King Class No.6005 King George II leaving Paddington

Just once in my life, I really did head out of Paddington somewhat like this (probably behind a King), on “The 10.30 Limited”, as they used to call The Cornish Riviera. I was going from Oxford to Perranporth in about 1948/9 for a holiday there with my local Oxford school-friend (at Christ Church school) John Pearce. I had no doubt arrived (unaccompanied at age 7 or 8, I emphasize, in those safe days of juvenile travel post-WWII) at Paddington from Oxford behind a Hall or a Castle, in good time before 10.30, and then came the trip of a lifetime. Paul Temple and Vivien Ellis’s “Coronation Scot” music come to mind as I recall this event. I believe I still have somewhere the seat reservation for that great day. Paddington-Reading-Taunton-Exeter-Plymouth-Truro, and losing a slip-coach en route (I forget where, but knew at the time). I changed at Truro, bought a nice (not ‘awful’) Cornish pasty at the Truro station buffet, and caught the branch line train to Newquay, hauled by a handsome little Churchward 45xx barking its way generally north-east-ish back along the Cornish coast towards Newquay. Only three or four years out-of-war, no doubt this was ‘austerity Britain’, but I didn’t know it and quickly spent my pocket-money and wrote-home for more. I hope it was refused.

qaa© Philip B Archer 2014