Getting Locked In The Arboretum

A Memory of Walsall.

I remember when I was 14 my friend Josie Weston and I rode our bikes along Broadway West to the Arboretum. We were walking along the paths and around by the lake when we met two boys and one of the boy's mothers worked for Josie's mother at Dawson's coaches. They asked if we would go on the lake and we said yes, so off we went on the lake in a rowing boat. We went all the way over the other side and we sat talking and  by the time we actually got back to the boat shed, the park keeper had already locked the gate.

We had to get one of the boys to scale the gates and then lift our bikes over and the other boy 'bunked us up' so we could get over the gate. We got on the bikes and rode like mad as we had to be home before 9.30pm. My dad met us about halfway in the car and by the time we got home, I got grounded for 3 months because it was 9.45 pm. We had such lovely times with the daylight saving and no danger to us children at all not like now.

Patricia Littel (nee Robinson)