How did you get to school?

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.

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.

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

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

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 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.

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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

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!

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 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.

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

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.

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)

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

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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?

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 !

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.

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!

Old thread but fascinating stories. My first school was at the top of our (very long) street so I walked from 5 years old (don't remember my mum taking me at all). We then moved and other than the first day I went on my own again - this school was probably about 2 miles away and I had to cross several main roads - used to meet up with friends along the way. They closed this school recently and I went back to visit and look round - everything looked so small!

When we started secondary the first 3 years were in the old school which was another long walk - then we were moved up to the new school even further away for the last years. There was a bus which we sometimes caught but as we had to walk in the opposite direction to get it mostly I walked or cycled. In bad weather very occasionally my dad would take me in the car but as this was garaged a long way from our house he would get soaked going to get it! I called for friends on the way and we often dawdled along but usually managed to arrive before the bell. The aim coming home when we were about 13 was to get behind two boys we fancied - one day I was carrying my cookery produce (a treacle tart) and was mortified when I dropped it in front of them. We still laugh about it as I ended up marrying one of them

My own sons were lucky as each school they attended was at the top of the street we lived on so they walked.

In my my case I just walked up the stairs to the kitchen table when Mom called school time. We were homeschooled I attended online school for Grade 9 and high school, but that was at home as well.

My mom had to take a city bus to get to school as a little girl - her city didn't have school buses in those days. Later she attended a girls' boarding school in high school. Dad lived on a farm so he took the bus. Unfortunately his parents' farm was the closest to town so he was the last one picked up and had to ride in the front with the little kids as all the good seats were taken!

When I was in Grade 12 (final year of high school in Alberta; I was 17) I wrote one of my diploma exams (GCSE equivalents, roughly) in the high school Dad had attended. Dad took me to the school as we were visiting his parents at the time. The same secretary who had been there when he was a student was still working there! He showed me his graduating class photo on the wall and those of his siblings.

Primary school,I walked there and back and home for lunch. A semi rural walk which I loved., and mostly walked with other children.
At secondary school I cycled about 2 miles each way. Most children cycled and we had vast dark cycle sheds beneath the school. Never any vandalism though.

Oops - old thread!