Cycling and badminton keep Tom Tinning young at the age of 90

But it was a dry day, so he opted to make the three-mile journey from London Road to Newtown Road by bike.

It’s the healthy and eco-friendly way to travel, of course. But it’s a lot for a 90-year-old.

Yet Tom seems to think nothing of it.

He may once have been head mechanic for a haulage firm, responsible for 60 lorries. But now does much of his travelling on two wheels, or on two feet.

As if that’s not enough exercise for a man of his age, he also plays badminton at The Sands Centre every Wednesday, provided the hall is free. It usually is.

Tom is not just in good physical shape. His mind is alert and his memory is sharp.

Some memories reawakened when he discovered a 75-year-old photograph, hidden in a biscuit tin and forgotten until now.

It dates from 1944, when he was a 15-year-old member of the Longtown army cadets.

Like Tom the cadets were mostly former pupils at Longtown School, and are marching from Nethertown to a church service in St Bees.

The man leading them was a Lieutenant Fisher, a maths teacher at the school.

He also remembers the names of most of the others in the picture, but says: “I don’t know if I’m the only one left.”

The photo prompted a lot of other recollections for him.

World War Two broke out in 1939 – exactly 80 years ago in September – and ended in 1945, so he says: “I just missed it.

“We did some manoeuvres with the Home Guard and I did some wireless operating with them.

“We also went into the Lake District on manoeuvres with the regular army.

“We could have been called up. The Germans did that – they had boys fighting at the end.

“But the war ended before we got there.”

Yet Tom was called up for the army after the war, as most young men of his era were. He had to complete two years of national service.

It took him first to Newcastle, Hampshire and Devon. “Then we set sail from Glasgow and ended up in Palestine.”

It was a scary place to be. Jews from Europe and America were arriving there, hoping to establish a homeland, and the native Palestinians weren’t altogether happy about it.

Britain was the “mandate power”, governing Palestine, Jordan and Egypt at the time, and had to cope with the eruption of violence.

A Jewish paramilitary organisation called the Irgun were carrying out attacks on Britons and Palestinians.

Most notorious was their 1946 bomb attack on of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, the UK’s headquarters, in which 91 people died.

“I wasn’t in Jerusalem but I was in Tel Aviv and Haifa. There were a lot of battles going on between Palestinians and Israelis.

“You had to get away as quickly as you could.”

The army came home via Egypt and Cyprus. Back in Cumbria and back in civilian life he worked for a short time on the farm of his uncle, Ted Waugh.

Ted had been an officer in World War One and a major in the Home Guard in World War Two, and his experiences had given him firm views about war.

“Once these naval officers came to the farm for tea. He told them: ‘This has happened twice. Don’t let it happen again.’”

Tom didn’t stay long on the farm but went to work for Carlisle haulage firm Border Transport, founded by Stan Robson, where he became head mechanic and fleet engineer.

He was responsible for the maintenance and safety of 60 vehicles and 300 trailers.

“If there had been an accident, I would have to find out what happened, why it happened and whether we did something wrong.”

Tom had married his wife Winifred in 1952 and the couple moved from Longtown to Carlisle, which was handier to work for both of them. Winifred worked for the Ministry of Aviation in Kingstown.

They were married for 66 years. Winifred died last year but they had three children, Philip, Judith and Alison, seven grandchildren and a great-grandson.

While Tom was at Border Transport the firm was taken over by the drinks giants United Glass, who later became Distillers, and are now Diageo.

“I get my pension from Diageo,” he explains.

He’d rather have been getting it from Border Transport. “It wasn’t the same working for a big company.

“They were always having meetings, that kept you from getting on with the job.

“It was much better before.”

Tom is 90 now but he nearly didn’t make 11. “When I was 10 I got typhoid fever, and was in Longtown Isolation Hospital.

“I didn’t know what was wrong, but I remember my mother scraping my mouth with a teaspoon and finding all this dried blood.

“I think I was the only case in the country at the time.”

He made a full recovery, but in his teens he was back at the hospital - not with an illness, but with a job he describes as “general dogsbody”.

“The boiler had to be stoked every day. On Sundays, if I was out with the cadets, my dad used to do it instead.”

It was around the same age that he took up badminton and began cycling. So he’s been doing both for more than three quarters of a century now.

He had met Winifred at a dance in Smithfield and remembers giving her a lift back to the friend’s house where she was staying – sitting on the crossbars of his bike.

Of his fondness for badminton he reflects: “It’s just what I started with. My mind’s okay and my arms are okay, but my legs won’t always do as they’re told.

“It’s just exercise. You feel a lot better afterwards.”

What do the family make of sport at the age of 90? “They think I’m crackers!

“Winifred didn’t want me doing it. She thought it was too much.

“But it gives you a lift. It tires you and energises you at the same time.”

Are there any secrets to making it to your 90s and keeping active and healthy? He can’t really think of any.

“I used to smoke but I gave up smoking when I was 60. I don’t drink much, I didn’t really frequent pubs.

“Maybe it’s pure luck.”