Sign of the times
The road sign that time forgot, found near Wookey Hole in deepest darkest Somerset. Strangely, I Googled charabancs as I'm never totally sure what they are*, hit on the Wikipedia entry and found that it mentions this sign as a rare remnant of the "charabancs' era". Quirky and significant. Result.
* Rickety-looking open top buses used for sightseeing.
Comments
Some of my ancestors were killed in one of the first ever motor vehicle accidents when the charabanc they were in crashed enroute to Brighton.
Posted by: Camilla | May 3, 2008 09:33 AM
We did a project in school last year about transport with some of the elderly members of the community. One of them talked about going on trips in a charabanc. There was also a lovely old photo of one from the 1920s in the museum archive which we scanned and put on the project website at www.travelsintime.co.uk
Posted by: alistair fitchett | May 4, 2008 10:32 PM
I'm probably old enough to have ridden in a charabanc but sadly never have. They are the most amazing vehicles though but not surprised they dont make them anymore.
Posted by: Michael | May 5, 2008 06:02 PM
i'm especially jealous of your recent travels - everywhere looks so full of ace stuff. we're off to dungeness to calm me down.
and that's a fabulous lot of deliciuosness right now too - thankyou
x
Posted by: ally | May 6, 2008 08:52 AM
It looks as indecipherable as most road systems to me.
Posted by: Roman Empress | May 8, 2008 03:10 PM
"Charabanc" was used at least up until the sixties to mean "coach" in the seaside-tourist sense. They didn't have to be open-topped; just double-decker. The book "Italian Townscape" by Ivor de Wolfe (English architectural critic) spends a lot of pages railing against the plague of "charas", and the photographs are of regular tourist coaches.
Posted by: Fnarf | May 8, 2008 10:42 PM