In the second part of his article re-creating an express coach journey from Manchester to Torquay in the ‘good old days’ of coach travel, Alan Payling covers the Bristol to Torquay section of the trip
When they arrived in Bristol the coach stopped at Anchor Road, but before arriving there, what Dave clearly remembers about Bristol was the drivers who would veer off the A38/Gloucester Road that still runs into the city centre. They would then cut across Clifton Downs, passing Bristol Zoo and then drive down the hill to Portway so everyone could see the Avon Gorge and Brunel’s suspension bridge. Dave recalls that seeing Brunel’s bridge was one of the best parts of the whole trip. [wlm_nonmember][…]
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What Dave also recalls is that upon arrival in Bristol, the passengers were eager to see if they had won what I can only describe as a form of coach roulette. At an earlier stage in the journey, the driver would put an arrow in chalk on the bodywork at the top of the wheel arch. If there were 33 passengers on board, he would then write the numbers from one to 33 all the way round the tyre that was immediately below the arrow. Everyone would then give a tanner to the driver – 6d or 2.5p – which was the prize. Upon arrival in Bristol, whoever’s seat number was the same as the number on the tyre closest to the chalk arrow, bingo, they were the winner of all the tanners and they would be over 16 bob better off – quite a bonus in those days. Dave does not recall his father winning anything, alas.
Dave also recalls that his family would eat at the British Restaurant in Bristol’s Park Street on the site of what is now College House, opposite the Royal Hotel. They were non-profit community kitchens set up in the war to feed bombed out people and those who had lost their ration books. Diners could get a three course meal for 9d. In 1948, there were still a few about – by then known as Civic Restaurants. So when they arrived in Bristol, Dave and his Dad would run up the steps from Anchor Road at the side of Bristol Cathedral and across College Green to the restaurant to save a table so they could grab a quick meal. They still had a way to go and this was the last chance of the day to get some food inside them.
When Dave’s family returned to the coach, they sometimes found that there had been a change of driver. If there was a shortage of drivers, then the initial driver would have to carry on down to Torquay. However, there was sometimes a delay and they had to wait for the new driver. The replacement Yelloway drivers, some 25 in number, would travel down to Bristol in a separate coach and would arrive before Dave’s coach. When Dave’s coach rolled up in Anchor Road, he would see the replacement drivers sat on the pavement killing time playing cards. Of course, the drivers weren’t going to break up the game until someone had won the pot, so a wait of half an hour until the card school wound up was not unusual before the new driver got their coach going again. If the first driver was staying overnight in Bristol, Dave told me that he would stop at ‘Sylvia’s’ B&B in Coronation Road, or later, at The Tudor Rose, a transport hotel in Kings Square.
Heading out of Bristol
At 1556hrs, the coach would start to head out of Bristol. Dave recalls that they went across a little bridge by the tobacco warehouses. That must mean that they crossed over the Merchants Street Bridge and then the Ashton Avenue Bridge, both swing bridges. The latter box girder bridge was a two-tier affair with the railway on the lower deck and road traffic on the upper. Having been closed to traffic for many years, it is about to see a new lease of life as a link in Bristol’s new Metrobus network. Once clear of Bristol docks, the coach would climb up to Bedminster Down where the passengers could look back across the city of Bristol. Frank recalls that the A38 was a good road and with little traffic outside the towns and cities, the drivers could really get a bit of a move on.
By now though, everyone was apparently feeling a bit weary either because of the early start, the singing, the journey itself or the booze, and so Dave recalls that a number of the passengers would nod off with their mouths wide open leaving everyone that was awake to enjoy their snoring.
At 1733hrs, the coach was due to leave Bridgewater and the timing was for a 1800hrs departure from Taunton. The good roads across the Somerset
Levels would see the driver making good progress, but Dave recalls that by this time they were in need of fuel. Hence there was a refuelling stop at the Blue Ball filling station. They then carried on down to Exeter with a departure time there of 1950hrs. Once they had struggled up and over the Haldon Hills via Telegraph Hill on the A380, they were on the home straight. After they had passed through Kingsteignton, they still had a stop at Newton Abbot at 2040hrs. The last 20 minutes of the journey saw them driving through Kingskerswell before the 2100hrs arrival in Torquay, the 273 mile journey from Rochdale to Torquay having been covered at an average speed of about 20 mph. ‘We’re here, at last’ must have been heard from the weary group.
The Town Hall coach station
At that time, ‘here’ was the Town Hall coach station, closer to Torquay town centre than the existing coach station further along Lymington Road. When the weary Frank and his family arrived after their 13 hour journey, there was usually a welcome committee to greet them. While they had indeed arrived in Torquay, they still had to get to their boarding houses which could mean a bit of a walk. So, local lads would be waiting with trolleys offering to act as porters to carry the cases. The trolleys were in fact the home made go-karts of the day, made out of old pram wheels and fruit boxes. For a few coppers, the lads would put a family’s luggage on their go-kart and pull it to their B&B. This service was particularly helpful where the effect of the journey and the booze left anyone staggering about when they got off the coach. Dave remembers one poor chap – he thought he was ill – who was so inebriated that the local lads ended up putting him on their go-kart and taking him to his guest house, a la carte, you might say. After a very long day, the driver would possibly retire to the nearby Upton Vale pub for a welcome drink and a good night’s rest, before he had to get up and do the return trip the following day during the summer months.
But, they were in Torquay, and the next morning Dave and his family would be up and ready to go. Unfortunately, there would be no full English waiting for them when they reached the dining room in their digs. Bacon was still rationed at that time and would be until 1954, so breakfast would consist of something like corn flakes, jam and toast. Dave was of the view that you would only get bacon and eggs for breakfast in Torquay in 1948 if you stayed at one of the ‘posh hotels’ – probably the hotels that coach passengers stay in today.
The journey home
Dave also has memories of the journey home. His coach would depart from Torquay at 0900hrs with an expected arrival time in Manchester of 2200hrs. Most passengers would have a few bob left from their holiday pay. This was handy because it enabled them to have a bit of a drink – and no doubt another sing song – on the way home. The road home of course took them through Somerset. And you know what that means. Cider, cheap cider, very cheap cider from the wood – scrumpy. So with the change they had in their pockets, Dave’s fellow passengers could buy some scrumpy to make the journey home as much fun as the trip to Torquay and the holiday itself had been. This is what happened to the crates of empty beer bottles that were left over from the journeys to Torquay. For the drivers, filling a few crates with cheap cider was a way to earn a few bob back in Lancashire, as Dave says scrumpy wasn’t readily available there. So the coach would pull into a cider farm. Dave recalls stopping at the Gaymer Cider Company or Whiteways to get all the empty beer bottles filled. Sealing them was a problem as the drivers had to rely on corks. The problem was, when the scrumpy was shaken about in the bottles in the coach’s boot and particularly when it was shaken about inside the passengers, there were explosive and unpleasant consequences, usually in the Tewkesbury region.
How times have changed
Dave travelled to Torquay by coach every year for the following 25 years. He particularly remembers the journey in 1951 because his coach was a Leyland Royal Tiger PSU/1/15. New to Yelloway that year, registration number HDK804, it had a full frontal Trans-United body which meant Dave could sit next to the driver. Despite improvements to the coaches Dave travelled on, it would be quite a few years before the roads improved so that journey times could be reduced. It would also be a few years before the journey south to Torquay could be completed on a motorway – about 40 in fact.
The best roads in the UK at that point were the arterial roads built in the 1920s and 1930s. These were roads like Western Avenue, Great West Road and the Southend Arterial Road, all in the South East. On the Torquay run, the Exeter by-pass was completed in 1938. Otherwise, the journey south was on ‘A’ roads like the A38, large sections of which are still in use. Dave and his family would have to wait 10 years for the first bit of the motorway network to open in 1958. The Special Roads Act of 1949, the legislation that was passed to build roads that became known as motorways, set the scene for a massive road building programme.
The first ‘motorway’ to open was the Preston by-pass, now the stretch between J29 and J31 of the M6. The motorway age in the UK was born. The next big development was the completion of the first phase of the M1, from what is now J5 to J18, in November 1959 together with the M10, the M45 and Watford Gap services, the first, and now the oldest motorway service station. The completion of the M6 didn’t occur until 1971. The Stafford to Preston section was finished in 1965 and the Stafford to Walsall link opened in 1968.
Things started to improve for coaches heading south of Birmingham when the then two lane section of the M5 opened from J4 to the junction with the M50 in 1962. The northern section of the M5 was completed by 1970. As late as May 1974, coaches heading to Torquay would still be showing their passengers the Clifton suspension bridge until the Avonmouth Bridge on the M5 opened that year and the M5 then took them on to Taunton. In Bristol, the completion of the Cumberland Basin flyover scheme in April 1965 had made life a bit easier on that leg. The M5 finally reached Exeter in 1977. So anyone under about 60 years of age who works in the industry now will have no idea what it was like to travel to a place like Torquay and spend 12 to 13 hours driving in and out of towns and cities en route. Now, they can enjoy the same journey times travelling back up north on the M5 and the M6 on a Friday at the end of a half term holiday. It took me six hours earlier in the year to get from Torquay to Gloucester when I unwisely chose to head along the M5 with half the schoolchildren of the Midlands and the north of England going in the same direction. Such is progress. And they didn’t look like they were having any sing songs either.
Despite the changes in the journey, has Torquay itself changed? I had a look at a video on YouTube entitled: ‘Travelling to the British Seaside’, a British Pathé newsreel about Torquay made in 1968. Even though the film is now 50 years old, regular visitors to Torbay will instantly recognise the place. Though the cameras being used by holidaymakers and the black cab date it, the quality of the film reveals a resort that has changed little. Some may wonder who people like Lionel Bart, Max Bygraves, Val Doonican, Sidney James and Arthur Askey are – all who feature in the film.
This was the day when the stars of TV, film and musicals appeared and stayed in Torbay. Nowadays we get Jim Davidson, Jethro and tribute bands. But otherwise, the coach passengers of the post-war era would feel immediately at home in familiar surroundings. It’s just the getting there that’s changed.
I asked Dave, if he had to make the journey from Manchester to Torquay by coach and he had the choice to travel on a modern National Express service or on a Yelloway express, 1948 style, which would he choose? There was clearly no competition in Dave’s mind, even though National Express would complete the journey in eight hours and 40 minutes. He has heard about journeys on modern express coaches being like sitting in a doctor’s waiting room, where everyone has their heads in their phone. For Dave, there was nothing like the good old days described above, when everyone was really friendly on the coaches he travelled on.
Re-create the ‘good old days’
So, if you’re a driver heading to Torquay and you want to re-create a bit of the ‘good old days’ for your passengers, try this. When you get to J12 M5, pull off the motorway and pick up the A38 going south. You’ll find it’s as quiet a road as it was in 1948. It’s also a good open road with only a few sets of lights until you get back on the motorway at J16. It’ll cost you about 10 minutes, max.
When you turn off, tell your passengers it’s a short trip down memory lane, back to the good old days. Put some George Formby on and get ‘em singing. My guess is they’ll love it and there is bound to be someone on the coach who used to travel along that road in the ‘good old days’ of coaching. When you re-join the M5 and you’re back in the 21st century, you’ll see why Dave has such very fond memories of coach travel in the ‘good old days’.
Finally, many thanks to Dave Haddock and Frank Elliott for their help with this article. Any mistakes, though, are all mine.
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