Childhood 'Transportation'.

Now that I've found out where the 'create new post' button has been repositioned to I shall create a new post.

I recently posted about my first 'proper' means of transport and some people mentioned their childhood tricycles and so on. I'd quite forgotten about my childhood trikes etc. Searching through my Dad's photos I've found two. The first photo is of a very young me on my little three wheel tricycle. I seem to recall that it was red and green. What has struck me more than anything is how similar my grandson at 2 is to me at, I suppose about 3. We have the same sort of laugh with the eyes partially closed and a similar shape of face.

A little later on I had a red pedal car. This is me sitting on the bonnet with Keith (who Keith was I cannot recall but he wasn't on of the neighbouring children with whom I grew up).

After that I had Triang Tricycle. It had a bin on the back. It was red and cream. I can't find a photo so I have borrowed one from Google. Oddly I can't find a red and cream one. Red ones and cream ones but no hybrids.

Thank you for awakening my memories.

Pip The Pixie

I'm home and, after a couple of days catching up, I'm actually feeling alive again and raring to go.

Over the last couple of weeks bloggers have mentioned books from their childhood, games and Heron even mentioned what I took to be his Tree Elf. I don't have a tree elf but I mentioned that I do have a Pixie called Pip. So I thought this was probably a good time to introduce you. Of course some of you may already know Pip and may have learned some of the same things that I learned as a tiny child when reading about him. Indeed someone on the radio whilst I was travelling mentioned that she recalled how Blackbirds got their orange beaks through reading The Adventures of Pip by Enid Blyton first published in 1949 when I was just 5 years old.

As a result of reading these very short stories (30 in total in a book of about 180 pages with lots of illustrations) I learned all about hermit crabs, why lizards lost their tails, chestnut tree buds are covered in glue, that male sparrows have black bibs, how toads defend themselves, how caddis larvae stop tadpoles from eating them, what happens when the oak tree comes out before the ash and vice versa (not that I knew then what vice versa meant), the injustice of the naming of the 'slow worm', about cuckoos, the difference between butterflies and moths and oh so many more things. 

What was so brilliant about that book was that it taught me so much and, because it was in small chapters made reading interesting too. 

I shall doubtless do another post on my childhood books but in the meantime I shall re-read The Adventures of Pip.

The Wales of Our Youth Revisited

Yesterday, Sunday, my brother CJ, aka Scriptor Senex, and his partner-who-drinks-tea went to Wales. Between us we have spent a lot of our lives in that country and I have particularly fond memories of youthful visits and stays. 60 years ago North Wales wasn't the half hour drive from Liverpool that it now is. River crossings (by tunnel and bridge) were a greater barrier and, of course, there were no motorways and cars were slower. None of us live in Liverpool now and the journey from the family's home on the Wirral into Wales took no time at all.

Many of our visits both for annual holidays and Sunday trips were to the area near Mold and Pantymwyn and Loggerheads in North Wales. It was accessible from Liverpool by bus and we could walk along The Leete (which until now I thought was spelt Leet) between Loggerheads and Pantymwyn or up Moel Famau.

I've walked up Moel Famau many times but my maternal Uncle Eric surpassed that to see the New Year in one year (I think they used to have a bonfire on the top) by riding his motorbike up the mountain. That was probably the late 1920s. Now there is a wide properly maintained track up the mountain: in fact there are many.

We stopped at the top of the Old Bwlch Pass:

The path up Moel Famau from the top of the Old Bwlch Pass

The Old Bwlch Pass looking down into the Vale of Clwyd with the town of Ruthin in the top right of the picture

There seemed to be as many cyclists as cars on the road

but sheep definitely outnumbered the people

Moel Famau ('the mountan with the pimple on the top' we called it) from the road between Ruthin and Denbigh.

The remains of the monument on the top of the mountain which was built to commemorate the Golden Jubilee of George III in 1810.
Photographed by CJ from the same place as the previous photo was taken.