A Sentimental Journey
- No. 07
Trowell - Home From School
w/e 30 March 2008
All
this week's pictures were taken with a Kodak DX6490
Gonna take a Sentimental Journey, Gonna set my
heart at ease.
Gonna make a Sentimental Journey, to renew old memories.
"Ey Up Mi Duck, Peter Morley from Western Australia here"
began an email using the Erewash Valley dialect and it continued
"I've got a sentimental journey for you." And
it's that sentimental journey that we will follow here as we
take Peter's route home from school with a few childhood memories
thrown in for good measure.
This view from the drive to Trowell Church of England Primary
School off Derbyshire Drive should be familiar to Peter who was
a pupil here between 1966 and 1972. There were no children about
today as it is half term in Nottinghamshire but I wondered how
they coped with the steady drone of traffic on the adjacent M1
to the right. I suspect there has been a significant increase
in vehicle numbers and noise levels since Peter's schooldays.
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Rather than walking all the way round Derbyshire Avenue, Peter
recalls leaving the school on his way home and taking a short
cut through a little gitty.
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The gitty leads out onto Smithfield Avenue and Peter's route
would take him up to Nottingham Road, the main road through Trowell.
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Peter says that he would turn right at Nottingham Road and walk
up the hill to the bridge over the Nottingham canal or Top Cut
as it is known to distinguish it from the Bottom Cut or Erewash
Canal lower down the valley. An alternative route today especially
for young children would be to follow the track on the right
and cross the busy road via the towpath under the bridge.
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The canal along this section has now been filled in and it looks
as though some alterations have been made to the canal bridge
to allow a walkway under the road. Just visible on the far side
of the road is the green sign indicating that the area is now
the Nottingham Canal Nature Reserve.
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It is adjacent to that green sign that Peter would "walk
down the bank and follow the path home" for about a
mile or so. Here too it appears that much of the land that used
to contain the canal has been swallowed up by the gardens of
houses built in the interim period. Peter paid a return visit
to the UK in 2006 and a walk along the canal path stirred some
childhood memories. He notes that now it is "just a pleasant
piece of open land where people walk and ride horses. It's hard
to believe that back then in my day the canal was teaming with
wildlife and was a source of endless joy and amusement for the
local kids. I used maggots (stored in the fridge much to Mum's
horror) to catch gudgeon down the Bottom Cut under the Gallows
Inn bridge, take them to the Top Cut and use them as live bait
to catch Pike. Rarely would I not hook a pike when I tried. They'd
take the live bait sometimes within seconds of it plopping in
the water underneath a bulbous pike float. Other times I'd wait
for anxious minute after minute before seeing that float bob
up and down a couple of times, and then slowly slide down and
away and under."
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The path does eventually widen and actually splits into two with
a signpost indicating a footpath to the left and a bridleway
to the right. Here's another of Peter's memories about the canal
in the late sixties and early seventies. "Also in the
cut were Perch and very large Tench, frogs, water boatmen, water
rats, and even the odd freshwater crustacean! It was a children's
Utopia, not only in summer, but also in winter when the cut froze
over. The local kids would have a competition each year to see
who was the first one brave enough to cross the ice. Each year
we'd strive to be the first, and we gently inched our way across
the newly formed ice, listening out for that great loud expansive
cracking of the ice we'd hear if we'd attempted the feat too
early in the winter season. If the unthinkable happened, it'd
be life and death to make it safely back to the grassy bank.
Like Hillary climbing Everest, like Armstrong rocketing to the
Moon, ours was such an adventure - only it happened every year!"
Peter went on to mention some of his friends who would accompany
him on his adventures but assured me "No girls mind you
- the cut was no place for girls!"
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Peter would end his walk home from school by jumping over a wooden
fence into the back garden of one of these properties on Windsor
Close that was home before the family's emigration to Australia.
He still remembers with affection though the "beautiful
lawns, rose gardens, three sheds and greenhouse" from
his childhood and also recollects that "In those days,
'Stranger Danger' just didn't exist. We'd stay out until ten
o'clock at night in summer, getting up to all sorts of harmless
mischief. You know, knocking on peoples' front doors and then
running away, scrumpin' and putting old pennies on railway lines
so that they'd flatten out even bigger. In those days you could
play right next to and even on the railway lines. I remember
when diesel engines started coming through Trowell, we'd drop
spuds off that bridge aiming for the exhaust grate on top of
the big fan on trains roof. A direct hit would result in instant
chips!"
All of these activities would be frowned on today but they show
just how much the world has changed in the last forty years.
I'll leave the last word to Peter who when revisiting his childhood
playground in Trowell in 2006 saw the area not as a "wide
eyed ten year old explorer/adventurer, but more as an adult time
traveller." He says "I couldn't help but feel
so very sad that the aquatic adventure playground that I knew
intimately as the Top Cut wasn't around anymore for the children
of today to also enjoy."
Cue song:- Never thought my heart could be so yearny. Why
did I decide to roam?
Gotta take that Sentimental Journey, Sentimental Journey home.
If you have a sentimental journey of your own that you would
like featured, email
a few details to me.
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