Evergreen

116 EVERGREEN Autumn
The typical package holiday
of the 1960s was not for my
family. Rather than sitting
on a plane to Spain we took the
car — and not just to
Spain. In 10 years of
wonderful holidays
we toured much
of Europe and I
collected experiences
to enrich a lifetime.
My father and his brother owned
a successful car-sales business, my
mother was a vastly experienced
motorist who had driven my
father’s pre-war Lagonda before her
marriage, and almost every other
type of car after it, and I had learned
to drive as a seven-year-old on
country roads and disused airfields
— so when I was 13
and it was decided
I should see the
Continent, it seemed
perfectly natural that
we should take our
expertise and love of cars abroad.
That summer of 1966 we went to
Switzerland, and I never forget the
excitement of my first European
travel in that holiday car of happy
memory: our bright red Hillman
Minx, BVU 356C.
On our last night in
England, taking coffee
in the elegant White
Cliffs Hotel in Dover,
I watched cross-
Channel ferries ablaze
with lights as they slid
The author’s parents
with the bright red
Hillman Minx, which
took them on holiday to
Switzerland in 1966.