in 1997, having failed to be re-selected by Labour party members three years earlier.

Vera, meanwhile, had married David Dingwall, who became a Bolton councillor and a nationally-acknowledged force in education. Vera, a Labour Party member, had campaigned for David Young and enjoyed the friendship of Grace. "She was a lovely woman," said Vera.

When Vera was widowed, and Grace died after a long illness, she and David, already friends, gravitated towards each other.

They married six years ago when David was no longer an MP and neither was actively involved in local politics.

David later suffered a series of strokes and died in hospital on New Year's Day from pneumonia.

Vera, never jealous about her husband's final wishes, set about putting them into effect. And last Friday she accompanied him on his final journey.

"I said a few words at the graveside, about how he'd worked hard and that now it was time to go," she said.

"It was all quite fitting for him -- he didn't like fuss.

"But, what had made him laugh was that the cemetery was built on the site of an old gunpowder factory.

"He always was a fiery character. David liked that idea."