Category: Travel

We arrived in London on August 23rd and stayed in the area until we went home on September 9th. I think we were both getting anxious to get home again. We had been away for two months already, seen a lot of different places, met a lot of relatives and new people. But there is always lots to do in London, so the last two weeks were filled with activities.

Of course we had to see all the regular sights – Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey, the Parliament Buildings, the Post Office Tower, Selfridges, St. Paul’s Cathedral, the Monument, 10 Downing Street, Madame Tussauds, the Planetarium, London Tower, Kew Gardens and probably lots of other things too. I’m just going to write about a few of the ones that stand out in my mind. I have visited London several times since then, so memories can be hard to place in which visit they occurred. These ones I’m pretty sure were from this trip.

Post Office Tower

I was a stamp collector as a teenager, so part of the point of the postcard was sending it to myself with a special post office tower stamp and it being stamped at the Post Office Tower. The tower was opened in October 1965, so it was a relatively new structure in September 1966.

As mentioned on the card, we had good weather and an excellent view from the level we were allowed onto. There were elevators that took us up.

We had also walked up the Monument, but there one had to walk up oneself – 314 stairs according to Aileen’s notes. This is a monument to the Great Fire of London and was built between 1671 and 1677. The tower is 62 meters high and there is an open viewing platform.

Richmond

Aunt Florence lived in a residential hotel in Richmond. She invited us to stay in her hotel from the 30th of August til the 6th of August. This was an interesting experience as well as giving us the chance to get to know our aunt. She was born in 1897, so would have been 69 years old in 1966. I think she was still working and worried about being able to afford to retire. She had a lot of friends and liked to go on cruises. One has to remember that retirement plans were not so common in the 1960s.

From the hotel room, I remember the gas heater that had to be fed with coins for it to heat the room. This was something new and different for me.

Though we took the tube into the center of London some of the days, we also did things in Richmond, such as Kew Gardens and Chessington Zoo.

One day we were just wandering around Richmond and went into the cemetery at St. Peter’s Church, Petersham. It is always interesting to see who has lived and been buried in the area. We came across the well-tended grave of Captain George Vancouver, the person whose name was used for the city I grew up in. He died in 1798 at the age of 40.

Brighton

We also took a day-trip to Brighton from Richmond with Aunt Florence and her friend, Marion. I remember it as a wet day. I also remember going out on the pier. I was given a coin to play the machines and felt the thrill of winning even though I did nothing except put in a coin. I used up all my winnings (another good lesson) then quit. I’ve never felt the need to gamble money in such a way again. We also went to see the Pavilion, one of the luxurious residences of the Royal Family back at the beginning of the 19th century.

Before 1971, the United Kingdom used a non-decimal currency system. In essence there were 12 pennies to a shilling and 20 shillings to the pound. A price in a store could be £1 5s 4d. But in addition to these unusual (for me) quantities, with difficult addition and subtraction, there was also the challenge of figuring out what each coin was worth. The Republic of Ireland also used a similar system of pounds, shillings and pence, but issued their own coins and banknotes.

My source for the following information in this blog is: https://www.retrowow.co.uk/retro_britain/old_money/old_money.html

In 1966, the following 7 coins would have been in common use:

• halfpenny (1/2d), pronounced “herpni”
• penny (1d)
• threepence (3d), pronounced “thruppence”
• sixpence (6d)
• shilling (1s)
• two shillings (2s)
• half crown (2s 6d)

In addition there would be banknotes:

• 10 shillings (10s)
• one pound (£1)
• five pounds (£5)
• ten pounds (£10)

For someone unused to travelling, these new coins and banknotes were confusing. I had learned about the British money system in school, but dealing with it on a daily basis, for example, finding the right coins to pay for something was completely different.

The following pictures are coins that I actually have. You won’t see the size of them, except in the picture with the penny, which is very large, in comparison to the sixpence.

We took a train from Glasgow early in the morning of the 6th of August. At Manchester we transferred to a train to Rochdale, which is where my dad’s next oldest brother, Walter, lived. We left Rochdale on the 21st of August so we were there for two weeks.

Walter Commins had gone to school with his youngest brother in Southport, so I think these two brothers probably knew each other better than some of their older siblings. Walter married Ivy and they lived in a semi-detached house. They had one son, Michael, who was married and living in his own home when we came in 1966. I still keep in touch with Michael, as he is good at keeping in touch with me. He is the only one of our generation that had the surname Commins. He has two sons and grandchildren so the name will live on through them.

Walter was very kind to us both by housing us and by taking us on many day trips, including Yorkshire, the Lake District and Northern Wales. Shorter trips included Southport and Blackpool. During the two weeks we were in this part of England, there were several rainy days, but we seem to have had leisurely days at Walter’s home on those days and they were able to find nice weather for the longer trips.

We had time to visit shops and meet people. Michael and his wife Brenda took us dancing one evening in Manchester. I remember it as a rainy evening, and Michael had problems with the windshield wipers. As long as he was driving, they worked well, but as he slowed down or came to a stop at a traffic light, the wipers slowed down or stopped too. I remember the dance hall, but I was not the most social person in strange places, though I remember dancing with people there. Michael was a year or so older than my sister, so I think she enjoyed the evening a bit more than I did.

Yorkshire

We took a day trip in the car from Rochdale via Halifax, Leeds, York, Scarborough, Whitby, Ripon, Harrogate, Burnly and back to Rochdale, a trip of a little over 400 km. The records say we were out for 12 hours, not getting back until 10:30 pm. In particular I remember seeing the York Minster and the seaside at Scarborough.

The route would have taken us through much of Yorkshire, including the North York Moors National Park. We saw many of the main Yorkshire towns. I don’t know now what the actual route we took, but given the list of the places we passed through, it would have been a good circle tour of North East England.

Southport

Though my dad was born and spent his childhood in Dublin, he went to school in Southport in England. His older brother, Walter, went to the same school. Because they were Irish, they were Big Pat and Little Pat. My dad never talked too much about his school years, except to mention that he went to church services enough during his years there to keep him going for the rest of his life. The school would have been a residential boys’ school.

Access to Southport from Dublin would have been a boat from Dublin to Liverpool, then a train the few miles north to Southport. As my dad was born in 1911, he was probably attending the school in Southport from about 1920 to 1927.

Uncle Walter drove us to Southport, about an 80 km drive from Rochdale. Southport is on the west coast of England, about 27 km north of Liverpool. Today it is a popular seaside resort town. It has extensive sand dunes. We saw the school that Walter and dad had attended. The buildings were still there, but I’m not sure if they were still used as a private school.

Lake District

This was another long day trip. We saw several of the lakes, Windemere, Grasmere and Coniston Water. Having read so much about the Lake District, it was interesting to have a car tour of the area. I think we were lucky and had a beautiful day for the trip.

As I have been to the Lake District since 1966, my memories may get mixed up. I remember the lakes and nature being very beautiful and the towns very crowded. Comments on a postcard: “This part of England looks much like B.C. with the lakes and mountains.”

North Wales

I remember this trip better than some of the others. I remember the castle and the mountains. We first drove to Liverpool, crossing under the Mersey River via the Queensway Tunnel which comes out at Birkenhead. We then drove to Queensferry and from there followed the north coast of Wales, making quite a few stops to see places along the way.

Llandudno is a large seaside resort. Bangor is a university town. We crossed the Menai Bridge and saw the island of Anglesey. We stopped at the castle in Caernarvon, or Caernarfon Castle as it is now called. It is an imposing construction from the 14th century and dominates the skyline in the town. (The name Carnarvon was also the name of the closest side street to where I grew up in Vancouver BC, so seeing the original Carnarvon was very interesting.) We then headed inland via Betsw-y-coed and Ruthin, passing by Snowdon, the highest mountain in Wales.

The trip was about 350 km, so another long day seeing the sights. I remember the weather being good that day which made it a very enjoyable trip.

After two weeks with Uncle Walter and Aunt Ivy, we took a bus to Stratford-Upon-Avon on the 21st of August. It poured with rain and Aileen sat by the window, which was leaking. She developed a cold that day. We stayed two nights in Stratford-upon-Avon. We saw all around the town, though didn’t attend a play at the Shakespeare Theater.

We arrived in Glasgow by boat from Northern Ireland. As it was an overnight boat, I slept for a few hours and was up early in the morning. It was interesting watching our progress up the River Clyde. It was quite narrow already when I got up in the morning and we passed mostly the dockyards. This was the first time that I saw the sign “dead slow” and wondered what it really meant as dead people don’t move at all!

We arrived on the 29th of July and left again on the 6th of August. We stayed with a friend of our parents, Madge Cummings and her sister, Jessie Izzat. Madge had known our parents when they were living in Glasgow during the Second World War. Madge and Jessie lived in an apartment in an old building. The ceilings in the apartment were very high. In the kitchen they had a clothes rack which they pulled up above head height to dry laundry or towels. It certainly got things out of the way.

I remember learning to play Mahjong, the original game, in the evenings. Madge and Jessie also took us on several car trips and showed us around the Glasgow area, as well as a day-trip to Edinburgh.

The Trossachs

Scotland has many beautiful, wild areas, even close to Glasgow. We were taken to see Loch Lomond, drove through the Trossachs National Park and stopped at Stirling before returning to Glasgow, a drive today of about 150 km. This was a day trip by car.

Stranraer

One day we took the train to Stranraer where I had a penpal. We visited with her and her parents. They took us around the area, showing us the local sights, treated us to lunch at a hotel, then we headed back to Glasgow by train. Stranraer is where there is a car ferry between Northern Ireland and Scotland as the distance between the two is very short here.

Edinburgh

From a postcard: “Dear Granny, Hi! We got to Edinburgh though the day we went it poured the whole time. In spite of the rain we toured Holyrood Palace and Edinburgh Castle. Jessie, who had her car, showed a little of the city, but as it was raining constantly and we weren’t prepared for it, we didn’t stay too long. It is pouring again today, so we will do our washing this afternoon. Your granddaughters, Aileen and Patricia” (Written by me)

One of the challenges we had when travelling for so many weeks at a time, was having to put up with the inevitable bad weather. I particularly remember it being terribly wet the day we went to Edinburgh and not getting out of the car much at all. Jessie was very good to us, but there wasn’t anything she could do about bad weather, except be flexible with what we did.

When I read my sister’s summary of the trip, I find listed a lot of things that I have no memory of at all. For example, a train to Gurrock and a steamer across the fjord and around a peninsula to Tarbert.

There was also a car trip to Prestwick Airport and Ayr, which are south of Glasgow.

We spent six days in Belfast from the 23rd of July to the 28th of July. The train trip from Dublin took two hours and we stayed in a guest house. We had no relatives or people to visit here, so were completely on our own for sightseeing.

This was a time of relative peace in Belfast so the city itself was relatively quiet. We explored the city but also took trips out of the city.

I remember taking the local bus to Bangor, which is 20 km to the east of Belfast and on the sea. We walked around the town center and down to the boat harbor. We had heard about the place from Audrey who had spent a week with her family there. One comment in a letter was that it was windy and therefore cool.

I also remember climbing Cave Hill on the outskirts of Belfast, so that we were looking down over the city. It was a nice climb up and quite open countryside looking down over the city.

We took two bus trips. The first one was to Portrush on the northern coast and the Giant’s Causeway, just outside of Portrush. Here we could see across to Scotland. I found the Giant’s Causeway very interesting and enjoyed scrambling around on the rocks.

The second bus trip was to the Mourne Mountains which are to the south of Belfast, but still in Northern Ireland. According to the letters, this wasn’t a very exciting trip, but we would have seen a slightly different type of scenery.

We left Belfast in the evening, taking an overnight ferry to Glasgow, sleeping in a large dormitory.

Dublin is the capital of the Republic of Ireland and therefore is an important city for the Irish people. This was also the city that my father grew up in so I have always been a bit interested in Irish history.

My dad grew up on the north side of the River Liffey in a predominantly residential area. I have visited the area several times and the house that he grew up in is one of a row of housing on a street that is relatively busy now.

We spent quite a bit of time in Dublin (July 10th to the 22nd) and we visited with most of the relatives that lived there at that time. Many different people took us on drives to see the countryside around Dublin as well as visiting different attractions in the city. We also had time that we organized for ourselves. We took two bus tours – Glendalough and Boyne Valley. We also took a walking tour of the center of Dublin.

One of the outings that I remember in particular was the day at Dublin Zoo which is located in Phoenix Park. Audrey took us, her four boys and Uncle Ken in her little Austin mini. With Audrey driving and Uncle Ken as passenger in the front seat, that left my sister and I in the back seat with four boys. It was a bit crowded and not at all safe by today’s standards now that everyone has to wear a seat belt. Back in 1966 it was accepted to have six people in the back.

I don’t particularly remember many of the animals in the zoo, but it was a fun day. We had a picnic lunch which consisted of liver pate and sliced beets. In the crowded car, weaving along the streets between the other cars on the road, I got very queasy sitting in the back seat with my sister and four boys! It is interesting what sticks in one’s head many years later. I was not impressed by Irish driving habits.

Uncle George took us and one of his grandchildren for a drive one afternoon to the west of Dublin. We visited the Japanese Gardens at Kildare, which I enjoyed, and I also remember us driving by the Curragh Racecourse at Kildare.

Another memory is of us stopping at a pub in Ireland, I think with Audrey, and even though I was only 16 years old, and not legally allowed to drink, I was allowed into the pub. I was given a mild alcoholic drink which was a mixture of lemonade and beer (if I remember correctly). Drinking culture in Ireland was very different from what I knew from home.

Over 50 years later, I don’t really remember that much from these two weeks in Dublin. Impressions of people and places stick, but not the details. Even reading letters that were sent home about our activities, hasn’t prodded memories at all. It’s almost as if I was reading about another person. But it was fun to meet my dad’s family and get an impression of Irish history.