LOVE conquers all in this tale of a Victorian father who put his foot down and his defiant teenage daughter who concocted a cunning plan to elope with her sweetheart.

It was more than a rocky road to true love for Ken and Pat Smith who celebrate their Golden wedding anniversary this week. The couple met at a ballroom dance in Ross-on-Wye when Pat was just 16. Their first date was, and they still remember the table number – lucky 13 – of a cafe by the Roxy cinema.

Pat recalls that she was determined to marry Ken by the age of 17, but began working away at a school in Malvern.

"But Ken was clever, he bought a car so he could come to see me."

It was Pat's Scottish-born father, landlord of the True Heart Pub in Ross, who forbade the couple to marry.

"He was a real Victorian father," says Pat. "You did what you were told and you weren't told twice. He said Ken wasn't good enough for me because he was a farm labourer."

But Pat was canny. She knew if you were over 16 you didn't need your parents permission to marry in Scotland. So she planned a daring elopement. Under instructions to write to her father once a week, she wrote three letters in advance and passed them to her sister to post – a deception which was to cost her sister a beating.

She and Ken then boarded a train to Glasgow with all the money they could scrape together. Ken pawned his camera to buy the wedding ring and Pat's grandmother arrang­ed for a proper wedding at St Andrew's Church in Denniston, Glasgow.

"The four guests were all widows and they all got blotto on the whisky".

They stayed three weeks and returned to Ross without a penny between them.

"Our honeymoon meal was a cheese sandwich and a slice of slab cake on British Rail coming home."

Married life started in Ken's grandmother's attic, followed by rented cottages in and around Ryeford and The Lea. Ken worked long hours for farm contractor, Johnny Evans of Weston-under-Penyard with a stint at Listers in Cinderford and later as a caretaker for Forest of Dean District Council. Pat, who always wanted to be a nurse, worked as an auxillary at Dean Hill Hospital, Ross, and recently retired as a warden for a sheltered housing scheme in Yorkley, where they now live.

With three children, Avril, Nigel and Stephen, and five grandchildren, the couple look back on a happy life.

"I don't mind if I stay here for the next 20 years so long as Ken is with me. We've had a super life. You can't grumble, there are ups and downs but that's all about talking. If you haven't got conversation you haven't got anything."