THESE were the days when health and safety didn’t much matter. People would dress up, climb on the back of a lorry or trailer and hang on tight until the vehicle reached its destination.

In this case, it wasn’t a short distance the entrants in the carnival parade travelled.

They mingled with ordinary traffic all the way from Woodstock to Cowley Centre in Oxford – about 10 miles.

And what’s more, few of them were sitting down. Most were standing, some perilously close to the edge of the lorries as they rattled along the road.

At least two of the vehicles had maypoles attached to them, but whether the young occupants were brave enough to dance around them while they were on the move was not recorded. The parade was organised in 1967 by the Oxford district branch of the English Folk Dance Society to mark the first day of a National Folk Week campaign “to bring back folk dance and song to the people”.

The Oxford Mail reported: “The dancers came to town in a procession that travelled from the Oxford City and County Museum at Woodstock. Children wearing flowers in their hair, some of which were plastic, clustered round a maypole on a lorry staffed by the St John Ambulance Brigade. This float and one carrying the Merry Milkmaids, entered by Woodstock Dance Club, were chosen as the best in the procession.”

When the floats reached Cowley Centre and dancing started, large crowds gathered round to watch.

The Mail report continued: “Hundreds of weekend shoppers watched as two local groups – Headington Quarry morris men and the Sunday Club – performed dances like the Double Lead Through (invented by an Oxfordshire man) and the Cumberland Square Eight.” Another of the 600-year-old English dances performed in the shopping precinct was a rain-making ceremony called The Abram Circle. Fortunately, despite a gloomy weather forecast, the rain held off and the dancers completed their routine without a drop falling on their heads.