Delia Daws (nee Towers), aged 81, of Kendal, recalls a drive down Dunmail Raise in the 1930s

 

In the late 1930s in Kendal not many people had a motor car. We had a black Ford 8, with doors but no childproof locks.

After a run out to visit an aunt at Keswick I pestered my mother to let me sit in the front. She gave in.

Not content to sit still, I fiddled with all the knobs, and, coming down Dunmail Raise, I found I could open the door handle. Out I flew and landed in a puddle.

I remember getting up and running after the car. I was made to sit in the back seat, nose, hands and knees all streaming with blood.

I was taken to Nurse Hughes down Helm Close. She cleaned me up with antiseptic and I was taken home in disgrace!

On Sunday morning my father went to visit someone at the top of Windermere Road and left my brother in the car. He fiddled with the knobs and found that the handbrake moved.

The car set off down the hill, and when my father came to look for his car he found it stuck against a tree. How disappointed I was to have missed it all!

I remember having a bogey, made out of two pieces of wood and four pram wheels. There wasn’t a lot of traffic so I was able to pull it up Burton Road, then come sailing down the middle of the road, past what is now Westmorland General Hospital.

Of course the day came when I overturned and arrived home with another burst nose, cuts and bruises. I never saw the bogey again.