YOU may have read in the Echo of plans mooted to introduce a rickshaw service in Cheltenham. Debate is currently afoot about whether to grant a licence for such a venture.
Well, if it does happen, it won't be for the first time that Cheltenham has flirted with unusual transport.
The photograph opposite, which is taken from Sue Rowbotham and Jill Waller's book Cheltenham, A History, published by Phillimore, shows a pair of rickshaws at the top of Montpellier in 1910. Sitting in one is Mrs Alexander Clifton, who introduced the novel form of getting from A to B.
Her idea, you'd think, was a good one. Plenty of ex-colonials who retired to the town after serving in far-flung parts of the empire would surely have enjoyed the nostalgic experience of being pulled around, especially by sturdy young moustached chaps in safari suits and bush hats.
But not a bit of it. The business soon folded and rickshaws disappeared from Cheltenham's streets. Not forever though.
During Gold Cup week in 2003 Ladbrokes ran a rickshaw service from Lansdown railway station to Prestbury Park.
Much more successful than the Cliftons' rickshaws were Bath chairs. At least that's what the baby buggies for grown-ups were called everywhere else in the country.
In Cheltenham they were called wheelchairs, because to mention the name of its great spa rival was out of the question.
The main rank for wheelchairs was in the Promenade alongside Neptune's fountain. There the old, infirm, or just plain lazy could hire a chair for a few pence and be pulled round the town by a gent in bowler hat, frock coat and shiny shoes. One of the last working wheelchairmen was Alfred Coveney, who was still pulling in the 1920s.
There was another chair rank at Gordon Lamp, where young lads who were members of the Gordon League gathered to run errands for anyone too idle to do their own shopping.
A more recent curiosity introduced to help people get about the town was the Noddy train. There were three Spa Shuttles, which ran from Pittville in and around the town centre and were free to ride.
The trains were gas powered, pollution free and quiet. They were also very slow and caused huge tail backs in the town centre. So according to your point of view they were either a serious attempt to address the town's gridlocked traffic, or a significant contribution to it.
Like almost every new idea introduced to Cheltenham the Noddy trains aroused much public ire. They were withdrawn on grounds of cost in September 1999 and sold at a significant loss to a theme park.
