Now that I am a fully paid up member of the U3A St Neots branch I joined a walking group that met in the free car park just near the market square in Sandy.  From there we marched up the road towards the  train station and then into the RSPB grounds (the headquarters of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds) where we walked up hill and down dale surveying the amazing autumn trees and ferns.

I chatted with the leader of the walk and discovered that she had lived in St Johns Wood (where I grew up) as her husband had been a member of the Kings Troops when the barracks where in Ordnance Hill. Some of my earliest childhood memories include standing at the balcony window of our council flat watching the horses and their riders trotting by as they exercised in the early morning.  Just along the road, in a different block of flats, Jeremy was watching the same horses on their way out or back from their dailyt ride. After 65 years in St Johns Wood the troop relocated (in February 2012) to new barracks in Woolwich.  Jeremy and I left our office to line St Johns Wood High Street with many other residents and workers to bid farewell to the Kings Troops.  Sandra, our leader today, has been to the new barracks but confirmed that they lacked the history and atmosphere and beauty of the old stables and ground that we remember so fondly.

A further note on the Kings Troops is that our daughter arranged “work experience” at the barracks when she was 16.  She was not in uniform but in dark clothing and DM boots. Everyone was on the parade ground when a sergeant called daughter and told her to report to his office. There he proceeded to bawl her out for the scruffy, unpolished state of her boots.  She didn’t have the heart to interrupt him and say that she was wearing her own footwear and was not subject to his regulations.  She (and he) survived five days of her work experience but she did NOT become a soldier!