Stow-On-The-Wold

It's 3 June 1994 and the trip starts, as any self-respecting trip to the Cotswolds starts, at Stow-On-The-Wold.

Lots of villages in the Cotswolds have a string of hyphenated words as a name. Apart from Stow-On-The-Wold, there's Moreton-On-The-Marsh, Foot-In-The-Cowplat, Nettle-Sting-Behind-The-Knee and of course, Bourton-On-The-Water. At least one of those actually exists and we'll end up there later because Stow-On-The-Wold has no Guest-Houses-With-Vacancies...

So, the Cotswolds then... An area of outstanding beauty and lots of quaint little villages whose buildings are almost all unique rather than a collection of the same design. Lots of them have given firms of modellers and ceramics like Lilliput Lane a rich source for their catalogue and Miss Franny has at least half of the Cotswolds, modelled in miniature, taking up 53 display cabinets, friends' lofts and stuck upside down on the ceiling as we got ever more desperate for space to put them!

However, back then in 1994 she didn't have any and holidays and shopping trips were spent trying to drag her away from shop window displays, bottom lip stuck out and an accusatory finger pointing at the examples in the shop with the words "Want to start collecting them!" ringing in my ears. Yes dear, of course... wouldn't you rather have another guitar? No? Why not try one to make sure?

Ah thank you lads - see I knew if I waited long enough you'd get fed up of making V-signs... The market cross was minus its cross from the top of the post that weekend. Must have been being cleaned or something...

For some reason or other, both Miss Franny and daughter Gill were reluctant to enter into the spirit of things by trying out the stocks properly...

Return to England's Cotswolds Holiday 1994 Index Page

Stow-on-the-Wold

Don't you just love those Cotswolds place-names! Stow-on-the-Wold, Moreton-in-the-Marsh, and of course, Bourton-on-the-Water. All aligned in a straight line along the A429 or, as the Romans knew it, the Fosse Way.

Any of these three villages is well worth a visit. We have been on numerous occasions, sometimes making a very slight detour to Upper and Lower Slaughter - a name so evocative of evil doings, but such a delightful place to visit.

This is the second of my postcard views tonight and this one from the late 1950s or early 1960s is one of my favourites as it shows a model of the very first car I owned and drove - a MkIV Reliant Regal.

Unfortunately half hidden in shadow, photographs of these 3-wheeled cars are hard to come across. The one I had was a van and whilst this one is the same shape exactly, the model shown has had windows fitted - an expensive luxury as this made the car liable at the time for Purchase Tax whereas the van had solid (I use the term loosely!) fibreglass sides.

It was in fact the first fibreglass Reliant. Previous models had been aluminium - that metal whose name is such a challenge for our friends across the Atlantic!

The Reliant van had been made in 1959 and was 11 years old by the time I made its acquaintance. The engine, a 700cc sidevalve - which meant that the spark plugs pointed up vertically out of the top of the engine - was completely knackered and friends soon got used to it breaking down and me changing the spark plugs and cleaning the oil and deposits off the old set for use in another 20 miles...

This is the beast itself! One white headlight and one yellow one. In the 1960s many drivers preferred yellow headlights because they shone through smog better than white light, which just lit up the fog and soot and made it look like you had a wall around you.

I passed my driving test in this vehicle, although I had to take another to be able to drive a 4-wheeled car when I was 17. The only reason for having such an embarrassing car was that it was legal to drive at 16!

There's more about the car and its successors on my Nostalgia web site.