Memory Lane

We turn back the clock with a picnic at Carding Mill Valley.

‘Leading down from the Mynd this valley is popular with walkers to this day’

We’re looking down Carding Mill Valley on a fine late spring weekend, possibly the May Bank Holiday. This beautiful spot is adjacent to the Long Mynd, the high heath and moorland that makes up about seven miles of the Shropshire Hills.

Leading down from the Mynd into Church Stretton this valley is popular with walkers to this day.

We can see a bathing pool, but is this one that became a larger reservoir or does it survive as a smaller pond? Maybe you can tell us.

Parking and picnicking carries on in its charmingly unregulated way of 60 years ago. Let’s start on the cars at the right of shot and go left. Closest to us is a Ford E494A Anglia with a Morris Eight 5cwt van behind it, and parked behind that is an Austin Eight, in which a poor chap seems to be desperately searching for a lost pork pie.

Two grandparents are dragging a toddler between a Morris Minor Series II and its big brother, a Morris Oxford. Behind the Minor is another Minor, then a jazzy two-tone A35 with a roof-rack, a black Consul MKII trying to create some shade with a blanket and then a dumpy Hillman Minx (about MKVII) with its boot up. Facing left is a pale Austin Cambridge Deluxe.

Roughing it

On the far side of the lane, facing us, we have a Vauxhall 12 with its bonnet flutings picked out in a paler colour, then another Minor Series II, then a Minor van and finally a Singer SM1500 saloon,

long-forgotten today. Look deeper into the crowd of other vehicles and you’ll see another Singer, this time a Gazelle further beyond the SM1500.

Further to the left an Austin Sheerline is roughing it with the small stuff, and partly obscuring that is a Morris J2 pick-up with a fabric cover, owned by Griff Chains. This agricultural machinery company is still in business outside Dudley… I wonder if its works vans are still used for picnics?