Sunday 22 May 2011

The joys of the open road

Until the mid 1950s most people in England went on holiday by train. The summer timetable was packed with additional trains on Friday evenings and Saturdays during the height of the holiday season.  Trains were provided to cater for day-trippers as well as those spending a week (or possibly two) at their holiday destination. 

Football supporters would travel by special trains to 'away' matches.

The end of post war austerity in the 1950s, an increase in car ownership and the advent of package holidays to foreign lands had their effect on the numbers travelling by rail.  The swansong of mass rail travel to holiday destinations was 1963.

Our family acquired a car in the mid 1950s, a Ford Consul to be replaced after a few years by a Ford Zephyr Zodiac. Prior to obtaining a car my father had a Norton motorbike to which was attached a sidecar. For reasons not known to me this was replaced by a Velocette which I remember as being a souped up bicycle as distinct from a scooter.

Holidays by car included visits to Scotland. I recall staying at Strome Ferry, Inverness and Grantown-on-Spey, seeing the Forth Bridge (the railway one) and visiting Edinburgh and Aberdeen.  The journey to Scotland was always by way of the A1 to Scotch Corner and thence the A68.  We stopped overnight at Stirling.

Some years we would travel to the South West to either Paignton or St Mawgan for a caravan holiday.  I remember both well.  The site at St Mawgan was run by an RAF man based at St Mawgan and his wife.  On one occasion we had a tour of the aerodrome and were permitted to board an aircraft and look at the flight deck.

My abiding memory is the journey to the South West from Sheffield. It was always a 4.00AM start.  Down the A61 to Derby and then on the A38 if we were heading for Cornwall.  In those days most of the journey was on single carriage roads, very few dual carriageways, no by-passes and no motorways. Anything over 50 mph would put a strain on the car.  The important considerations were to get through Burton-on-Trent, notorious for the large number of level crossings of railway lines serving the breweries, before 6.00AM  and to cut across the Birmingham conurbation by 8.00AM.

Journeys to Devon were usually via the Fosse Way and the notorious Exeter bottleneck.

The great enemy was tiredness, particularly on the return journey when close to home on familiar roads. Every year road accidents resulting in deaths were reported in the Sheffield newspapers: people returning from the South West and having an accident within a few miles of their home.

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