Little more than thirty yards of Tittybottle Avenue remained in its original form when last visited one wet and wintry day. A great deal of it had disappeared under the construction of a link road from the end of the new M65 to the old road system which runs along the north valley of the small hill town of Colne in north-east Lancashire. The rest had been replaced by a narrow utilitarian and featureless tarmac footpath to the railway station and the inevitable Leisure Centre. There was little or nothing there to satisfy the nostalgia of the visitor.

Nobody seems to know how the Avenue got its name. It was never an avenue in the first place; merely a rather steeply sloping footpath running along the boundary of railway land between Colne LMS Station and the Barrowford Road and Priestfield residential areas, providing a short cut to the Station and the main road which climbs up the hill through the town centre. As for 'Tittybottle' - ? Perhaps young nursing mothers preferred the footpath for its safety and quiet, and perhaps they paused to refresh their babies with the feeding bottle en route.

Now even the railway has gone, and the line which once ran in deep cutting towards Skipton and the Yorkshire Dales terminates at Colne Station. The Station is unmanned, its Victorian buildings demolished, and the single track terminates in ancient buffers. There is talk about the old cutting and the swathe of derelict railway land to the north being used to provide another link from the M65, to ease the motorist's way to Skipton, leaving behind the Forest of Pendle on the way to the Dales.

All that is a far cry from the days when a train ride was a treat for many, or a necessity for some, and a cycle was the youngster's best way to explore the country lanes.

Those were good days - or mostly so; even for children of the so-called great War of 1914-1918.