How did you get to school?

Walk, bus, walk up steep hill. Very occasionally car if my father happened to be driving to work. Normally he cycled. I remember my mother coming with me on the bus and meeting me up to the age of seven or eight, thereafter I went by myself. I went to the same school from the age of seven until I left at 18.

As I got older I loved to vary the journey home. I often walked with a friend to her house (in the opposite direction to mine) and then got a different bus home. I also liked to get off the bus early so that I could walk home past a farm where I could look at the pigs. To this day I am rather fond of pigs!

Walked to and from primary school 4 times a day for seven years. No really busy roads to cross thank goodness. Sometimes used to hitch a lift on the back of the horse-drawn milk cart.
Then was allowed to cycle to grammar school, but had to leave my bike at my aunty's and walk the remaining 5 minutes to school. Think my parents thought my bike would be stolen at school! And had to do that right from first form to the Upper Sixth.
The route involved cycling on the very busy A4 which at that time was the main London to Bristol route, in the days before the M4.

Walked to school both infants, primary and secondary were in the same lane next to each other so I did that from 1945 to 1956 then a train journey in a different direction to college from 1956 onwards.
Dad had already left for work so wasn't able to give me a lift.
Now and again the headmaster gave my friend and I a lift home if he was visiting his sister who lived near us and we felt the bees knees in his ramshackle old Morris car. This was from the primary school.
Friend and I used to decline lifts from a neighbour's horse and cart !

All my schools were within walking distance.
What I do remember, though, was I travelled unaccompanied by Mum after the first day there, aged 5, but I wasn't alone really, as my friends did the same. It just wouldn't happen now, would it?

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Depends which school you mean. I went to 10. variously
1 & 2: walked, 3: caught a bus and walked, 4: boarded, 5: school bus, 6: walked, 7: bus/ferry/bus, 8 & 9 school transport (army lorries), 10: boarded

Kindergarten...pushed in big pram. (4 miles)
Infants...pushed in big pram (3.5 miles)
Juniors...walked with mum pushing brothers in pram (3.5 miles)
Seniors...bike down B roads and lanes (10 minutes)

This is such an old thread, Jings is on here somewhere back up thread together with a few posters who have changed their name in the meantime

Oh God everybody walked to school back in the day, it's what we all did before the advent of helicopter parents and from age 5 if I remember rightly, my brother and me and a friend down the road, over a mile I'm pretty sure. How did we all survive heaven only knows, I put it down to a good old dose of benign neglect that parents had in spades back in the dim and distant past. I did no such thing with my own I hasten to add, far too uptight about perceived dangers around every corner.

I walked to primary school and cycled to secondary school. Neither of my parents could drive so we walked or cycled everywhere.

I was an army child too so went to many different schools, some for only a few months. My brothers and I went to school by bus or walked.
One English school was several miles from home, including woodland and a heath, steeply uphill on the way home. When one brother had appendicitis he was sent home from school and arrived to find our mother out and the house locked.

This thread has brought home to me how very different it is for parents with school age children today. Our local Facebook Group page has an advertisement for the coach fare to the local Secondary School - it costs £884.00 per year for 7 mile return journey.

I walked to my primary school. The Grammar school was more interesting. In the morning I went by bus to be sure I was on time, but going home I could take the bus again, or I could walk halfway home and then get on the underground, or I could walk down the road to the railway station, catch a train to my nearest station and then walk the rest of the way home. Of course in the winter it tended to be get on the bus as quickly as possible!

Yes, it costs to send your children to school now.
My GC catch the school bus, which is actually a service bus and costs £1 per child per journey, so £20 per week. It’s only a mile and a half but along a very busy road then stops in the narrow congested village street where a little boy was killed outside school recently.
Road conditions now cannot compare with those when we were young.q

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Walked to the bus stop, bus to the tube, tube to bank then changed tube, tube ride then long walk to school. Whole journey took an hour and a half.

Walked from about 8 years old, on my own or with friends, no adults in sight. From 11, I cycled along a main road, carrying a tennis racket, violin, PE kit and satchel. No, I wouldn't let any child of mine do the same!

Walked nearly a mile to junior school in charge of my younger brother, even crossing the A25.

First school was a 3 mile or so bus ride away, plus a fair walk either end. I would go with rather older sister, but had to come back alone on the bus.

One memorable day when probably 6, I missed the bus I usually took (dawdling) and didn’t realise that there’d be another if I waited.
So I walked the 3 + miles, dawdling again, and stopping to have a good look in the pet shop I’d passed so many times on the bus.
My poor mother was frantic - she’d been on to the police!

Walked to primary, cycled to secondary. They were both part of the same school, just 3/4 of a mile from home.

Primary school I walked. Home for dinner also. So 4 x I mile every day. At Grammar school I cycled. Satchel in a basket on the front, hockey boots or plimsolls in the saddle bag and a tennis racquet or hockey stick on the crossbar secured with clips.

I live in Gloucester now but was born and raised in Totnes, in Devon. I used to boast to my children that, until I was 10 and we moved up here, I used to walk three miles to school everyday and then 3 miles back. Recently, I took a trip to Totnes and measured the walk. It was just under a mile! I'm keeping quiet about that.