GWR Trip Week
And then there was the Swindon Trip Week.
That was unique to Swindon. If you never travelled on a Trip Train you weren’t a Swindonian, and that was it and all about it.
I’ll explain a little bit about this trip business. See, the Great Western Railway in those days they used to close their works every first Friday in July, every year, and that was the beginning of the holidays – or the lock out; there was no holidays cos there was no pay attached to it. They used to get everyone, every employee had a free ticket to travel anywhere in the Kingdom you might say. And take all their family with them.
Well, if you could afford it, you could go for a week. There wasn’t many went for the week, it was usually day trips. Perhaps down to Weston, or Weymouth or somewhere like that. It was usually Weston with us lot.
I can remember we used to get scrubbed up the night before, what we used to call our annual bath. That was just a bit of fun, but it was called the annual bath. The next morning we was up at dawn as you might so cos the trains used to go pretty early. They used to open the siding up at the top of Rodbourne Lane, at Dean Street there. When I say early, if I remember rightly, it seemed like the middle of the night to us, but I suppose it was about half past six or seven o clock.
Anyhow we use to traipse up there, hundreds of people going up. They would get on these trains like, you know, and Dad did find us all a seat and one thing or the other and pack us all in somehow or other, or perhaps there were two or three families in the same compartment. And there was no corridors, ten to one there was no corridors, and away you did go. And up did go the window, and Dad was shouting out to all his mates on the side of the line, perhaps his mates that had to work for some reason or the other, maybe volunteered to work because they couldn’t afford to take the week off. Anyhow, we did go on down, past Wootton Bassett, and then all of a sudden
“Aw Mam, I’m hungry! I’m hungry!”
“Ah, you’ll have to wait, you can’t be hungry” Mum did say,
Then we’d get a bit farther and somebody would want to go to the toilet, somebody would want to go wee-wees or something,
“Here, give us that bucket”
Out come the seat side bucket
“Use that bucket, and when you’re chucking it out the window mind which way you’re throwing it, you don’t want to get your own back do you?”
Then there was somebody else in the corner, they were breast feeding a babe perhaps. And there was Mum, spreading the sandwiches, and we’re fighting over comics. Oh, a proper Howsyerdo.
Anyhow we got down there, and it was perhaps raining and pouring. Well, if it was raining and pouring, you did stop in the train until it stopped raining. And as soon as it cleared up a bit, off you did go and find somewhere or other to have yer bits of sandwiches and that, perhaps have a donkey ride, you know Dad did dish out a penny for a donkey ride. Until it was time to come back, and we’d get back, I don’t know what time it was, perhaps eight o clock at night- we’d all had a good time, and we had the five weeks holiday to look forward to anyhow, all us kids.
Course, the likes of Dad, he had the week off see, but he had the decorating to do, and the allotment on one thing and the other. And talking about decorating, a bit of paint here and there, he didn’t do a lot of decorating but a bit of paint back and front. He used the Engine Green you know, it was pretty cheap in those days. As long as you could find an empty tin to take Inside like you know. Inside, you know what I mean by Inside, it was always termed Inside – if you worked in the railways, you worked Inside.
And it used to be proper dead here for the week, oh dear, up town. Wednesdays, what they call Trip Wednesdays, every shop in the town did close, there was not one shop you could go in at all and buy a thing, everything was closed up it was that dead.
Then they did start reckoning up the hooters, see how many it was until next year. And the men used to get into work,
“Hey Bert! You went to Weston, how’d you get on?”
“Ahh, lousy….lousy time.”
“What’s up then, was it pretty bad all over?”
“Ah, the weather was alright, the bloody beer, it was lousy, it was terrible!”
Then came the reckoning. Course, as I told you, there was no pay for that week. And that meant a whole fortnight with no pay at all. Poor old people, how they managed, I don’t know. Many is the time I see my poor old Mum looking round for a penny, just a penny! To put in the gas.
Good old times? Not on your Nellie.
