A FRIEND of mine is the proud (and only the third) owner of a lovely black 1936 Austin 7 Ruby.

Registered in June of that year, it belongs to an age of the short-lived reign of Edward VIII and when Arthur Laver Clarke was our mayor.

Whenever it is driven around Maldon it undoubtedly turns heads, but that wouldn’t have been the case when it was new, as that particular model was a reasonably common sight here in town.

It was, after all, the economy car of its day, with some 290,000 of them being produced in the UK by Austin between 1922 and 1939.

Although there had been other cars around in this area, some as early as 1904, the Austin 7 led the way as the most popular, affordable car of its age.

One of our local dealerships, Bates Motor Works Ltd, held a motor show here in Maldon in October 1930 and the ‘7’ doubtless featured.

But with that popularity, reports of driving offences started to appear in the newspapers.

On Sunday, August 22, 1937, Gerald Flowers made the mistake of leaving his car outside All Saints’ Church without any lights on and was subsequently fined 10/-.

Despite those occasional setbacks, motoring became the vogue and with it came the birth of the motor travelogue.

Foremost among these has got to be HV Morton’s light-hearted classic In Search of England (first published in 1927) and billed as “a record of a motor-car journey around England”.

Unfortunately his route did not bring him to Maldon, but 12 years later and nearer to home, in 1939, Clifford Bax published Highways and Byways in Essex.

In the preface he says that “...in our time most travellers are motorists and a motorist makes light of a county’s mileage”.

So with that assertion in mind, the other day I squeezed into the passenger seat of my friend’s pride and joy – feeling a little bit like we were acting out a scene from Laurel and Hardy.

I had with me a copy of Bax’s account, knowing that the two (that is the car and the book) were divided by just three years.

With the sound of Bing Crosby singing Pennies from Heaven going round in my head, it was time to go back to those days.

We started outside All Saints, thinking about the unfortunate Mr Flowers and his fine all those years ago.

Bax says that the church is “decidedly noteworthy” and describes the triangular tower, the fine carved stonework of the south aisle and the tombs of some of the local worthies.

Maldon was, in his words, “a wayward, long and attractive town” and so it was that we trundled down that long High Street, passed by King George’s Place (newly built in 1935) and headed off into the 1930s and in the direction of Burnham.

Burrow’s 1939 RAC County Map and Gazetteer (price 1/6- net) helped give us our route and it wasn’t long before we were travelling along the Mundon Road and what was once known as the Brick House Farm Estate – the council houses contemporary with our car.

In Mundon village itself we passed by the White Horse pub where George Cleveland would have been behind the bar at the time.

Down to the junction at the bend and our trafficator popped out and started flashing left.

We arrived at Butchers Corner and the house that was, until the 1930s, the local police station.

Another signal left, we turned on to the B1018 (a 1922 road designation) and through Latchingdon.

Glancing at the Lion, where Emma Filby was landlady in the 1930s, we took a right at the parish church – Rev Frederick Haynes Goodwill was rector there from 1937.

Around the winding road and then into Althorne and we could tell that the Ruby was struggling with the gradual incline of Summerhill. Another left turn at the T-junction and we continued in the direction of Burnham (as does the nearby railway line – once run by LNER with steam locomotives).

More bends and we skirted the Burnham hamlet of Ostend, soon arriving in the town itself.

“Burnham”, says Bax, “flourishes upon boating” - a place where you might “hire almost any kind of small craft (for) sailing up and down the estuary”.

And talking of sailing, we pulled into the car park of the Royal Corinthian Yacht Club.

This tall, broad, white building with long bands of windows was designed by Joseph Emberton in 1931.

Larger than life, Frederick Gilbert (Tiny) Mitchell (1884-1962), of Clopton Manor, Northamptonshire, was commodore here from 1931 (in fact right through the 1930s and up to 1952).

A successful engineer by profession, Tiny was a wealthy man and a passionate sailor, and I imagined him looking out of one of the metal-framed, ocean liner-type windows with disdain, thinking: “Who are those two in the common little car? I don’t think they’re members.”

He would have been right – we aren’t (and weren’t), so perhaps it is time to turn round and head back to Ruby’s garage in Maldon and 2019 – a journey of just 12½ miles, but 83 years.