THE recent sad events have rekindled my memories of the early 1950s when with my parents we would set out for a Sunday afternoon drive taking grandparents around the countryside surrounding Cirencester.
I would have been about 4 or 5 years and the drive would often finish with a lemonade and a packet of crisps for me in the car park of a favourite hostelry.
If the drive should include the A 429 Cirencester to Stow road, it was always pointed out that we were passing the place where the, by then, Duke of Edinburgh put his car through the hedge.
The place was around three miles from Cirencester towards Fosse Cross in the area of Hollow Fosse farm. The road in those days used to leave the straight Roman route and divert in a couple of places to avoid the Andover to Andoversford railway line.