Some memories here for our older members. Just the job if you can't sleep tonight......
www.youtube.com/watch?v=JE82FZpq0qM
Commentary sounds very familiar.....just like the ones we did on the police driving courses.
I wonder if a single vehicle has survived.
Ted
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A very pleasant and uneventful journey without incident. Fantastic Ted, thank you very much. Filmed almost a decade before I was born too.
I can imagine a similar commentary in progress when I'm driving through towns, I'm not sure if that's a good thing ;)
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Wonderful video from 12 years before my birth.
Two things struck me:
Unbelievable lack of traffic relative to today.
There were still muppets on the road, even back then. :-)
Fantastic post though, Ted. Great to watch.
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Lovely film, Ted. I just thought that I'd have a quick look at it, then got captivated and watched it through! :-)
Thanks for posting.
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Really enjoyed that - thanks.
In addition to the observations above, I noticed so little road furniture or armco on the open road sections.
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I was 9, I recognise many of the areas, good to see how they have changed.
As for traffic? my memory of those days and long journeys is stretches of empty A roads, regularly interspersed with horrific traffic snarl up points, where it may take you an hour to get through a country town for example.
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I was not that impressed with the driving at the start in Lampton Road.
I know the road very well and have never seen anyone go left like that especially poor with a learner ahead.
The Great West Road ( our first motorway ?) ws so so quiet.
The Bath Road past Heathrow North looks very so different now with its line of hotels.
Use of the horn would as he did is today more likely to generate more than two fingers.
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>> The Great West Road ( our first motorway ?) was so so quiet.
>>
The first UK motorway was the Preston bypass, opened in 1958.
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>> >> The Great West Road ( our first motorway ?) was so so quiet.
>> The first UK motorway was the Preston bypass, opened in 1958.
>>
Yes the first road called a motorway but The Great West Road was IMO in effect a motorway when it was built - opened in 1925. Outside town, three lanes each way plus wide verges and cycle lanes and pavements.
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>> Yes the first road called a motorway but The Great West Road was IMO in
>> effect a motorway when it was built - opened in 1925. Outside town, three lanes
>> each way plus wide verges and cycle lanes and pavements.
>>
A motorway is defined by different rules and laws than other roads, including a 1925 dual carriageway and Glasgow's Great Western Road, (also used to be a six lane dual carriageway).
Last edited by: Old Navy on Mon 24 Oct 11 at 12:07
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I see there were nutters about (on the road) back then Teddy!
That is an England which I knew & luved, but which alas is no more :-(
I only noticed one blimming foreign car, some German thing with an engine in the boot!
Ya see - if all you loyal subjects out there had bought cars that were Made in England, Britain may may well still be Great!
Instead of which you put your £'s into Johnny Foreigners pockets buying these ere flipping French, German, Italian, Korean, and Swedish junk :-(
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>
>> That is an England which I knew & luved, but which alas is no more
>> :-(
You were in a different England mate. I know we couldn't afford a Jaguar in 1963, and I doubt your family could either.
I think 63 was the year the old man had to sell the car to pay for xmas dinner.
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>>I think 63 was the year the old man had to sell the car to pay for xmas dinner<<
Ah, well - you must have eaten the "upper crust" then as my dad never owned a car in his whole 54 years,
One thing I do remember about 63 was - we only had chicken once a year @ xmas, now I have it (chicken!) 3 times a week.
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Chicken three times a week? You'r posh.Does it taste like chicken.63 I was 14 at Tech school.
The old man took driving lessons whilst he was on leave.Neighbour opposite us had a Morris Minor if we went near his car he came out chasing us funny fellow.
Nice film clean and quiet on the road in comparison with today.
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>>Does it taste like chicken<<
I only eat free-range organic chics, so yes it does taste like chicken oughta.
>>63 I was 14 at Tech school<<
14 in 63 - Christ! you must be blimming old :)
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"14 in 63 - Christ! you must be blimming old :)"
Oh dear. I was older than that in 1963. A bit... I mean, a few years.
My father was a long-standing motorist and car-owner, having owned a Standard 8 during the war years (wretched 3-speed gearbox IIRC), then, if memory serves, a Rover 14, a Jowett Javelin (what a piece of cutting-edge car technology THAT was!) and a Jaguar 2.4.
After this I was no longer living at home and had started my own motoring career - another story.
Yes, it was a different England and a different world then, though I don't have a rose-tinted view of it. Every generation thinks things aren't what they used to be - just as well, in most cases.
Of course motoring was more of a pleasure then, in some ways. However, traffic could still be appallingly bad and cars were much less reliable.
Two reminiscences to back these points up: as a child I remember my father starting at the crack of dawn in the summer to drive us from Hertfordshire to Cornwall and the dreadful traffic jams in places like Slough and Launceston, the experience enhanced by caravans towed by underpowered cars, which all the other underpowered cars couldn't overtake. The journey to the very south of Cornwall took about 12 hours including stops - double what you would expect today.
As a young guy in his twenties I can remember driving my Vauxhall Viva with Brabham conversion (oh yes!) to the West Highlands and realising there was a carburettor problem when the thing would not run properly, would not tick over and so on. I suspected (correctly) which one of the two carburettors was at fault and dismantled it at the roadside maybe four times before I found the little bit of rubber debris that was the cause of the problem - having burnt my hand on the exhaust manifold in the process.
Happy days? Well, yes and no.
Last edited by: FocalPoint on Mon 24 Oct 11 at 12:20
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>>Yes, it was a different England and a different world then, though I don't have a rose-tinted view of it. Every generation thinks things aren't what they used to be - just as well, in most cases.<<
I suppose that's why I live where I do FP, I yearn for the old days/ways in many respects,
I'm looking forward to this weekend when I light the fire, getting the coal in, chopping wood, having a room full of smoke due to an Easterly blow :) btw - It can be just as bad traffic wise in Cornwall these days during July & August, especially on the A30 at Temple!!
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>> I yearn for the old
>> days/ways in many respects,
You speak for many of us there D more than you'd think, the bad parts with the good too.
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Is it raining there yet Dog? Met office predicting torrential rain and some flooding in parts of Cornwall and Devon?
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>>You speak for many of us there D more than you'd think, the bad parts with the good too.<<
Yeah, cheers gd - sign of getting old :-D
>>Is it raining there yet Dog?<<
Well CG, I checked out all the weather sites inc. the new Met Office beta site, and they all warned of that torrential rain you speak of, but I haven’t seen much of it (yet)
I sleep with the window open 365, but I didn't hear any strong wind or heavy rainfall during the night,
Oops! - it's just started to rain quite heavily :(
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-devon-15426414
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Update on the wev - The Ship Inn at Mevagissey is flooded + a few other properties, I hear.
Also, some flooding in Newquay, Roche, and parts of the A30 between Bodmin and Launceston.
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"I suppose that's why I live where I do FP, I yearn for the old days/ways in many respects,"
I certainly didn't intend to belittle such a view, Dog. I just find that my own mind, as I get older and more aware of my age, doesn't seem to work like that.
One of the great pleasures of my life is visiting my elderly aunt in Falmouth, which I try to do twice a year. She's in her nineties now - who knows how much longer she'll be around? She's my last surviving relative from that generation and I admire her a lot. I like to get her talking about the past. Her mind is still sharp and memory good, and I am constantly learning things about the family (she's my father's sister) that I didn't know before.
Yet it's not a world I yearn for. To quote the familiar words: "The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there." This is the opening of L.P.Hartley's The Go-Between and it is crucial to the understanding of the book that the narrator, telling us about his distant past, has a very uncomfortable relationship with it.
That's probably true in my own case also and I'm quite prepared to accept that a more normal relationship with one's past is to see it as familiar, comfortable and even cosy, so that one might want to re-visit it or even dwell in it again, even with all its faults.
BTW, I shall be down in Falmouth for a few days later this week, my 'Andsome!
Last edited by: FocalPoint on Mon 24 Oct 11 at 15:00
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>>BTW, I shall be down in Falmouth for a few days later this week, my 'Andsome!<<
Should've dried out by then :)
I often wonder what it must have been like post ad 43 and 1066!! such a drastic change to their 'way of life' back then,
My friend lauri used to say to me that it wouldn't be advantageous to stay in diapers sucking a dummy for the rest of your life, would it, so we have to change with the times, or we would all be back living in the cave hunting Woolly Mammoth with flint tools.
And so I believe there is a master plan for the Universe, and that we are continuing to evolve and progress,
I've even wondered of late if we are the only 'advanced' life forms in the Cosmos, but that one day, a thousand, a million, a billion years from now, mankind will spread out and populate the Universe,
just like we have done on our home planet (perish the thought!)
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>> One thing I do remember about 63 was - we only had chicken once a
>> year @ xmas, now I have it (chicken!) 3 times a week.
>>
The thing I most remember about 1963 was the big freeze up.
(And my parents never had a car either)
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I was 11 in 63, so a lot younger than that Dutch geezer,
We moved here a year earlier, which was a step up from Chilham Hse in Bermondsea!
g.co/maps/kmgwg ... remember winter 63 well - great fun :)
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Dutch geezer? Thanks cockney geezer.
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"trafficators" eh?
nice piece of history; thank Ted.
'63 was the year Dad got his first company car, a Mk II Jag from Cowie's of Sunderland in gunmetal grey with red leather just like the one in the film. VGR 725 if it's survived.
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Thank you Ted.
I knew that whole road like the back of my hand as my parents lived in Bath around that time. By 1963 I would have driven it myself several times. Not in a Jaguar 3.4 though.
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An excellent piece of history/nostalgia; thanks for finding it and posting.
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'He's giving me the V Sign'
Priceless!
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"Why he thinks I should be interested in his politics I don't know"
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Good stuff - recognised the bits of Reading and near the abbey in Bath, where he would mostly have been going the wrong way down what are now one way roads.
Like it when he flashes his lights and pips his horn (a few times) at the car holding him up in the outside lane of the M4, just after a minute in - 'Giving me the V sign. I can't think why he should think I'm interested in his politics' :)
EDIT: beaten to it!
Last edited by: Focus on Mon 24 Oct 11 at 12:33
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Brilliant, we enjoyed every moment of that.
He called the twerp in the Herald a Mimser, nearly fell orf me chair, they don't make 'chaps' like that any more and more's the pity..;)
It was about 63 that me Dad got his first car, 57 Minx in two tone grey, kept it for many years till the rust ate it.
The winter of 63 we got snowed in down our lane for a long time, 3 ft deep, we dug our way out by hand, not far from Aston, Herts.
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>> Brilliant, we enjoyed every moment of that.
+1
Was only three in 63 but I can remember the roads being much the same perhaps a couple of years later. And all the narration still aplies today; watching under cars, giving doors room to open, giving cyclists space.
Peopple don't speak like that any more - lovely west country burr as well.
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A few years before 63 I remember leaving my dad in Port Talbot Wales with my mother on a steam train to Harwich.
Time is going fast had good memories in the UK as a child.Big bars of white chocolat which we couldn't get at home.
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It was a good vid - good obs by the driver. I had to laugh at one point, the guy was changing gear and the camera cut to the lovely Jaguar instruments - "double de-clutching means the revs drop but the speedometer needle stays steady" and the blinking thing was waving like a sweetheart in a train station, am I doing 30 40 or 35 ? My Moggie 1000s were like that, not like the rock steady accurate needles of today !
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My Jowett did that too, Pug. I went through everything to cure it, changed the gearbox..even drilled the propshafts and filled them with expanding foam for a little more weight. Nuddings !
Found that the local engineers merchants had 1/2 inch BSF locknuts in stock so as a last resort I replaced the twelve castle nuts and split pins on the Layrub propshaft couplings.....speedo steady as a rock from then on !....and plenty of nuts now in stock here !
Ted
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>> not like the rock steady accurate needles of today
The ones displaying an analogue representation of a digitally recorded speed. When I put the speedo into diagnostic mode on the Mondeo (went back in 2007) you would see the speed alter on the digital speedo but the analogue one had some 'inertia'.
When I start the Passat all the dials sweep to begin with. Again all digital.
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I did enjoy the v-sign incident, and the demonstration of not to get annoyed!
It also reinforced my impression that more people knew how to overtake then. I'm sure a lot of younger drivers think it's only possible to overtake on multi-lane roads and dual carriageways.
Isn't there a similar film of a drive up the A1? I can't find it.
Last edited by: Manatee on Mon 24 Oct 11 at 22:57
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There was a much greater speed variability in those days between different road users. Every car now can do 70 - 80 easily, and most do so whenever possible. Lorries can do 60 easily.
In 1963 drivers of faster cars, the Jaguar or slightly lower market models, would be doing anything from 60 to 100 or more, while Morris minors and Austin A30s would struggle to maintain half that speed. Lorries ground slowly up hills at 25 mph. There were plenty of much older vehicles around that couldn't do a lot more.
I remember in the late 50s my uncle winding his Ford Consul up to an indicated 100 mph (probably quite a lot less in reality) on the Great North Road just south of Grantham.
At other times he drove a flock of sheep along it between fields.
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I can beat most of you - I was 15 in 1963.
After I passed my test in 1966 my parents stood me advanced driving lessons - I'm pretty aure that the excellent ex-police instructor would have frowned even then at coming up close behind the troglodyte in the Sunbeam Rapier and tooting at him. Otherwise the Jaguar man's driving seems pretty orthodox. I think the Triumph that overtook the Jaguar must have been a Vitesse! (Introduced in 1962 I think).
Anyway many thanks for that Ted. I too remember some equally kind person finding a video of a drive up the A1 - I think it was 1939 and the car was something American. Not sure if it was on here or on HJ.
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>>I can beat most of you - I was 15 in 1963<<
Lud was drawing his pension by that time, almost.
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>>I too remember some equally kind person finding a video of a drive up the A1 - I think it was 1939 and the car was something American.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pm_Q7X_-2Ck
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Ah, they were heady days, Avant. I was 17 and in the Summer I joined the Manchester City Police as a cadet.
We drilled in the yard at Longsight like the blinkin' military. We had lessons in law, first aid, fighting and many other skills !
We were entrusted to see pedestrians across the road at the busiest crossing in the city at Christmas...keeping an eye on the mini-skirted and booted girls, of course.
We we roped in for searches, trying to find poor Keith Bennett among the demolition areas of east Manchester, where he lived. Later, on the moors. One winter we were all taken off in the force's bus to the Snake Pass to help search for some missing boy scouts in the snow...they were found, but not alive.
New recruits arrived and older ones went off to the police college at Warrington.....usually on the train to Padgate station but later I had an unreliable Tiger Cub....no-one had a car.
The roads were just as filmed in the clip. Lots of very old cars..no match for the force's Wolseley 6/110 saloons which were being replaced by Ford Zephyr Zodiacs on the road patrol. Bikes were still ' bathtub ' Triumphs.
The happy highways where we went
and cannot come again.
Ted
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Some 1927 motoring scenes plus the boys in blue. ( A bit before my time :-) )
www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwahIQz0o-M&feature=related
But in my time
www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDtjscPwrKY&feature=related
And one for Devon ( Groccles)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHoVoTfVSlU&feature=related
Last edited by: henry k on Tue 25 Oct 11 at 22:44
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Pleasant vid and some memories too. 6 yr old in 63, 'bout this time actually.
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(Sorry to play the pedagogue again.)
Into my heart on air that kills
From yon far country blows:
What are those blue remembered hills,
What spires, what farms are those?
That is the land of lost content,
I see it shining plain,
The happy highways where I went
And cannot come again.
A.E.Housman
Ted enjoys his memories; for Housman, they are a torment. Fascinating thing, the way we relate to our past.
Last edited by: FocalPoint on Wed 26 Oct 11 at 11:32
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>>I think the Triumph that overtook the Jaguar must have been a Vitesse!
No, definitely a Herald, too many details - Vitesse had silver bumpers being the most noticeable.
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Bag of cement required in boot to keep a Vitesse planted.
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>> Bag of cement required in boot to keep a Vitesse planted.
>>
I might try that trick with mine ;)
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>> Bag of cement required in boot to keep a Vitesse planted.
Suggested for hydraulic Citroens too, particularly those whose load is usually just a driver. Not to keep them planted but to open the load sensing valve and ensure rear brakes have some work to do.
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>> Bag of cement required in boot to keep a Vitesse planted.
Didn't always work. The only real way was to buy a late one with lower links in the rear suspension, or keep repeating the mantra: I must not lift off in a corner - again!!!!
;>)
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A few nice memories. - CGNorwich
