Chapter 7 Stourport

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I joined ATV in January 1971. At this time, Ros and our first daughter were still in Dublin, but I had found a buyer for the house, a colleague at the P&T looking to move from Cork to Dublin. The legal process of the sale moved very slowly and in the meantime I had viewed and decided, with Ros to buy a newly built house in Stourport - on - Severn, 23 miles west of Birmingham.

Daughter number two was born in Stourport. The preparation and delivery could not have been more different from her older sister's birth the year before and I was present to see my second child enter the world and able to hold her minutes after she was born.


Margaret with her first granddaughter, April 1971

54,Stagborough Way, Stourport, 1971

I drove over to fetch Ros and our daughter on the ferry in January 1971, but it was May before we moved into the Stourport house. In the intervening months we stayed with my parents and grandmother in Halesowen .

Daughter number two in 1972

In 1973 I renewed my links with Pembrokeshire.
We bought a second hand 16ft caravan from a dealer in Stourport and I towed it to St Davids and sited it at Lleithyr Farm on a field with about twenty other caravans.




I was fortunate to be working on a predictable shift pattern in the Master Control Room  (MCR) at ATV in Birmingham. This involved being on duty up to twelve hours at a time, but with corresponding time off, which combined with generous annual leave meant we could take advantage of having the caravan at St David's for a large part of the year. This was especially so in the years before the girls started school. Ros was not employed during this time and we made good use of the opportunities for travel at quiet times on roads that were mostly not busy with traffic.



With a base in Pembrokeshire, I decided to build another boat, my third. This time it was constructed from a high quality wooden kit, rather than more basic selected timber. This made garage construction easier.
Enterprise E17211 being built in Stourport 1973

She had her maiden voyage in Pembrokeshire in September 1973, with David helping me to launch her.

During the early 1970s, we walked many miles of the coast path with remarkably little complaint from two small girls who must have found it very tough at times.


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