I was 16 years and a few weeks old at the time, effectively teaching myself to ride my first motorcycle (a 1955 Francis Barnett 197cc two-stroke job)43126 wrote:I can remember spending all night on a no 33 bus, It was Wednesday 10 July 1968, The Bristol flood, I was a young bus conductor of 21 years of age Newly married based at Marlborough Street Bristol, I was on what they called spare duty for the evening and was asked to go on the Bath service as a conductor had gone sick, To my surprise the bus was a single deck R E, unusual at that time, The driver was a regular on this service for many years, We knew nothing then about what was going on outside of the depot but is was raining quite heavy when we departed, I cannot remember the time we left sometime between 7 and 8 pm i believe, We knew nothing of flooding until we got to Brislington Village, The police were there stopping cars, A policeman said we could go through but to take care, To which we did, We were the last bus to go through as the next bus a double decker got stuck in the village, There was a photo of the bus in the evening post the next day, It was a night i shall never forget most of the journey it was like going along in a boat, We managed to go through Keynsham there were no people about waiting for the bus we were picking up stranded motorists from the roof of their cars as we went along, We eventually arrived at Newbridge Road Bath about Midnight thats as far as we got, The police would not let us go any further, The passenger/stranded motorists were transferred on to large lorries to get them through to Bath, We then turned around and headed back to Bristol, We got back as far as Stockwood on the outskirts of Bristol, By then i believe the road bridge at Keynsham had collapsed, Thank goodness for the Keynsham bypass, Both roundabouts at either end were flooded but my driver managed to get through, The police said Brislington and many parts of Bristol were flooded and to stay where we were, As luck would have it my driver lived just down the road in West town Lane, so we walked to his house it was now about 2 am the next morning, The drivers wife got out an old fold up camp bed and i settled down in their front room to sleep. About 6.30 am i was woken by the drivers wife with a nice cup of tea and a piece of toast, How lucky i was that the driver lived in West Town Lane, As soon as soon as we could we got ready and walked back to our bus, No cars were being allowed through to Bristol but it was decided we would be allowed to proceed, We arrived back at Marlborough Street Depot about 08.00am, I was booked to work my rest day Thursday on an early start and was of course already late, When i told the depot inspector i was now going home he said are you not going to work today, I will not repeat what i said to him and headed home, Sadly i cannot remember my drivers name he certainly knew his stuff driving in those conditions keeping the engine running,
As usual in the evening, I got on the thing and left Stockwood for Brislington where all my mates lived at the time. It was absolutely bucketing down, none of my friends were around or going out, so by about 1900 I decided to give up and go home. I recall my parents were rather shocked that I came home so early
It kept bucketing down through that evening but, as we were in Stockwood and on high ground, I had no idea what was going on in Brislington (from what John says, I must have gone through Brislington village just before the floods came up).
The rain had stopped by the morning, but the radio was reporting how bad things were in the greater Bristol area, so I decided to use this is an "excuse" to go to school a bit late, and I swanned in about 0915.
To find I was only the third kid who had got in that morning .....
Has anybody else got any memories from the time? Even railway-related ones will do!
