Image source, Mike Barnes
Mike Barnes got as close as he was able to putting Wisbech on his USA licence plate
A man who grew up in a Fenland market town has shared his love of the place by having the name Wisbech on his car licence plate in the USA.
Mike Barnes, 56, lives in St Louis in Missouri but spent his “formative years as a teenager and into my 20s” in Wisbech in Cambridgeshire.
“It was a really good place to grow up, and I was remembering those days and wanted to do something,” he said.
His car now proudly sports the W’SBECH sign – the closest he could get.
Mr Barnes explained that in the USA you are only allowed six letters and an apostrophe or a dash, when it comes to licence plates.
He paid $15 dollars to the state License Bureau and said: “You can have what you want, but you have to explain what the letters mean, so I just said this was the name of my hometown – and they let me have it.”
Image source, Mike Barnes
Mike Barnes moved to the USA in 1999
He recalled growing up in the town in the 80s and 90s and said it was “amazing”.
His fond memories included the various houses he had lived in as well as “buying fresh veggies at the market, banger racing at the track, hanging out in the car park in the evenings… and going to the Saturday auction in the Old Market, pub crawling from Norfolk Street to the Market Place then on to North Brink”.
“They were good times,” he wrote.
Mr Barnes left Wisbech when the company he…
