In 1987 Bradford teacher Doreen Gregory inspired me to design an educational version of Big Trak. That was Classic Roamer. Tomorrow the world’s greatest cycle race, the Tour de France starts in my home town of Leeds. The first stage takes the riders through Yorkshire Dales where I spent a lot of my youth walking and potholing. This is a heady mixture of nostalgia and homesickness mixed with some Yorkshire pudding and French joie de vivre (I never expected to see a map with à côté de Buttertubs marked on it). I had to create a somewhat personal Roamer Topical Topic.
The children in Year 1 and 2 at St. Aidan’s C of E Primary School, Clock-Face, St. Helens were very excited when Roamer joined their class after the Christmas holidays. Soon a group of the Year 2 children decided that Roamer needed his own town to explore and so decided to make him his very own road mat. (more…)