MY DRIVING CAREER
My first car was very generously given to me by my sister. She had bought it new in 1962, and gave it to me on my seventeenth birthday in 1966. I was a FIAT 500. These cars were tiny, but would hold four people, providing they were not too fat. There was even a minute crack for luggage. It had a sunroof, which made it slightly less claustrophobic in the summer. I saw dozens of these ‘Topolinos’ struggling up the Alps when I holiday’d in Italy in 1968. They were really popular in their homeland. It had a horizontal two cylinder four stroke engine. This was at the back of the car, a very similar arrangement to the VW Beetle that I was to drive twenty years later, although the Beetle had four cylinders.
I got used to all the things which you had to check before driving off; the oil needed a quick inspection of the dip stick and the air pressure required a kick or two on the tyres to give some indication of the amount of inflation. The water level was not an issue, as this was an air cooled car, but as for the battery I had to keep the electrolyte topped up with distilled water. It was also a good idea to make sure all the lights were working, especially if any night driving was in prospect. All these checks are still important, but do not have to be done so regularly in 2021, and many are done automatically on the display. One thing I had to do on the FIAT 500 that is no longer required was to clean the contacts in the distributor head; modern cars do not have a distributor.
I happily drove this car around Norfolk and as far as Oxford for years; my sister and I even took the car by ferry to Cork and drove around Southern Ireland in 1966. However, by1970 it had largely rusted away, and it failed its MOT. After this exciting start to my motoring life I did not own a car for many years; even the Beetle referred to above was in fact my wife’s car. I drove my father’s cars at first and company cars after that. Later shared a VW Golf and VW Polo with Molly. The next car that was undoubtedly mine was a blue Nissan Micra. This was bought secondhand in 1998. The Micra was another small car, but not quite as small as the FIAT 500. It also had a proper luggage space.
My last car was another Fiat – this time a Seicento. This was a real bargain; a new car, but having just been discontinued it only cost me £4000. The only unusual thing was that I had to go up to Lincoln to collect it. This was no problem, just an adventure on the train The only difficulty I faced was finding out how to unlock the petrol tank. When I retired I decided that I no longer needed car, and so my 43 year long driving career came to an end.
JOSEPH MASON
THE BLOG FOR THE STORY OF DRIVING
WHEN WAS THE AYLSHAM BYPASS BUILT?
Norfolk still has no whiff of a motorway, although the first one in England had opened over sixty years ago in 1959. The Aylsham bypass is on the A140, which goes all the way from Cromer in North Norfolk to Ipswich. The Aylsham bypass dates from the period when a lot of towns and villages in East Anglia were finally being bypassed; but Long Stratton to the south of Norwich on the A140 is still awaiting its bypass. When the Aylsham bypass was built even the Southern Bypass around Norwich had yet to be stared; that was when at last dual carriageways were introduce for Norfolk. Unfortunately none of these early bypasses were dualled, even on the major routes like the A11 and the A47. I wonder if Long Stratton’s long awaited bypass will be dualled? (No it won’t, according to the council, so no change there.)
In January 1980 my sister and I were on our way to Cromer, and the bypass was being constructed, but was not yet opened. Before the bypass was completed, all the traffic going north to Cromer from Norwich used to go right through the middle of the town. Perhaps there were not so many juggernauts on the roads then, but in 1980 there were already quite a few. This road is STILL called Cromer Road in Aylsham. The bypass runs from just outside the town to Alby in the north. The old road goes through the village of Ingworth on the river Bure. In 1980 there was still a standard gauge railway to Aylsham, although no passenger had gone that way for over twenty years, it still carried freight traffic to Lenwade until 1983. Now there is a narrow gauge line for tourists along the old trackbed from Wroxham.
The village of Marsham (just south of Aylsham) must have been bypassed at the same time. Luckily for the Plough, the pub in the village, it did not get bypassed and so still enjoys the passing trade, orat least it does in normal times. As I write all the pubs in England are closed. Marsham was were the Soames steam engine was built over a hundred years ago. The rivulet that runs through the village has the charming name the Mermaid.
Here is what I had to say about or trip through Aylsham; ” For lunch we home made rolls with our soup. In Norwich we did some shopping including a bottle of sherry. Then off to the seaside at Cromer. It was frosty but sunny. The Aylsham bypass is progressing well. At Cromer we gave the dogs a run on the beach. There was plenty of driftwood about, so I gathered some to take home for the fire. Then my sister and I called on Muriel Gantlett in her little bungalow in Harbord Road. She was surprised to see us, and gave us each a bun and a cup of tea. I mended her radio.”
JOSEPH MASON
THE BLOG FOR THE HISTORY OF NORFOLK
1973
BAWDESWELL CHURCH, bypassed in 1973
I was 24 in 1973 and that makes it feel very long ago; it was a long time ago, and it represents a different world in many ways.
One thing that hasn’t changed that much though is going up to the capital by train. By 1973 diesel locomotives had hauled the trains for ten years, and it would be another decade before electrification came to the East Anglian mainline. At the beginning of February 1973 I went to London with my father. We were after some special fasteners for an engineering project we were engaged in. After a search we successfully accomplished that in Clerkenwell. Next we went to South Kensington to visit the Science Museum. There we had lunch and looked round the aviation and nautical exhibits. One thing that caught my eye was the original boat that won the first boat race for Oxford in 1829. We got the 4:30 train back to Norwich and were home by early evening. Our young dog Fido was pleased to see us.
This was the year that the village of Attlebridge on the A 1067 road from Norwich was bypassed. I drove along the new road for the first time on March 15th. Until then all the traffic to Fakenham had to cross the narrow medieval bridge across the river Wensum. Bawdeswell too was bypassed at the same time; there has been little improvement to the road since, although the amount of traffic has grown enormously. In spite of the economic woes of the period (some of which I will detail below) the 1970s were a good time for such minor road improvements in East Anglia; a decade later we had major road building projects like the Norwich Southern Bypass (but we are still waiting for the Acle straight to be widened).
Our brown Daf 44 -“Tabby”.
The family car at the time was a brown Daf 44. From the family point of view the major drawback was the fact that it only had two doors. This was alright if only two people were in the car, but this was not ideal if there were more. Daf cars were Dutch and they were all automatic. The gear lever was simple; there were just three position; forward, reverse and neutral in the middle. There was of course no clutch. The Variomatic transmission was by two rubber belts, a system unique to Daf cars although they were later bought up by Volvo who produced the 340 series with the same system.
The Daf 44 was fussy at lower speeds and did not really settle down until she was doing 70 mph. Luckily there was little traffic on the roads by modern standards and fewer speed limits, so this speed was frequently achievable. For the first part of the year it was perfectly legal to drive at 70 mph, but the Oil Crisis that began in October caused the government to reduce the national speed limit to 50 mph in December. (In those pre-speed camera days this limit was honoured more in the breach than the observance.) I have hinted at the political and economic troubles we were experiencing at the time; besides the oil crisis we also had in December the Three Day Week. This was introduced because the coal miners were out on strike. Things continued to be difficult throughout the 1970s, culminating in 1978/9 with the Winter of Discontent. This, for those of you too young to remember, was the time when dead bodies went unburied and rubbish piled upon the streets because of industrial unrest.
The Winter of Discontent and the Three Day Week must have made a deep impression on Mrs Thatcher; she was Education Secretary in 1973 and Leader of the Opposition by 1979. To reduce the importance of the coal industry to national life became one of her principal policies once she was in power. Now we distrust coal because it is a dirty fuel, but this had no place in the decision to close down the industry; it was a political matter, the origins of which lay in the strikes of 1973. There is still a huge amount of coal left in under much of Britain, but the future appears to be in renewable energy sources. Shutting down the mines proved to be the way things were going, although many of the redundant miners never worked again. The discovery of gas in the North Sea enabled the country to change the kind of fuel we used. Great Yarmouth power station had been coal-fired; now a gas fuelled one has taken its place. Houses were generally cold and drafty forty years ago, with no doubling glazing or insulation, so we huddled round the fire. In those years we still relied on coal to keep us warm through the chilly months, but I do not recall any problems for us in that regard. Our coal bunkers must have been filled for the winter well before the miners went on strike but this was not the case for the country at large in 1973. Mrs Thatcher made sure she had huge stocks of coal before picking her fight with the miners.
JOSEPH MASON
THE BLOG FOR MEMORIES OF EAST ANGLIA
NORTH SEA GAS
I can recall the newspaper headline announcing that large amounts of natural gas had been discovered in the North Sea. The drilling had come up with substantial supplies of energy. I was in the senior school, so it was after 1963. In fact BP struck gas in September 1965. Sticking out into the North Sea as East Anglia does, this was obviously important news for Norfolk and Suffolk. Exploration vessels were already leaving our ports to service the exploratory rigs, and in 1968 a gas terminal would be constructed at Bacton on the North East coast of Norfolk. It was a news story of national importance – these headlines were not only in the East Anglian Daily Times but also in the Daily Mail and the Telegraph. This discovery led to a major alteration in the gas supply; this changed from a processing industry based on gas works using coal to become an extractive industry, relying on drilling rigs for natural gas.
Gas grid installation works at Southwold harbour mouth, 1969.
Until the late sixties many towns in the country (even the small ones like Southwold and Haleworth) had their own gas works. They produced town gas, which largely consisted of poisonous carbon monoxide. It was made from coal, and besides the gas this gave two useful side products, coke and coal-tar. Coke was used as a smokeless fuel, and tar had many applications, from road mending to the making of soap!
Putting the new gas supply in an underground grid was a huge task; previously the National Grid meant just electricity pylons. The pylons were quite an undertaking, but at least they went overground. Once the gas grid had been completed the little gas works were closed. Many villages that had never had town gas were supplied with natural gas.
Unlike town gas, North Sea gas was not poisonous, which made it safer, although it could still explode if it leaked of course. The combustible part was methane, not carbon monoxide. This didn’t make any difference to the way it worked, but the pressure of the new gas was higher; this led to the need for adjustments to be made to gas cookers and boilers. We had a gas supply at my father’s business premises, but the sole appliance in the building was a single gas ring in the basement. Nevertheless, we had a visit from the gas man who had to adjust the pressure before we could be transferred to natural gas. Everybody’s gas appliances had to be converted to run on the new fuel, and this was in itself a mammoth job.
One effect of going over to a national grid was the spread of gas to even relatively remote places. There were much small villages and towns that had never had gas that supplied with North Sea gas. They had been beyond the reach of town gas, now they are on the mains. There are still many smaller and even more remote country villages where gas is not supplied; the gas grid might well pass close to these settlements, but the number of consumers is too small to justify the expense of installing the infrastructure. It is a common complaint of country dwellers that they have the added expense of buying bottled gas or oil to fire their central heating. Before I was married I never had central heating, although gas was available in the village. I just had a coal fire in the living room. Exceptionally we lit a fire in the front room as well, but never in the bedrooms although they too had fireplaces; as a result they we were literally freezing in the winter. Ice often formed on the inside of the window panes, which were single glazed. Natural gas was laid on in the 1970s, but it was after I had moved on in 1985 that my sister had central heating installed. The central heating and double glazing have made icy windows a thing of the past.
Gas marker, 2013.
You couldn’t miss the passage of the gas main while it was being installed, with diggers advancing across the countryside. Even after the trench had been filled in and the grass had regrown over it you could still see where the pipe went from the ‘gas markers’ – posts about 3 metres high with a luminous orange triangle on top. These were placed at strategic points, often where the pipes crossed a road. These were to make it possible to see the route from the air, so that a helicopter could easily inspect the pipeline for leaks and for possibly interference from terrorists as well. These gas markers are still there, although they have become so much part of the country scene that we no longer notice them. That was not the case when they first went up, when they stuck out like bright beacons in the landscape.
After 50 years the gas terminal at Bacton is still a crucial part of our energy requirements, although it was only intended to last 25 years. Britain is not and never has been self-sufficient for natural gas; we rely on supplies from the continent and from North Africa, from where it is shipped in liquid form. This part of the world is not politically the most stable, and this has implications for the reliability of supply.
Another 1969 view of Southwold. The Commer Express you can see peeping out on the left looks ancient, but the Landrover is pretty timeless.
Another effect of North Sea gas was indirectly the demise of the coal mining industry. The immediate cause of the rapid winding down of the coal industry was the disastrous 1984 strike led by Arthur Scargill. However, this closure of the coal mines would not have been an option if the country had still depended on coal for all its power. With gas no longer being produced from coal, and the substitution of gas electricity generating stations for coal fired ones, we have got on very nicely without the once crucial coal mines. The dirty coal fired power stations are inconceivable today.
At least gas is a much cleaner fossil fuel than coal, but as such the burning of natural gas produces CO2 , and this is bad for the environment. Apart from nuclear generation as at Sizewell we are increasingly reliant on offshore wind. The power produced by wind farms is clean but unreliable – when the wind drops so does the energy generated. It is also expensive and is only economic because of subsidies. It is becoming less visually intrusive as sea wind farms are almost the only ones now being built. The cost of generation is also coming down. Lowestoft is growing as the centre for supplying the wind farms in the southern North Sea.
Solar energy is becoming more popular, and many people now have solar panels on their south facing roofs. It does not work after dark of course, and although batteries can store an amount of current this is inadequate for heavy uses like heating. Other forms of renewable energy like tidal have scarcely been tried, although tides does not suffer from intermittent supply like wind power and solar.The prospect of producing gas from shale in this country raises all sorts of questions, pitting the need for reliable energy against damaging the environment and the possibility of producing earthquakes (more likely to be a problem in a densely populated country like the UK). But if shale exists deep below the sand and chalk of East Anglia it is not currently an issue in Suffolk.
JOSEPH MASON
MEMORIES OF THE COUNTIES OF NORFOLK AND SUFFOLK
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