The Royal Mail might be refusing to paint a post box gold to honour Kent's Olympics hero Lizzy Yarnold, but a more eye-catching tribute as been announced today.

Work has started to spray an Arriva bus that covers her hometown route gold.

The bus will run on the number 478 route, which runs through West Kingsdown and the nearby villages of Eynsford and Farningham on its way to Swanley.

Richard Lewis, from Arriva, said "We are proud of Lizzy's achievement and, as we serve her local community, we felt that a gold bus would be a fitting way to draw attention to her success.

"Unlike a post box, our bus will be seen by large numbers of people every day over a wide area as it travels between Lizzy's home village and the nearby town of Swanley."

The bus is being painted in Watford and will be back in service next week, he added.

Yarnold was chosen to carry the Union flag and lead the GB team at the closing ceremony of the Sochi Winter Olympics at the weekend.

The 25-year-old former Maidstone Grammar School for Girls student, from West Kingsdown, won Great Britain's first gold medal of the Olympics when she claimed victory in the women's skeleton competition.

Yarnold went into the Games as one of Team GB's brightest medal hopes and she lived up to expectations by blowing away the rest of the field.

She was chosen to carry the flag, as winner of one of only 10 gold medals in British Winter Olympic history, by Team GB chief Mike Hay and his deputies.

Last week, a post box was painted gold by vandals in Hever Road, West Kingsdown, after Royal Mail said it had no plans to decorate postboxes for Sochi winners - like it did for gold medallists at London 2012.