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AY,P...COOKSWAY!
ITHIN the next few weeks, as the summer holiday season is waning, a car towing a well-equipped caravill leave Bigglesvvade for the Continent. At the wheel be 42-year-old Charles J. Cook, the proprietor of .sway Tours, and although the casual onlooker might rstandably take him for a holidaymaker in search of tst of the 1965 sunshine nothing could be further from ruth.
is is indeed no holiday. Mr. Cook is, in fact, searchor new tours destinations and new routes for his 1966 In. He will be looking for different refreshment and light stops on tours that he has been requested to it in next year's brochure. More than this he will ming routes and checking mileages. As he put it to " Ifs no good taking a car on its own—a car and tan travels at about the same average speed as a .1 and is often just about as awkward to manceuvre." viii also arrange menus (chicken and chips can be a tedious if offered at every main stop!) and argue
s with shrewd Continental restaurateurs and . ter's.
ith him on his costing tour he will carry one impor tant piece of equipment--a eine camera– with which to take coloured movies of the routes and the places where he will take his 1966 clients.
On his return, after all his correspondence and costing is done, he will edit his film, rent a local hall and, with his coaches drawn up outside, "take" his prospective clients on a lightning armchair visit to all his proposed destinations. Staff will be on duty to book intending passengers-who can actually specify the seat they wish to occupy, after first inspecting the actual coaches in which they will make the journeys.
This, by the way. is no recently dreamed-up gimmick— the hall hired for last year's film show, illustrating this year's proposed tours (it netted more than a score of onthe-spot bookings) was too small and a larger one will he used this year.
Apart from one double-decker Dennis bus, the Cooksway nine-vehicle fleet is all Bedford—three 41-seaters, one 11-seater minibus, and four VAI.s (three of which have Duple bodywork and one Plaxton). Three of the vehicles joined the fleet between December and January last, well before the season started. Mr. Cook having discovered that it takes two or three months for vehicles to "settle in ".
The development of Cooksway is interesting. When Mr. Cook left the Forces in 1945 his assets were £60, one taxi and one demobilized Dennis coach. To these was added a 27-seater Dodge coach, which also had seen war service. In 1947 Cooksway began purchasing Bedford Duple coaches, the first acquisition being a 29-seater Duple Vista.
With the usual struggles that go with the small man's attempts to break into the industry proper, road-service licences were granted in 1948—the first covering a weekly Saturday summer service to Margate and Ramsgate. An excursions licence followed, allowing the company to operate to such places as London Airport, the London Zoo, Hampton Court and Farnborough. •
The First Continental Tour
With the extension of the licence to cover journeys to Dover, the company undertook its first Continental tour— to Paris—in 1951. In 1952, encouraged by this achievement, Cooksway ventured as far as Switzerland, besides operating a further successful tour to France. With the increasing popularity of Continental holidays, the company began to add further to its fleet that year.
Tours now operated cover France, Belgium, Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Italy, Spain, Luxembourg, Denmark, Holland, Norway and Sweden. Excursions to Ireland have also been undertaken.
This year's operations have included one Rhine Valley, five Italian lakes and five Austrian " Do-as-you-please" tours, with three successful 14-day tours to Czechoslovakia at a cost of £47 per passenger. So successful have the Czechoslovakian tours proved that this country will certainly be included in next year's itinerary.
Many Private Tours
As well as its licensed destinations, many private tours are undertaken for schools and works in the vicinity. Among these have been tours to Spain, and Austria. On one of these journeys, taking schoolchildren on an Easter holiday visit to Austria, the coach was accompanied by c16 BBC television cameras for a feature in the BBC2 programme "Inquiry ", which was shown in May.
Last month saw perhaps one of the most adventurous of the company's private tours—a 4,000-mile round trip taking in Rome, Naples, Vesuvius and Venice. On this a Duple Vega Major was taken to within a few hundred yards of the crater of the 3,700 ft-high active volcano Vesuvius, along a taxed road. Having arrived at this height it was discovered that there was no turning space for the vehicle_ The result was an exciting half-mile or so trip down the mountain in reverse!
Mr. Cook—he is, in fact, Cllr. Cook on the load Biggleswade Council—operates his vehicles on the principle of one driver for one coach_ He does not believe in the Continental tour which takes in travel on the other side of the Channel in a foreign coach—a practice adopted by many of the larger coaching companies and which he feels can be open to many abuses on the part of some foreign drivers and couriers, at the expense of the passengers. He mainly uses the Dover-Calais route, but is seriously considering omitting France as an entry port on the other side because of the attitude of French Customs authorities. Mr. Cook refuses to participate in the oftenadopted means of getting speedier and preferential treatment—the cigar and cash gratuity system so well known to Continental commercial vehicle drivers.
Also Fills Local Need
In addition to providing Continental and home tours, Cooksway also fulfils a local need. Every day during school terms about 1,000 children are carried to and from school and three coaches are on permanent daily hire to a large local manufacturer, Kayser Bondor. Charles Cook also runs a complete travel agency with a main office at his depot in Patton Road and branch office in the centre of Biggieswade. Like his coaches in Czechoslovakia, his depot office and agency arouses a great deal of interest from passers-by. It is designed as a Swiss chalet!
Following in the tradition of a famous namesake Charles Cook is continually exploring new routes along which he hopes to take his clients, many of whom travel with him year after year. Perhaps it is they who have inspired the motto he has printed at the foot of his current brochure—" Always . . . Cooksway!"