Last updated 05:28, Friday, 30 May 2008

They were rarely glamorous, never very adventurous but our big days out were always special... particularly the ones involving Grandad’s Bus.

It was a Volkswagen bus. Red I think – or maybe blue. Funny how memory plays colour-chart tricks.

Whatever shade its paint-work, we’d all pile into it when a day out was called. The whole family – Mum, Dad, grandparents and a couple of aunties, Grandma’s cousin, my brother, myself, the dog and food for man and beast – wrapped in greaseproof paper with a neat pleat and packed into picnic baskets with flasks of tea, coffee and homemade lemonade... can anybody be bothered to home-make lemonade these days?

Since so few families can be bothered with big days out now, it’s doubtful lemonade would be top of any modern mother’s to-do list. Old hat, that. And as for Grandad’s Buses, well...

Had Grandad not been a shortish, stout man, never without his collar, tie and trilby, he might have been considered quite trendy when he bought his bus. It was the early 1960s after all and VW buses were beginning to acquire a soon-to-be hippy status.

But to qualify for pop-cultured modernity they needed to have stencilled flowers on their doors – symbols of peace or gardens or something. But my grandad would never have risked his smart paint job with anything so frivolous as a flower. That would have been as outrageous as taking his trilby off... and he never took his trilby off.

So the bus was just a bus. For family. For showing off. And big days out.

We rode in it to Bolton Abbey for wobbly walks across the stepping stones, to Ambleside and Grasmere – big deals for a Yorkshire family – to Scarborough for lunch on North Bay beach with the donkeys and a peep at the miniature battles in Peasholme Park.

Sometimes – because Grandad wasn’t the best or fastest driver on the road – we had time only to climb out of our bus, unpack our picnic, sit on rugs and folding chairs, eat, drink, clear up, pack up, climb back in and ride home again... always stopping alongside hedgerows on the way because one auntie would invariably need to wee.

“You should have gone before we set off!” Grandad would snap from beneath his trilby – which, even at six or seven years old, seemed to me a ridiculous thing to say. We’d always set off a good eight hours ago and eight hours was a long time for any auntie to have to cross her legs – especially when she’d had homemade lemonade with her egg and cress sandwiches.

But her flustered, embarrassed apologies for poor bladder control were as much a part of our days out as were the tinned salmon and cucumber.

I suppose the scattering of extended families has put paid to old-fashioned big days out. People move on for study, for work, for marriage into affordable homes. There’s not much call now for Grandad’s Buses as transport for three generations of picnickers, great aunts, cousins and their vacuum flasks.

Another bank holiday having just passed, thoughts of big days out were bound to prompt a touch of nostalgia for a time before main roads to coast and country were turned into go-nowhere-fast car parks. Before trains ground to a halt right on schedule, because holidays now mean repair and cancellation opportunities – not big days out.

They’re done at home now. Family days, when not shopping days, are conducted in the garden with reclining chairs and tables with fancy parasols, home barbecues, beer and fizzy drinks from the fridge – with not a thought for homemade lemonade or egg and cress.

Lovely, of course – if the sun shines. Delightful to share with friends. But not a patch on the anticipation of an excursion with family, pets and packed lunches; out on the open road with a grandad in his hat, an auntie wanting the loo.

When not in Grandad’s Bus, we’d sometimes set out in Dad’s Vauxhall Victor. Just the four of us, we’d head for Bamborough Castle, Alnwick or back to Bolton Abbey – always a favourite. Dad would swear at caravans and take lots of photos. Mum would pour her homemade lemonade and go a bit quiet. A Geordie on the sands at Seaton Sluice, she’d sometimes suffer the homesickness natural to an exile in Yorkshire. They were good days. Happy days. Big days out.

Since sinking new roots in Cumbria, my days out have tended to be new adventures of exploration. They’re more solitary than they used to be, of course – generally by design – but the rule is again that they involve no shopping and lots of photos.

And then I report back in my phone chats home.

“Funny thing is Dad, I got to Ullswater and could have sworn I’d been there before.”

“You have, “ he said. “In Grandad’s Bus.”