This is really out of sequence as no doubt we will be talking about the hovercraft again when we reach the letters for 1963; however this is perhaps as good a moment as any to introduce the subject.

As the linked video shows, briefly in 1963 there was a trial hovercraft ferry service from Weston-super-Mare across the channel to Penarth. It was the very epitome of a ‘nine days’ wonder’, briefly enjoyed and then never seen again (like Costa Coffee’s Giant Jaffa Cakes … ) and it must have appeared to some people at the time almost as an hallucination. Indeed, mention it to some people these days and they look at you as if you’d lost your mind; however it did exist, and here’s some footage and some photographs to prove it.