Bryan Marlowe's reminiscences of the summer of 1938 (Evening Press, March 30) brought back memories of a lost world.

My grandfather was a bargee who plied his craft along the Bridgwater Canal during the 1920s and 30s.

With his corduroy trousers, collarless flannel shirt and blue spotted neckerchief he looked like Douglas Fairbanks in The Prisoner of Zenda.

Mind you, the cogs tended to spoil the illusion and I never saw Fairbanks smoking thick twist tobacco in a clay pipe.

Granny would sail with him on many of his journeys and, in the summer of 1938, I had the privilege of spending two adventurous weeks travelling to exotic places like Runcorn, Widnes and Birkenhead.

The wooden barge had no power of its own and had to be towed by a horse plodding along the towpath; or by grandad and his first mate.

Where no towpath existed the men would use the long barge-poles. Standing in the bows, they would thrust the pole down to the canal bed and, learning heavily on the pole, they would walk to the stern of the boat.

Then granny would stand at the tiller looking magnificent, like a workingman's Brunhilde.

As befitted his dignity as captain, grandad occupied the after cabin, his mate living in the fo'castle.

Darkness was a permanent feature of cabin life, there were no windows (or portholes) and the gloom was relieved by the yellow flame of an oil lamp, or the glow from the tiny stove. Despite the basic standard of accommodation, the two weeks spent on grandad's barge remains one of the most memorable holidays of my life. I never got a chance to repeat this adventure because, 12 months later, our world was shattered by a lunatic called Hitler.

Robert Holmes,

Thorganby,

York.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.