My childhood adventure from Manchester to Spain 1969

Chapter 1: A Taste for Travel

An important legacy from my parents is my taste for travel. Actually that is not a strictly accurate statement. I love being in different places and enjoy experiencing new cultures. I don’t necessarily enjoy getting to them.

One of my earliest memories is of accompanying my father on his rounds. At the time he was an area manager for Security Company and would often have to make late night inspections. Spot checks to ensure the security guards were awake and at their posts at the various business and industrial sites he covered. Often I would accompany my father on these late night inspections (he claimed it was the only way they could get me to sleep) and I would be safely strapped into the front passenger seat beside him.

Dad would keep me entertained by telling me about the places we were driving by, the work being done at the various sites we visited.

He is a natural raconteur. Sometimes he would tell me of the places he had been to in the Middle East and Mediterranean when he was posted overseas by the British army. During his time abroad on active duty, he would take the time out to visit nearby countries rather than spend his leave on visits back to UK. And he had many tales to tell. Vivid tales of his travels in the Holy Land. Of staying with monks in an ancient mountain top monastery, living off bread, goat cheese and wine made by the monks. Tales of his time in Cyprus during the troubles between the Turks and the Greeks (hasn’t there always been trouble between the Turks and the Greeks?).

One day under enemy fire while on ski patrol in the snows of the troodos mountains. The next day to find himself on leave, snorkeling in the rich warm waters around the coast, or enjoying a spot of sunbathing and a cold beer.

Other times he would regale me heroic tales of the Celtic legends of old – Cu Cullen, Finn McCuill and the Red Branch Knights. As a young man he had toured Ireland and England extensively by cycle, staying in Youth Hostels, at a time when the roads were quieter and safer than they are today

These car journeys had a several curious effects on the infant Brian. The most significant was that it spurred me on with a desire to experience these foreign places at first hand. Secondly it meant that even to this day I find it almost impossible to go to sleep before 1.00 AM. Unless of course my wife is prepared to drive me round town in the dark for 2 hours telling me interesting stories. Most unlikely as she doesn’t drive.

A curious side effect was the distorted perspective I developed of the world outside the immediate area of my home. As I was so small (I could hardly be described as a potential high jump champ now, either) it was impossible to see directly out of the car windows. Consequently I became convinced that the world in between the places where the car stopped and I got out; consisted almost entirely of clouds, starry skies, street lights and the occasional disembodied church steeple or high rise apartment block. My head spent so much time at an angle of 65 degrees; it’s a wonder I didn’t decide to become an astronomer.

At the tender age of three, I now had a baby brother and sister for company, and was about to set off on my first long haul travel experience. My father’s best friend from the army had managed to get a job as the manager of a famous hotel on the shore of Loch Ness. The family was invited to be his guests.

Back in the early 1960`s there were no motorways or even major roads in that direction. The trip North from Manchester was set out on with much the same sense of adventure as Marco Polo set out for China. As it turned out, he got there much quicker.

To this day my father insists that mother acts as map reader and navigator on long journeys. I have no idea why. Perhaps it’s because she is so nearly perfect he needs an excuse to shout at her occasionally. God love her, she has absolutely no sense of direction whatsoever. She could get lost in a telephone kiosk. Have you ever done that when you have been really drunk? You know, phoned for a taxi then forgotten which wall to push against to get out. No? Must just be me then.

Anyway take my word for it, Mum is hopeless with directions and she knows it. The time to set off had arrived and Dad handed mum an out of date tourist map of Scotland. She held it in trembling fingers, uncomfortably aware of her total inability to tell a road from a train line. She seemed vaguely aware that anything coloured blue was likely to represent a form of water. A river or a lake maybe. The rest of it could have been in ancient Sanskrit for all the sense it made to her. She studiously poured over the map for about 20 minutes before eventually announcing that she had located our destination on the map and was ready to go. It was felt at the time that the cartoon monster with the name Nessie beside it should have helped her locate Loch Ness sooner. But it didn’t.

Off we went on the roughly 350-mile trip north. We crossed into Scotland near Gretna Green to a big cheer. My first foreign country! Even if it is, albeit somewhat reluctantly, part of Britain.

Then things started to go awry. The British government seems to be pathologically against spending money in Scotland. While the rest of the UK is blessed (some would say cursed) with an extensive motorway network, Scotland has until recently missed out on any such expensive public works, especially the further North you go.

You would think that it was long term Government policy to make travel around Scotland as difficult as possible and thereby keep the semi naked, wide painted hordes of barbarian Scots away from the civilised south. Anybody who has ever visited the holiday resorts of Blackpool or Morecombe during Glasgow holiday weeks would realise the plan was doomed to failure.

Back then the roads were lousy with few signposts. We seemed to be perpetually stuck behind slow moving lorries. It was slow going indeed.

Despite our early morning start, darkness had descended and the weather had closed in. Heavy rain affected visibility so that it was easy to miss a signpost on the unlit roads.

Every town or village we came to dad would bark out the place name and the phrase “which way next?” Mother was clearly becoming more and more flustered and less sure of our position.

At one point we had reached quite a large town. As we drove through the center we noticed mother looking frantically about the place through the windows. Dad assumed she was looking for a place name so that she could tell him exactly where we were and how far we had to go.

Dream on sucker!

She had actually spotted a bus terminus and was desperately praying that she could locate a bus showing “INVERNESS” as its destination that she could follow. Obviously she was not praying hard enough. We were still 200 miles from our destination and inexplicably heading West instead of North.

Two hours later with the rain beating a heavy metal drum solo on the roof, the road got even worse. At least before it had been fairly straight. Now it twisted and turned and became even narrower. We were the only vehicle on the road, no longer hindered by lumbering wagons.

“Are we lost?” I asked unhelpfully.

My father was muttering under his breath and glancing daggers at the map bearer in the front passenger seat.

“Have you any bloody idea where we are woman?”

“Yes, yes I think so”, she said with a definite lack of conviction.

“We should be coming up to a major junction where you take the left turn.”

“There, there it is!” she announced, a note of unexpected triumph in her voice.

The car turned sharply left, descended a steeply sloping concrete slipway, and came to rest axle deep in the icy waters of the Irish Sea.

Oh, how we all laughed! Actually nobody laughed. Dad was banging his head monotonously on the steering wheel (at least he wasn’t banging mums head on the steering wheel) and we were contemplating life as part of a one-parent family. Mum was pretending not to exist. Well you would, wouldn’t you?

We did eventually make it to Loch Ness and my parents did eventually start speaking to each other again. Nine months later I had another baby sister. Sandy has also inherited our taste for travel. As a research doctor and lecturer she travels the world, attending symposiums and presenting research papers. This has helped her to amass the finest collection of Hard Rock Café commemorative cocktail glasses known to man, and I am very proud of her.

In the following few years we discovered much of Britain together as a family. Mostly it was by way of days out at the weekend, blackberry picking, and picnics in the gardens of historic houses. That sort of thing. Dad changed his job and joined a food distribution company as a salesman, which meant a pay rise and a company car. We also had a couple of summer holidays at holiday camp in North Wales, which I particularly enjoyed. I learnt to swim one year and earned my first ever “certificate of achievement”. I was seven years old and I still have the certificate – is that anally retentive or what? I put the certificate on my bedroom wall and when we went back the following year I pretended I still couldn’t swim so that I could get another one. Sad but true.

However much fun these times together were, you could always tell that Dad wanted something more. Something just a little bit different. Something really, really foreign.

One fateful day, dad came home late from work. On the back seat of the car were a big canvass sack and a collection of aluminium poles.

“And this is what exactly?” enquired Mum.

“It’s a tent darling. Family sized.”

Clearly this was not the fully automatic washing machine that the overworked mother of four had been hoping to get with Dads annual bonus.

“Bill, can I have a word with you please. Away from the children.”

There followed a hushed but heated debate off to one side.

“Where did you get it?”

“One of my customers let me have it cheap. His kids are too old to want to go camping anymore, but he says they had lots of fun weekends away all over the place”.

“I don’t care how cheap it is, take it back. I am not going to spend my weekends sleeping on wet grass, watching my kids going rigid with boredom in some field in the middle of nowhere, while you and me slowly go blue from hypothermia. Apart from that I hate insects, you know I do.”

Dad was not to be deterred. “OK we will try it out for one weekend and if you are still not happy, it goes back. Fair enough?”

“Oh come on mum. I’ve never been camping before”. John had appeared at Dads side. Like the last minute arrival of General Blucher’s men at the battle of Waterloo, victory was clutched from the jaws of defeat.

“Ok. Well try it. But if I get the flu, it goes back .No discussion”.

The new tent was taken into the garden for an immediate trial run. Dad’s customer had given him directions for assembly scribbled on the back of a beer mat, so it took us ages to put the thing up. Finally it was done. The bloody thing took up most of the garden, and was the size of a Victorian summer house. The roof was so high, only mum and dad could reach it.

That night the five of us slept in the garden under piles of blankets. We loved it. Mum called us a bunch of bloody idiots and slept in her own bed. But being mum, she was there for us first thing in the morning, with bacon, eggs, tea and toast. You need a good start to the day when you’re sleeping outdoors, she advised.

The next Bank holiday weekend we went camping in the Lake District. What a beautiful place for our first camping expedition! The drive to the campsite, just North of Lake Windermere was just breathtaking. Spectacular views of mountains, lakes and rivers appeared round every corner. The buildings and houses of our village were all of brick – the older buildings blackened by decades of chimney smoke. The only building made of stone was the Town Hall.

Up here the buildings were made of Lakeland stone. The blue – green rock giving the area a unique otherworldly appearance. The place was gorgeous!

Mum need not have worried about either boredom or hypothermia. We were lucky with the weather and spent an idyllic weekend roaming the hills around the campsite, fishing in the streams for tadpoles and sticklebacks. The campsite was very well organised and clean. Plenty of shower and toilet blocks strategically placed around the site. There was even a fish and chip shop, so mum didn’t have to cook on the Saturday night.

The best thing for families was the evening entertainment. The campsite owners had turned a collection of old farm buildings into a little village; with a shop, village pub and kids club. In the evenings the adults could have a beer knowing that the kids were safe next door, being entertained by an amateur magician dressed as Robin Hood, with a female assistant dressed as Maid Marion. We had a brilliant weekend. As for camping holidays, we were hooked.

The weekend had been an unqualified success. Even mum had to admit that she had enjoyed herself and couldn’t wait to do it again. It was after we had returned from this first successful expedition that dad revealed the true intent behind buying the tent.

The year was 1969. Man had just stepped on the moon. My future wife had just been born in the far, Far East of the Soviet Union. We were about to become known round Europe as the Quasimodo family.

Dad had read an article in the Sunday newspaper supplement about a family that had spent six weeks one summer touring France and Spain in a caravan. It sounded fantastic!

The heroes of the story had made their way southwards at a leisurely pace, travelling a few hours a day. They would stop for lunch at any quaint country village that took their fancy. Or sometimes they would buy fresh cheese, pate and wine from the many farm shops that lined the route, then picnic by a river.

We could do that, thought dad.

Sunday dinner was a traditional affair in our home – roast chicken, roast potatoes, chestnut stuffing, vegetables and gravy. All eaten off the best crockery with the family seated on carver chairs around the imitation priory style dining table. Attendance was compulsory.

It was at the end of Sunday dinner that dad revealed his master plan for our main holiday in September – we were going to go camping in Spain. The announcement was timed to give dad the maximum amount of moral support, i.e. all four kids, and mum the least chance of having any possible objections listened to in any kind of fair or impartial manner.

He briefly outlined the article that he had read. Then he waxed lyrically about how great it would be for the children. A real education. One long geography field trip.

Dessert (usually apple pie and ice cream – my favourite) was abandoned as dad produced an atlas from under his carver chair and we all gathered round to look at our proposed route.

South via London to the coast, over to Paris, and South once more to Perpignan and the border with Spain.

From there it would be on to Barcelona. Our destination was to be a campsite recommended in the newspaper article right on the coast, just a few miles further on from the Catalan capital, by a village called Castelldefels.

And best of all, right, dad had to take his vacation in September. So we would miss the first two weeks of the new school term. Fantastic or what?????

All four kids were bouncing up and down with excitement. Not so mother. She was looking at all the lines and squiggles on the map with nothing short of despair in her eyes, in the full knowledge that she would be the unwilling navigator once again.

As she collected up the dirty plates, I swear she was quietly sobbing.

Chapter 2: The Adventure Begins

Mother accepted the fait accompli with good grace and gradually warmed to the idea. Over the next couple of months we did a whistle stop tour of every camping and outdoor supplier in the North of England. No longer would we sleep under a pile of blankets on a ground sheet.

Now we all had airbeds to sleep on and thick comfortable sleeping bags to keep us warm and cosy at night. For cooking, mum chose a foldaway gas stove with twin burners and a grill. It folded up to the size of a small briefcase but was ready to use in just 2 minutes. She also picked a set of lightweight aluminium pans that fitted inside each other like a Russian doll. A sturdy 10-gallon water drum with a foot-operated pump would mean we had our own fresh water supply in the tent.

For nighttime, we all had a rubber torch each and a gas storm lamp for trips to the loo at night. Dad came across a set of 12-volt lights that plugged into the cigar lighter socket in the car. These made it possible to read after dark and cook in safety inside the tent. We would certainly be a lot more comfortable and self sufficient than on our first trip.

It would have been easy to get carried away with the range of accessories available: portable toilets; shower tents; gas heaters – the list was endless. Our problem was one of space. There was never going to be enough .Dad would have to find a way to get everything for a family of six for two weeks, including luxury accommodation (ok, a tent) into a family sized saloon car.

Oh yes, and the wife and kids.

To help with this, dad bought a specially designed roof rack. It covered almost the full length of the car roof and could be packed high in a turtle shape, the contents being held in place by a tough waterproof covering and stretch cables. When taken off the car and re-assembled, the roof rack became a kitchen unit with storage shelves, wash basin and work surface.

Even so, it was going to be very cramped inside the car indeed.

We had another couple of weekends away to get the hang of all the equipment. This included a thoroughly miserable trip to a site in Rhyll in North Wales, when it rained cats and dogs from the minute we arrived and is probably still raining to this day. We got soaked putting the tent up, and never got either warm or dry the whole weekend. The site had only the barest of facilities and we had a thoroughly depressing time cooped up in the tent with some colouring books and puzzle books for entertainment. This, reasoned dad, was exactly why we should be going to Spain for our holidays, and some more predictable and reliable summer weather. At least he was right on that score.

By the beginning of August final preparations were in hand for the assault on Southern Europe. Dad got permission from his employers to use the company car for the trip, and they helpfully arranged for a “Green Card” extension to the car insurance cover for driving in Europe.

There was a major difference between our family and the happy travelers. Dad had read about in the newspaper article – they had six weeks to make the trip and we only had two.

So reasoned my father, if we were going to be in Spain long enough to get a suntan, we would have to get there and back as fast as possible. Oh god.

It is a long long way from Manchester to Barcelona. A bloody long way. Dad had it all worked out – He had contacted the automobile club to ask for advice. They provided him with a series of map cards detailing suggested routes, advising on road conditions and expected travel times between major towns. Thoughtfully they also provided a card with useful motoring phrases in French – later to be a source of endless amusement. We could tell somebody in French that we suspected the front wheel bearings needed inspection and possible replacement. We could not however order anything useful, like a cheese sandwich. Or chips.

So, armed with the route cards, a Michelin road guide and a list of recommended campsites in France and Spain, Dad planned the trip in detail. Honest to god, Alexander the Great took less time planning the conquest of Xerxes and the Persian Empire.

Like all great military disasters through the ages, the plan was simple to follow and practically foolproof. Leaving at midnight from Manchester to avoid traffic delays, we would reach Dover and the English coast in around six hours. Allow an hour for any possible delays (yes, you mother) and catch the seven am hovercraft to France, with time for Dad to grab a catnap on the 45 minute crossing. Then drive hell for leather down the fast autoroute to Paris and on to the South, stopping only for fuel. We would have to make our bathroom trips coincide with garage pit stops. A combination of caffeine tablets and witch hazel eye swabs would keep the driver awake and hopefully alert for nearly two days. There would be plenty of time to sleep on the beach when we arrived.

At last the day arrived for our great adventure to begin. We all helped to pack the car. Most of the camping accessories, tent and poles went on the roof rack. We joked about it being stacked so high we would have to be careful going under low bridges – you know that line about many a true word said in jest? The car boot was full of clothes for six people for two weeks, pots and pans and the rest of the camping gear that we couldn’t put on the roof rack for fear of causing a hazard to low flying aircraft or upsetting the flight path of migrating geese.

Mother was packed into the front passenger seat; sardine like, her legs hemmed in by tins of baked beans, packets of breakfast cereal and other essential items of food that we wrongly assumed might be unavailable in Spain. On her lap were perched the map and route cards. Before we left, I turned the map the right way up for her so at least she might get off to a good start.

If mum had it bad sat in the front of the car, life in the back of the car was no picnic either. The foot wells were filled in with the inflatable airbeds, the rear seat covered in a thick layer of six sleeping bags. When the four children were shoehorned in for take off, we found ourselves packed in so tightly that we were sat with our knees up around our ears and next to no clearance between our heads and the car roof. In days to come it would be a constant battle between us to be last into the car and get a coveted window seat. For the two kids in the middle it was like the nightmare of being trapped in the rubble of an apartment block after a 7.5 Richter earthquake. No fresh air and no possible way out without outside intervention. It would have had Harry Houdini howling from claustrophobia. Animal rights campaigners insist on more space for battery hens. Still only for two days…

So we were ready. At exactly midnight (we actually had to synchronize our watches would you believe), the family saloon started up and we set off on our great adventure. The poor car was so heavily laden it had the ground clearance of a lazy crocodile.

It was just as well it was dark when we left – if the neighbours had been witnesses to conditions in the back of the vehicle they might have alerted the authorities. My father would have faced charges of causing unnecessary suffering to minors and we would probably have spent our summer holiday in council care. To keep us amused on the long trip, mother had thoughtfully bought us a magnetic travel chess and draughts set. Unfortunately it is well nigh impossible to play if your arms are pinned to your sides by the immediate proximity of your siblings.

No matter! We were on our way to high adventure and nothing could dampen our spirits. With Radio Luxembourg blasting out the latest hits in the background we trucked south, the family singing along with all the musical harmony of a rusty nail trapped under a revolving door.

We made good time all the way to London. Now the easy thing would be to go around London on the ring road. Yep.That would have been the easy thing to do, right enough.

To save time dad decided he would drive straight through central London. He had lived and worked in the capital when he had first come to England in the 1950`s, and he was sure he could take us right through without a hitch. Mum abdicated all responsibility saying that the route cards recommended going around not through – if dad wanted to choose his own route, it was down to him.

It did not prove to be a wise decision. As we got closer to the center, we became hopelessly lost in a maze of one way streets, all of which seemed to lead us round in circles. In the twenty years since dad had lived here the place had changed beyond recognition.