It must have been an early start from Cheltenham bus depot but I don’t recall anything except feeling somewhat coach-sick as we approached Weston-super-Mare, another town I’d never heard of but whose name fascinated me. Was it really going to be super? As my only recollection of the place now is the white tiled toilets in the coach station, probably not (though I’ve had several enjoyable visits there since of course).

In retrospect the coach-sickness could have been caused by looking through I-Spy books. These are still around today, though not in quite the original form. Each book, costing about sixpence, covered a different topic (birds, cars, railways, etc) and the idea was to find as many of the items described as you could and record its location and the date spotted, gaining points as you did so. When you’d completed a book you could send it off to Big Chief I-Spy at the News Chronicle (the newspaper that published them) and get all sorts of prizes. I don’t think I ever did complete a book but I had loads of them and was borderline obsessed. The recording activities, and looking back over them, must have helped reinforce some of these memories. You can read more about I-Spy books on Wikipedia, and the amazing Big Chief, though I suppose he’d be very non PC these days.

Yet another change of coach company (“Black and White” I think, with colours to match – they existed until the 1980s until swept away by the ubiquitous National Express) and we were on our way to Exeter. That was another town I’d never heard of but I just liked the sound of the name. From there we’d have taken the “high road” through Okehampton and Bodmin to Cornwall. There was no bridge at Plymouth in those days so I think this was the only possible route. I’ve no memory at all of the coach dropping us in St. Austell where Grandpa would have been waiting with his little Austin Seven for the final leg of the journey. Most holidaymakers I guess would have stayed on for the seaside resorts further west.

Grandpa was the Methodist minister in St. Austell, and their home was the big Manse on the outskirts of the town, on Bodmin Road just before it was crossed by a big railway viaduct (it’s still there). We drove up a curved drive which led to the front door, though my first recollection is going into the kitchen through the back door, to be greeted by Grandma and Dad’s younger sister, Maxine, who would have been about 18 (no, she was 23 in 1952) and lived with them, or was maybe back for the summer having been at teacher training college. None of them were strangers, but it was one of those “My, haven’t you grown!” moments familiar to all children meeting grown ups again after a period of time.

I remember Maxine telling Ian and I that we’d “crossed the Tamar” and not really understanding what on earth she was talking about but being a bit too shy to ask. We loved Auntie Maxine though, because she was just that bit younger than most of the grownups and was fun to be around. I think we saw her more as an older cousin than an auntie. Later that year (or maybe the following year), after she’d trained to be a teacher, Maxine came to live with us in Liverpool and taught me more about music than any other teacher since!

And so the epic two day journey ended, with two tired little boys being tucked up in an unfamiliar bedroom surrounded by more family than we’d ever known in the same house.