On my coach/bus trip to Rhyll (post#148 ) we passed the Melbourne Cafe on the Chester Road but it was too near to stop at. These folk from London in four coaches stopped there for refreshments. One of the coaches has Llandudno on a sign so they still had a long way to go.
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Thanks, oldMohawk, that's a wonderful image. London to Llandudno in the early thirties - what a trek. I'll repeat it here.
Everyone well dressed, men in suits, ladies in summer dresses and hats, stretching legs and no doubt enjoying the fresh air and the quiet, now that everything has been switched off. You can almost feel and smell the heat of the engine and hear the clicking and ticking as everything starts to cool down on that summer's day and they walk past the vehicle and into the cafe - for a nice cuppa or a sandwich and no doubt a welcome visit to the loo. About halfway there on their long journey.
I wonder who the two Streetly locals were, witnessing the scene. A regular thing, no doubt. this temporary invasion. I remember the cafe so well during the war years - but then always apparently deserted and I was never sure whether it was actually operating, although I must have had the odd ice-cream from there - a penny or, if you were feeling extravagant, a penny-halfpenny (0.4p or 0.6p). Situated - as it still is in a different guise - on the Hardwick Arms crossroads.
OldMohawk, on his trip to Rhyl, must have passed our house on the Chester Road, as did so many other coaches in the prewar and postwar years. (My parents had moved into their brand-new semi at about the same time as this photograph was taken). Day trips like works outings and longer journeys too. I recall them, from about 1946 onwards, coaches from Harpers and Happy Days and the Midland Red and no doubt many others. Just occasionally, late on a summer's evening, one of these would pull up outside our house as it headed back to the City. A number of blokes would pile out and irrigate our front hedge with a stream of filtered Ansells's mild. Perhaps the Melbourne had already closed for the day. Not something Dad took with complete equanimity although I'm sure he was well enough acquainted with the pressures exerted by a pint or three on the male body.
Only a short time before those immediately postwar days, the coach traffic had been even heavier, especially early in the morning or late afternoon/evening. But at that time these weren't holidays for people, the coaches were transporting men and women from Brownhills and Cannock and Walsall Wood, in their working clothes, to and from the Birmingham factories, summer and winter, morning and evening, day in, day out, year in, year out. No stopping at the Melbourne for them.
(Sorry, a bit off-topic. But these photos do prompt memories....)
Chris
birminghamhistory.co.uk
