WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? PART 41

I was watching repeats of WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE on BBC2 last week and the one featuring Len Goodman, the primary judge on Strictly Come Dancing, struck a chord with me.

    One of his ancestors was a silk weaver in London and due to his father having been involved in the trade there was enough money to buy two properties in the capital. This was way back in the early 19^th century and as governments were wont to do, they passed a law that meant those involved in the silk trade had to move from London, otherwise they had to pay a hefty levy. Within a short space of time the government passed another law which meant cheap French imports of silk goods completely ruined those involved in the silk trade in Britain. Len’s ancestor lost everything and ended up working as a porter in London’s dockland.

 

Those of you who might have read my blog over the past year might remember my mention of my paternal great-great grandfather, Charles Cooke, who was born in Coventry and came to Liverpool in the 1840s. His father, John, had been a ribbon manufacturer and I wondered why it was that Charles left the family home in the Midlands for Liverpool. I discovered that there was a silk industry in Coventry involving a large workforce of silk weavers and the manufacture of silk ribbons was part of that industry, as well as other goods.

   Just like Len’s ancestor those in Coventry were made destitute when the government passed that law that enabled the import of cheap French silk goods. Things were so bad that soup kitchens were set up to feed the starving. Reason enough for my great-great grandfather, Charles Cooke to make his way to Liverpool where he found a job as a warehouse porter down at the docks, just like Len’s southern ancestor did in London.

     It was in Liverpool that James must have met another warehouse porter, Thomas Woolley, who had come up from Shropshire. Charles married Thomas’ s daughter, Jane, who had been born in Liverpool. The couple were married at St Peter’s church and lived in Toxteth down by the docks at a time when Liverpool began to expand rapidly into the thriving city it became.

     Charles and Jane’s son, James was born in Toxteth and he became a baker. (I can still see in my mind’s eye, Mary Berry’s face on WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE a few weeks ago on discovering that she had a baker in her ancestry). 

     But back to Len. My interest in him as such that this morning I googled him. I knew him to be a Londoner and that he could have been born within the sound of Bow bells but was actually born in Bromley, Kent. As it happens my maternal great-grandfather, William Milburn, whose joiner father, came from the Lake District during the building boom in Liverpool, took his family south to Bromley, St Leonards, which is by Bow, London, where he and his wife, Mary, had another six children. My Liverpool born grandfather, John Milburn, was to work in an iron foundry in London dockland before taking to the sea and returning to Liverpool, where his daughter, married my father, the great-grandson of Charles from Coventry.

     Len, also discovered Polish blood in his family and therein lay another interesting tale for the Strictly Come Dancing judge. Like so many of us who trace our ancestry, he, too, pondered and marvelled about how if such a person had not done this or that, then he wouldn’t have been born.

    I have never really asked myself the question Who do I think I am? I know who I am but I’ve always had an interest in how things came about. That’s why I, like many another, find it so fascinating delving into my family, city and country’s past.

    I just wish I could find out more about my great-grandfather Martin Nelson, a Norwegian mariner just like his father, Hance Nelson. Martin came to Liverpool and met a girl from Toxteth. Unfortunately I can only find mention of Martin on his marriage certificate and that of his children. Within nine years of that marriage, his wife Mary is a widow and remarries another Norwegian mariner who is a Nationalised Brit. If only I had one of those experts from WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE to help me in my search!

     P.S. On another note, I have put up a new banner photograph of the Liverpool waterfront on my Google + version of this blog that was taken by my son, Tim. I’ve also changed the photo of myself to one from the 1960s for your interest. 

JOGGING THE OL' MEMORY: PART 40

I was made up the other week when I read that as we get older it isn’t that our brain stops working as efficiently, it’s just that when we try to remember things, it takes longer because we have more in our memory banks for our brain to sift through. This made perfect sense of my remembering just the first letter of a name or a place I can’t recall straightaway but do so a few hours later or the next day. It reinforces what I’ve thought for a while and that older people are at a disadvantage when it comes to quick-fire quizzes, such as Mastermind.

In our house it’s not only me that can be forgetful but my husband as well. Who hasn’t been asked, ‘Do you remember where I’ve put my keys?’ His have turned up on the second stair up by the front door or on the top of the fridge…or even inside his woolly hat with his gloves.

I always remind him of an episode of Poirot in which Miss Lemon couldn’t remember where she had put her keys and had to stay at his flat. The next day she remembered something Poirot had told her and backtracked on her actions of the day and she found the keys in a bowl of fruit in the hall.

When I first set out to be a writer and was looking for ideas for magazine articles, the smell from a tar machine where workmen were resurfacing a road, instantly reminded me of when I was a little girl bursting tar bubbles between the cobbles on Whitefield Road, near where I went to junior school. That I managed to get tar on my white ankle socks didn’t please Mam at all. Especially when her method of getting rid of the tar involved rubbing butter into it.

But that memory led me to writing an article called SENSES OF THE PAST - smell, hearing, sight, touch - I sent the article to LANCASHIRE LIFE. It wasn’t accepted but the editor did tell me that it was a near miss and that letter encouraged me to carry on writing.

The sight of laden branches of blackberries takes me back to a Sunday School trip on the Wirral or a holiday in Towyn, North Wales. I still enjoy picking blackberries and this morning I decided to make jam, I’ve had three ice cream containers of the fruit in the freezer for weeks and decided it was time to do something with them, as soon I’m going to need the space for Christmas goodies. I decided to make apple and blackberry jam and John helped with the peeling of the apples and sterilising the jam jars. The bubbling mixture smelled gorgeous but after spooning the jam into jars, left at the bottom of the pan was a mush of blackberries and syrupy liquid that was fragrantly toffeeish.

My mam never made jam but she did make toffee apples. I can picture her now in her floral pinny in our old back kitchen. Us kids loved those toffee apples because they were a once a year treat. Having said that there was a woman who used to make toffee apples who lived near Ogden’s tobacco factory on Boundary Lane, and there would be a queue of us kids waiting to hand over our pennies to buy one. Today’s shop bought ones just don’t taste the same.

On a slightly different note I received an email this week from a lady called Deborah who lives in Perth, Australia. (Isn’t the internet magic!) She had recently read my books STEP BY STEP and A DREAM TO SHARE; both of which are mainly set in the beautiful city of Chester. She wanted to know the titles in the right order of the other books in my Chester series because she wanted to know what happened next to the characters. I have been asked this question before about that series - which is partly set in Liverpool as well.

For anyone else who would like to read about my Chester families who discover they have links with Liverpool. They are as follows:

STEP BY STEP, A DREAM TO SHARE, WHEN THE CLOUDS GO ROLLING BY, TILLY’S STORY, and SUNSHINE AND SHOWERS.

Just like Liverpool, Chester is a fascinating place to visit. Chester as a port came to prominence much earlier than Liverpool but Liverpool was to supersede it when the Dee silted up. I discovered the main similarities between the cities were both had rivers, cathedrals, canals and markets, as well as a main railway station. The differences were obvious, but most interesting to me was that Liverpool had numerous pawnbroker shops during Edwardian time, while I could only find two in Chester.

I would have liked to have carried on writing that series whose stories came to an end in the twenties, but my publisher at the time decided it was time to leave that era and the characters. She wanted books to be set around the fifties. It is where my latest Liverpool books are set and I have to confess that the fifties is one of my favourite decades to write about.





　

GOING TO THE FLICKS: PART 39

The other week I was given two tickets for the Plaza Cinema in Crosby by one of my neighbours, Val. She wasn’t able to go but thought I might be able to use them.  There was to be a special showing of a film called Life on the Home Front in North West England. It was rare footage that had been put together by the North West Film Archive who are determined to save our region’s filmed heritage.
     It was a while since I’d visited the Plaza which was saved from closure several years ago by a group of volunteers and is now a community cinema. When my sons were much younger, we would do the half hour walk to Crosby quite often. It was at the Plaza we saw ET, THE BLACK HOLE,  ONE OF OUR DINOSAURS IS MISSING, as well as DEATH ON THE NILE, so I remember it with fondness. It is situated opposite Crosby library which I visited last week because I had a yen to browse shelves of books. Sadly we lost our local library in Litherland almost a year ago.
     I’m glad to say the Plaza still has the atmosphere of the cinema I remember,  although the seats are no longer those ones that would threaten to spring closed when you stood up or tried to sit down. John and I found the new ones really comfortable with a decent back so you could rest your head as you gazed up at the screen. The film lasted just over an hour and was narrated by Maxine Peake, who can be seen on our television screens at the moment and has played Hamlet at the theatre in Manchester recently.
     It was not quite what I expected as the footage did not cover just the First World War but some of the years in the lead up to it and several years afterwards. Neither was it local in the way I had thought it would be. Still I found it really interesting because it gave me a proper feel for the people living then and I received a good impression of their lives.
     I had not realised just how prosperous great swathes of Lancashire was in the year up to what they would have called the Great War. The cotton industry was booming and we had a good share of the export market. Neither had it struck me just how many coal fields there were in Lancashire. I enjoyed seeing the marching bands and girls and woman dressed up for the annual festival when the rose queen was crowned.
     I actually have a photograph of my sister and I dressed in long frocks in a procession when we were part of such an occasion in late forties Liverpool.
      So many happy faces in those pre-WWI films.
     Then came the announcement of war and films of marching men. Fortunately we were spared shots of the Somme and the awfulness of the numerous dead, although there were photographs and names of men who had died. Some of the film did show a whistle stop tour of King George V and Queen Mary visiting towns in Lancashire and the multitudes that turned out to catch just a glimpse of them.
      I was reminded of the one time I saw Queen Mary. She was in an open car with her son King George VI and his wife Queen Elizabeth when they visited Liverpool. My parents had taken my sister and I to see them. It must have been in the late forties because my sister was sitting on Dad’s shoulders and I remember being lifted up so I could see over people’s heads in front.
      The last part of the film was quite sad because it showed the commemoration of various war memorials in towns and villages in Lancashire. The excellent voiceover by Maxine Peake also informed us about the changes wrought after the war with the loss of jobs due to the decline in the cotton industry. Factories having gone over to making munitions during the war had lost markets worldwide and it was a similar story of lost markets in the coalfields of Lancashire. Altogether I found it fascinating.
     A DVD is available from Manchester Central Library, IWM North and other outlets. Price £12. The First World War Life on the Home Front in North West England. www.nwfa.mmu.ac.uk 
      As my husband and I walked home afterwards, I could not help thinking of when our expectations of an evening at the flicks would be a main feature film, a B movie, a cartoon and the Pathe News. Our hearts might have sunk when confronted by bad news but by the time we had left the cinema in a great crowd of cinemagoers and walked home in the fresh air, the news wouldn't be playing over and over in our minds but we might be singing the songs from a musical or discussing the plot of a murder mystery or laughing over a comedy. 
      Lately the news on our television screens has been really upsetting and the horror of it all is hard to banish from our thoughts because it is so in our faces. Again and again. I’ve taken to switching over if I can get away with it but I don’t live alone and others think we need to know what’s going on. What do you think?

 

When my sons were much younger, we would do the walk to Crosby quite often. It was at the Plaza we saw ET, THE BLACK HOLE, ONE OF OUR DINOSAURS IS MISSING, as well as DEATH ON THE NILE. I remembered it fondly as what some would call now an old fashioned proper cinema.

OUT AND ABOUT AROUND MERSEYSIDE: PART 38

The Sunday evening when I last blogged I went to Formby Books to listen to Ann Oakes talking about her grandfather who died from a result of wounds received during the Great War. Most likely she would never have thought of writing a book if she had not discovered his letters in the attic when clearing out her father’s house in Worcestershire. Ann was brought up in the small village of Wilden and one senses that a part of her heart is still there, despite having married a Merseysider and moving up to his home ground. I had met her husband when he had come to listen to me talk at a University of the 3^rd Age meeting and discovered their son had been at school with my eldest, Iain, who does research for me.

It was a very interest talk, much of which can be found in her book Yours Ever, Charlie. A WORCESTERSHIRE SOLDIER’S JOURNEY TO GALLIPOLI by Ann Crowther. Space is given to her grandfather and great-grandfather’s relationship with the Baldwin family, one of whom Stanley Baldwin was to become prime minister of Britain. Rudyard Kipling was also known to the Crowther family, being a relative of the Baldwins. As it says on the back cover, the book is a poignant reminder of how beneath the staggering statistics of the First World War lie innumerable personal and tragic stories.  

 

Part of Ann’s research took her to Malta but my latest was closer to home. Having had my latest book LOVE LETTERS IN THE SAND accepted by my publisher, I decided to make a start on a project close to my heart. So last week I decided I wanted a look around Toxteth as that was where a number of my ancestors had lived for a while in Victorian times. I’ve read a fair bit about that period and I wanted to connect places in my head, such as how far was a certain street from the docks. So with my 1928 Bartholomew’s map of Liverpool in hand (mentions a lot of the old streets), along with a present day map, I persuaded my husband that a morning out trying to find old Toxteth would do us both good.

We-ell, it didn’t quite work out like that!

We both knew that the old docks and just up from them on the South side had changed a lot, but we did not realise just how much it had done. Although a few of the streets and roads were still mentioned on the present day map.

We had a lovely run along Derby Road and the dock road (real name Waterloo Road if I’m not mistaken) our side of the Liver Buildings but then all changed. We ended up motoring up the wrong street instead of  Parliament Street as we intended. We went down again and then along Grafton Street, which runs parallel with the southern end of  the dock road. We did actually see the name Mann Street or Upper Mann Street where my great-grandmother, Mary Harrison, grew up and lived for the first few years of her married life to Norwegian sailor, Martin Nelson, but we’d reached a dead end and it was blocked by bollards, so we couldn’t get to it. After a quick look at the map we decided to go down towards the Mersey again, thinking there must be a way to find another street where another of my ancestors had lived.

No way! What struck me afresh was just how steep the streets run up from those nearest the docks.

So I suggested to John that we go to Princes Park, named after Edward VII when he was born, as I’d never been there before. Somehow we ended up in Otterspool but that was better than being at Speke Airport, or John Lennon as it’s called today. At least as it was a fine day, there was a lovely view over the Mersey to the Wirral. We parked and out came the map again.

We decided we’d backtrack, John was certain he’d be able to find Princes Park, where he’d been before in his youth, if we made for the Anglican Cathedral where my school used to go every Ascension Day, along with St Edmund’s. 

We found Parliament Street this time - and I noticed Toxteth Library on the right, and decided I must go there one day. We went along Catherine Street and eventually motored down Princes Road. There were some really attractive big house there, which no doubt had been inhabited by the rich upper middle classes at the time my ancestors were living just up from the docks. Then we went along Croxteth Road, named after Croxteth Hall, owned once upon a time by the Earls of Sefton. We missed the turning to Princes Park.

Where did we end up? Sefton Park which had once been part of the Royal hunting park of Toxteth. This whole area, including West Derby not far away has a long history.

Now I have warm memories of visiting Sefton Park aviary, the lake, grotto, or cave as we called it, and seeing the statue of Peter Pan with my sister and parents when I was a little girl. We generally travelled to the park on the 26 or 27 bus, so we had entered the park by a different gate. I also cut through the park after school games near Green Park.

I wasn’t really in the mood to hike across the park to find the palm house which son Tim assures me is well worth a look, because I was getting hungry. What I did find was a monument by the main gateway to a Samuel Smith, born in Kirkcudbright, Scotland, in the 19^th century. He was a philanthropist, who became member of parliament for Liverpool. He was a bit of a traveller like many another who settled in our fair city and died in India.

We headed home, but not before traversing along Park Road, a well known shopping centre for my ancestors. At least I felt I had a bit of a feel of the place after getting lost several times in Toxteth and the area still known as Toxteth Park. So next time when someone mentions the Toxteth riots and your mind is filled with images of burning cars, remember there is another side to that ancient part of Liverpool.

PART 37: ACROSS THE MERSEY

Having finished the book, I’ve been sort of relaxing by sorting out my ancestry files on my father’s side of the family, doing a couple of jigsaws and meeting my sister, who lives near Chester for lunch. Anything to escape catching up on the housework. 

She said, ‘Where d’you fancying going? What d’you feel about New Brighton?’

I felt fine about New Brighton, having not visited that childhood haunt for several years and then it had been in her company. Last time I was there my heart had plummeted. It was winter and it didn’t feel a bit like when we were kids and our parents would take us on a crowded ferry from Liverpool across the Mersey on a bank holiday Monday.

Like most Scousers I have memories of paddling in the pool that was sort of enclosed by a low wall from the rest of the shore, making it reasonably safe for children when the tide came in. As well as crabbing amongst the rocks and, of course, making sandcastles and walking along the prom.

My sister and I never got as far as the paddling pool this time around because I’d actually taken the train to Capenhurst, her nearest train stop, where she picked me up and drove us all the way to New Brighton, so we came to it from a different angle to which I was familiar.

We had lunch at a Harvester’s overlooking the sea - lovely friendly staff and good fish and chips. Then we drove in the direction of the main part of New Brighton and parked by the sea wall. (Apparently during the bad storms of last winter the waves had come right over it and reached Morrison’s!) There was still no sign of the seaside resort I remembered but I could now see the more familiar Lancashire coastline where I lived across the Mersey as we walked along in the direction of the new superstores where my sister fancied a cappuccino in Morrison’s. She reckoned that it's the big stores that have helped to bring New Brighton alive again, as well as the coastal walk.

We paused to speak to a bloke fishing as the tide was in and asked him what he expected to catch.

‘Flatties!’ he said.

‘Plaice!’ I murmured, and I was a child again going shopping with Mam to Charles, the fishmonger’s, on Breck Road in Everton.

Fridays were fish days despite us not being Catholics. The queue would be outside the shop. Now Charles was what I’d call a real fish shop. They didn’t just sell mackerel, kippers, herrings, haddock and cod, but skate, ray, conger eel, salt fish (of course), fish roe and cockles and winkles (we called the latter cuwins for some inexplicable reason) You’d winkle the snail-like creature out of its shell with a pin after they’d been boiled. Fishmongers also stocked eggs and rabbits still in their fur. My mother was skilled in preparing this cheap meat and making delicious stew.

But I digress. As my sister and I walked along, enjoying the sea breezes, I noticed a plaque and being nosy I went over to see what it said. It was dedicated to an Ian Fraser (now there’s a good Scottish name) who had lived in Wallasey. A Lieutenant Commander in the Royal Navy, he had won the VC for his bravery in a midget submarine during an attack on a Japanese ship.

He had died not so long ago at the age of 87. You can read his obituary online which, as well as providing a detailed account of his wartime exploits, mentioned that he had married Melba Hughes, who was serving as a Wren at Pwllheli, North Wales, when he met her.

Now Hughes is what I’d call a Welsh name and I couldn't help thinking of the debate going on at the moment about Scotland having a referendum in September whether to leave the union and go it alone.

Liverpool and towns on both sides of the Mersey have long welcomed people from all over the world, many have settled in the area,  but none more so than those from Ireland, Scotland and Wales.

My husband although born in Liverpool, is what I’d call a true Celt.  On his mother’s side of the family he has inherited mainly Scottish and Irish with just a touch of English blood and on his father’s Welsh and Scottish with just the slightest hint of English blood. He would say he was a true Brit. As for me I am more English than he is but I do have a large dose of Welsh and a touch of Irish as well as Scandinavian. It is likely that I could have a streak of Scots because my mother is descended from a line of Border Reivers who along with the Lowland Scots, no doubt raiding across the border between England and Scotland.
It truly grieves me to think of the UK being split up. It’s almost like saying those on the other side of the Mersey are a different race from us Liverpudlians, although there are those who would say they are, I add, tongue in cheek.     

Part 36: WHEN YOU COME TO THE END...

It came as a bit of a shock to me to realise that it’s over a month since I’ve blogged but I’ve told myself I should’ve feel bad about that because I’ve been working really hard getting to the end of my latest manuscript LOVE LETTERS IN THE SAND. Actually I didn’t get right to the end before sending it off to my agent because I reached a point where I thought I’ve had enough, I’m over the word limit and it could be that it might need another book to come to the end of the story and my deadline is the 1^st September … panic, panic. So I emailed it off to my agent and waited for her comments. She told me to spend some time thinking while she went through it and that’s what I did.

During the last fortnight or so I’ve been through her copy edits and comments and on Thursday evening I came to the end of the rewrite, feeling satisfied with myself, and emailed it off to her. I did have to bring the action forward a bit which meant reading through the notes, my researcher son, Iain, had done of events in 1958 as reported in the Liverpool Echo of the times and do a bit of research online but I think the story all hangs together and hopefully, my agent, publisher and readers will enjoy it.
    The titles of my latest books set in the Fifties are taken from songs. Not surprisingly as to me that decade has a lot to do with music, so when I felt stumped for a title for this latest entry for my blog I naturally began to think of songs and what came into my head was “When You Come to The End of …a Lollipop” which immediately made me smile and go online …and what came up but Max Bygraves singing the song on You Tube. (I did try to do a link to this but it was so difficult that I gave up but just google it if you want to see it.)
      I sometimes think that some of the words of today’s hits are crackers but after listening to Max singing what was a hit in 1960 I decided that there were some daft songs around in my younger days, too. It made me come over all nostalgic, though, because the version I watched showed a variety of lollipops and I could almost taste the Swizzels solid sherbet kind you gnawed on or gobstoppers that you could suck for ages and then there were sherbet dips and even toffee lollipops, as well as fruit flavoured ones. On the telly last evening there was a programme about how to make your own lollipops. I don’t think I’ll be making any but I will be making chocolate and sultana bread and butter pudding this evening as we’ve a friend coming to dinner.

     But since coming to the end of the manuscript and thinking about my blog, I homed in on its title AND THEY CAME TO LIVERPOOL which originally referred to my ancestry but now contains much more than just that. In the past month Liverpool have had a visit from the Giants. Whilst I didn’t actually go and see them myself, my photographer and filmmaker son, Tim, did, and as he knew one of the girls who was helping out with the project (she spoke French) he was able to get some interesting shots.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/timfilmmaker/   This is Tim's photo stream, to see the Giants, scroll down and you'll eventually come to them.

Of course, there were also lots of photographs in the Liverpool Echo and on North West television of the Giants, their tour of the city and their leaving of Liverpool by ship for France. They were such an attraction that thousands and thousands of people came to Liverpool to see them.

      There was a time when I was younger when the city was in decline and more and more people were leaving for pastures new. My brother Ron, left with his wife and baby daughter in 1959 for Essex, in the sixties my sister went to Cheshire, and several of my cousins went to America and Canada. Now Liverpool attracts many tourists from all over the world, thanks in part to the Beatles and the music scene, but also to its fabulous maritime history and its situation on the Mersey and it being within easy travelling distance of so many beauty spots on the Wirral, Cheshire, Wales, Lancashire and the Lake District.

      Recently I’ve been reading two books by the same author, Michael Mitton. One is called DREAMING OF HOME and the other TRAVELLERS OF THE HEART. In brief, the first is about finding a sense of home, a special place of acceptance and belonging. The second is about exploring new pathways on our spiritual journey, although it spoke to me about much more than that. I reckon it take a lot of courage to up stakes and go in search of that something you haven’t found yet.

      Now I’ve come to the end of my latest saga, I want to step out of my comfort zone and put parts of my blog in some semblance of order and turn it into a book, or even a couple of short books with extra material.

I forget where I might have read it but isn’t it true that in every ending there is also a beginning.

   

  

 

PART 35 :THOSE WERE THE DAYS MY FRIEND

Just been watching the first stages of the Tour de France in beautiful Yorkshire . With hand on my heart I admit that the White Rose County is as lovely as Lancashire, county of the Red Rose - the Red Rose can been seen wrought in the gates of Liverpool’s Central Library. Watching the cyclists who were as colourful as the scenery in their cycling gear, I was transported back to 1962, the year John and I went youth hostelling on the bikes we had bought second hand that Spring. His was a Claude Butler with gears. Mine was a lady’s bike without gears. I had never owned a bicycle before. No, I tell a lie, my sister and I were given my sister-in-law, Elsie’s, to share. I learnt to ride by simply getting in the saddle and peddling up and down our street. I only fell off a couple of times. That was around about 1957 - the year most of my present manuscript, LOVE LETTERS IN THE SAND is set.

But back to 1962. John, having decided we were going to cycle from Liverpool to Cornwall, had me getting into condition by cycling to places such as Formby on the Lancashire coast and for hills, those ones in Liverpool that rise up from Great Homer Street, and up to Netherfield Road and Everton Brow. I can’t say I arrived the top without getting off my bike.
http://streetsofliverpool.co.uk/tag/netherfield-road/

When we eventually did set off for our epic cycling trip two hills stand out in my memory. The first is Porlock Hill, Devon, which has gradients of 1in 3.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHRDOu-Psz4
 John, of course, took it all in his stride. As for me, I spent most of that climb, pushing my bike up the hill. I discovered that passing motorist informed him that “She’s on her way, lad!” and he kept cycling down to where ever I was at that point. I did eventually reach the top and remember crossing part of Exmoor on what some would call a typical English summer’s day, mist, rain, etc. Suffice to say I never did reach Cornwall because by the end of that day when we arrived in Barnstaple on the north Devon coast, I’d had enough.

Going back a bit - the other hill - a gorge actually. We took what we thought was a short cut to get out of the wind after leaving Chepstow, bypassed Bristol and went through the Chew Valley, Somerset and ended up at the top of what we discovered was the famous Cheddar Gorge.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheddar_Gorge 
 At the more sensible age I am now, I would never have cycled down it but it wasn’t until we had freewheeled down it and were almost at the bottom that we read a notice saying that cyclists were advised to walk.

I have had several bikes in my life so far, never having wanted to learn to drive. When I had my youngest son, Daniel, in my mid-thirties, when he was a toddler we bought a bike seat for him. I used to cycle with him on the back and a shopping basket on my front handle bars . I suppose it’s not surprising that when he was in his twenties, he cycled from Liverpool to France and throughout that beautiful country.

Those were the days, my friends.

I still have a bike which I generally remove from the shed to cycle along the canal towpath and in our country park that used to be the local council tip. It is now full of bird song in spring, wild flowers in summer and is great for picking blackberries in Autumn.

In my early writing days one of the first things I had published was an article in a series called MY FAVOURITE THINGS, you’ll probably guess that mine was MY TWO WHEELED FRIEND MY BIKE.