I HAVE been watching the TV show All Creatures Great and Small, I think I am up to Series 4. The setting is 1939-1940, the war has begun and James Herriot has been called up.

Talk about a touch of old times. He is leaving the village and as the bus comes along the destination board says Keighley.

As the bus pulls away on the back of the bus is an advert, it covers the whole back of the bus. It says: ‘Blythe and Berwick 27 Church Street Bradford’.

Many years ago in Bradford there were very few ‘haulage’ companies. Most mills and other companies had their own lorries (and horse and carts) for deliveries. In Bradford there were only a couple of big haulage firms.

Henry Long had a fleet of trucks and was based in Manningham, and Pickfords who specialised in removals and moving very heavy goods.

Most people in my neighbourhood around St Mary’s Church in Barkerend, if they moved house, used a local man with a horse and cart.

I remember seeing Pickfords deliver a new boiler to Busbys laundry, which took some pretty clever driving to negotiate into Drewton Street.

And of course the railways LNER and LMS both used a small three-wheeled Scamell which pulled an articulated trailer, as well as horse and carts.

So back to the bus in All Creatures Great and Small. ‘Blythe and Berwick 27 Church Street Bradford’ was one of the few firms in the city that had a fleet of trucks and were known for heavy haulage.

They had a depot in Leeds Road which If memory serves me correctly was just off Hammerton Street. Maybe 27 Church Street was their office, I think Church Street was connected to Market Street and Broadway.

The major things being delivered in those days were huge bales of wool. The railways used horse and carts, the horses were big Clydesdales and the bales were stacked up three or four high, making the load about 15 or 20ft high.

Since almost all the roads were made of granite cobblestones they were slippery when wet, so the drivers used to avoid going down, or up, the steep inclines, for example Church Bank, and instead they would use Well Street, up Leeds Road to East Parade and then onto the big mills at Wapping or Barkerend Road.

Seeing Mr Herriot catch the bus from the imaginary village green, which was taking him from the fictional town of Darrowby (filmed in Grassington) to Keighley, and seeing the ad on the back of the bus, brought back all those memories.

Nostalgia can be a good thing.