fantastic places --- perhaps Tokyo and Fiji were
the high-lights, but, also, I shall never forget the experience of landing at Hong Kong, in the late evening when the lights from myriads of small boats were reflected in the harbour.
The following year I journeyed across Canada with friends, using Greyline buses and stopping off where we pleased and for as long as we wished. Niagara Falls were a sight that lived up to it's reputation; I thought Ottawa was the finest of all the Canadian cities; the Prairies were mainly bright yellow with crops of rape when we crossed them in June and bright blue with flax flowers as we returned in August. The mountainous Rockies region has some superb scenery and we stayed longest at Jasper and Banff, from where a tour across the Athabasca glacier, in a snow-mobile, was a trip to be remembered. At Vancouver there are some of the finest totem poles in the world and when I saw these I felt that, perhaps, these were what I had really travelled so far to see.
From Vancouver it was possible to go northwards
to the great fishing port of Prince Rupert and then north again into true Indian country using the Alaskan Highway for a short distance — I would like to have gone further on this road but, alas, time did not permit — I thought, perhaps, I would go back one day, but this has not happened yet!
Each year I have visited some foreign parts — Tunisia, Morocco, Sicily, Italy (several times as I have studied Italian in my spare moments), Portugal, Crete, Greece, Cyprus, Turkey, Bankok, and Sri Lanka, which for me out-shone them all.
Most summers, too, I have taken my car and spent a fortnight or so exploring various parts of the British Isles — from Scotland to Cornwall, from Wales to East Anglia.
In between travelling I have found plenty of voluntary work to do mainly serving on various committees. Chipping Sodbury has a number of charitable trusts which administer legacies from past centuries. One of these, the Town Lands' Charity, of which I have been Vice Chairman, has proved very active and interesting in recent years for its funds have been used to convert the ground floor of the Old Grammer School, in the High Street, (where most of you commenced your Secondary Education), into a Community Centre, and the same charity has built a new Town Hall behind the old one. These projects, though time consuming, have been stimulating and rewarding.
At one time I served for several years as a Governor of the St. John's Primary School in Chipping Sodbury and also of the new Brimsham Green Comprehensive School at North Yate, and as Vice Chairman of the main Governing body of Chipping Sodbury Comprehensive School, which, in addition to the main governing body has a small