Growing Up in Lederhosen: Memories of Growing Up on a Newly Built Council Housing Estate in the Sixties; a Small West Country Village on a Hill, Surrounded by Fields, Woods, River and Canal in the Valley Below

For hundreds of years the old West Wiltshire village of Winsley has stood on a hill, a peninsular of land surrounded on three sides by the Avon valley. The railway, John Rennie’s Kennet and Avon Canal and the River Avon, run side by side in a big semi-circle through the valley below. On leaving our house we could walk in any direction, though fields and on footpaths to Conkwell, Turleigh, Murhill, and Avoncliff; a different walk for every day of the year. As kids our playground stretched for miles and within that playground we had everything we could desire; acres of woods in which to play, trees to climb, caves to explore; the old workmen’s punt on the canal; the river to fish and swim in. The parents of a couple of friends owned dairy farms where we could rig Tarzan swings from the rafters in the barn or build castles from the small rectangular bales of straw as they were then; fortifications preceding the stubble fights that would inevitably end in one child running home in tears. But the tears soon dried, and any telling-off rarely lasted long; it was an idyllic childhood.This is a true story of growing up in a country village during the nineteen sixties. A village where kids could roam freely and do pretty much as they pleased.