July 2008

Your letters

The last to leave RAF Middleton

I read with a lot of interest the article relating to the RAF in Yorkshire (Apr), in particular the brief mention of RAF Middleton St George.

I was the last member of the RAF to leave Middleton. I had been sent from my home base here in Suffolk to complete the shutdown and to arrange the handover to a Darlington council officer.

When I arrived I met with the officer in charge, who told me that he was leaving the following day and the other RAF person would leave in a few days, and the two civilian employees from Catterick would stay and they knew very little about the place.

I was informed that all the remaining equipment was in certain buildings and all other buildings were empty. Not being prepared to believe all that I was told, I decided that I would check the alleged empty buildings for myself — and it was just as well I did.

Everything was fine until I checked the NAAFI canteen and found it packed with furniture, pots and pans, crockery etc.

All RAF equipment etc was to go to Catterick and Bawtry but neither was interested in NAAFI items. Several phone calls to the NAAFI proved fruitless, so I contacted a local secondhand dealer and he took the lot. How much he paid I have no idea… at least that’s my story and I am sticking to it.

The whole operation took about eight weeks and was quite an experience. I was invited to attend the official takeover by the council but I declined.

I have been a frequent visitor to Yorkshire over the years for walking holidays but the sands of time have caught up with me and I can no longer travel that far, but Dalesman keeps me in touch.

I should mention that I also served at Acaster Malbis and Cottam in the late 1940s.

John Hooper, Woodbridge, Suffolk

On your bike

The article ‘Reaching for the Skies’ (April) takes me back to the early 1930s. My father, an ex-serviceman (army warrant officer) who had spent most of his civilian life in private service, found himself out of work, through no fault of his own. Private estates were cutting back on indoor and outdoor staff — my father was one of the casualties.

The family moved to Harrogate, our home town, where my father found several odd-jobs but with no future. On an old pushbike he cycled round the countryside job-hunting, and finally landed work labouring on the construction of Linton-on-Ouse airfield.

Fortunately, someone in authority realised my father’s worth and employed him in the site office. In the meantime, the pushbike had been replaced by a motorcycle, provided by my brother. He stayed at Linton until the airfield was completed.

About this time Munich had come and gone, and war seemed inevitable. Ministries were evacuating London and leaving for the provinces. The Ministry of Aircraft Production (MAP) arrived in Harrogate and my father landed an office job with the ministry, based in the Old Swan Hotel in Harrogate. There he stayed until just after the end of the war.

Later he remarked to me that never in his life before had he enjoyed such a cushy, well paid job with easy hours. Dare I say it – he got on his bike.

Mrs E B Palfrey, Pershore, Worcestershire

Tricky take-off — true or not?

The article about Royal Air Force operations in Yorkshire (Apr) reminded me of a story which appeared in a newspaper several years ago. The correspondent had been a member of a group of workmen employed in the maintenance of overhead power lines in the Settle area in the 1940s.

One day they were sent out to go where a large military aircraft (either a Halifax or Lancaster) had, for some reason, made a forced landing in a field (it must have been a big field) near Austwick. The salvage crew intended to dismantle the aircraft for removal which could have required the removal of a line of power cables.

However, the pilot, believed to be Leonard Cheshire himself, objected, saying: “It’s my airacraft, I’ll fly it out,” which apparently he did after it had been stripped of everything but the basic essentials and the fuel level reduced to the bare minimum to fly it back to base.

It seems to be a somewhat improbable feat, but can any reader confirm that it actually happened?

Mr W Sutcliffe, Hebden Bridge

Souk sellers hit the spot

I loved the reader’s letter ‘Ey Up in Jerusalem’ (May). On a recent holiday in Tunisia the sellers in the Souks had all the sayings: “Cheap at half the price… only 50p…" But my favourite was the smack on the bottom and “Asda Price” (plus a few that are unprintable in a family magazine.)

M L Frear, Wrenthorpe

Learning how to talk tyke

In 1964, when my husband, two very small children and I took a giant step over the Pennines from the Wirral (Merseyside) to Hightown in the West Riding, we did not realise that we would have to learn a new language: ‘ginnel’ for alleyway, ‘laiking’ for playing out, ‘treacle’ for syrup.

But the biggest surprise of all was when we went to the bakers or to the bread van which came up our street. When I asked for a ‘cob’ or ‘tin’ (terms I used on the Wirral), why didn’t I receive straight away a large round loaf or a large rectangular loaf?

On the Wirral, a teacake was a small flat bread, and a teacake which had currants in it was a currant teacake. As for baps, barm cakes, and 'scown' not 'scon' (scone) … I gave up and decided it was safer to point to what I wanted.

Now, in 2008, we have been dubbed honorary Yorkshire folk, as we have a Yorkshire daughter and two Yorkshire grandsons.

Finally, another confusion arose when neighbours concluded a conversation by saying, “See ye later”. I found this very confusing in 1964, since no previous arrangement had been made. Didn’t our new friends know that we were used to “cheerio”?

Valerie A Siggins, Cleckheaton

Moving story caught on film

In the letter from John Webb in the April Dalesman he says there is a transport film about a farmer from the Wolds moving south to Sussex in 1952.

It was actually a complete farm of machinery, animals and men from the farm just outside Stokesley in North Yorkshire, not the Wolds. I was fourteen at the time and remember it well.

It was all loaded onto a special train at Stokesley Station and the train travelled through the night to Sussex on what turned out to be the coldest night of the winter.

It was the end of an era in the locality as the Skutterself Estate was all sold up which had belonged to Sir Robert Ropner at Skutterskelf Hall.

My grandparents had been tenants on the estate since 1919, the year my late mother was born, and in 1952 when the estate was sold, her brother bought the farm, as did a lot of the tenants on the estate.

David Sutcliffe, Barnard Castle

EDITOR'S NOTE: Our thanks to all the others who wrote in about this farm move, Ed.

Dog-walking etiquette in the Dales

What are readers’ views on doggy bags?

Obviously it is correct to not let dogs foul our villages, but in open country, dog muck disappears in four to five days, but dog bags take four to five years (according to the manufacturers). If you walk the Dales, more and more we see blue and green bags thrown in trees and rivers.

Raymond Potter, Skipton

The golden age of cycling

My wife Margaret and I were talking about our days of cycling in the 1950s and the sort of mileages we used to clock up.

One of our favourite rides was to the Cyclist Touring Club's annual international rally on the Knavesmire in York, a round trip of about 100 miles.

Much of it was on flat roads, with only Harewood Bank a climb of any consequence, which wasn’t too tough on Margaret and we managed to have several hours at the rally.

There was one particular ride which stands out in my memory, and I never did know just how far it was. It was an all-male ride, a CTC ‘A’ run, and most of the riders came over the border from Lancashire. In those days nearly all the lads rode on fixed gears (you pedal all the time), speedometers were practically non-existent, and we could only hazard a guess at the distance covered.

So we set out one day in our old VW camper to retrace the route, first down through Skipton and over Embsay brow to Barden, from there it was a stiff climb and then a long drop down Greenhow Hill to Pateley Bridge.

On we rode to past Ripon and Thirsk to have a lunch break in Northallerton. It would only have been sandwiches and a pot of tea in one of the many ‘tea-only cafés’.

After lunch it was on up to Richmond, where we parked up a couple of hours.

We didn’t have the luxury of a stay on our bike ride, for we then rode on the full length of beautiful Swaledale. Then we had the formidable Buttertubs Pass to conquer, and at a gradient of one in four it was a fair old pull on our hand-built lightweight machines. I daresay we did some walking.

A speedy whiz down into Hawes for our tea, which would have been at the legendary Ma Walker's café in the village, well refreshed for the tough pull up Widdale.

From Ribblehead we turned left down Ribblesdale to Horton and Stainforth, and along a traffic-free A65 from Settle to Long Preston, and for me a stiff climb over Swinden Moor home to Earby.

The speedo on our camper that day read 131 miles, and when I cycled the distance I can’t remember being all that tired. Perhaps it was youth on my side or just the sheer enjoyment of all that wonderful Yorkshire scenery.

Francis and Margaret Forrest, Earby

EDITOR'S NOTE: We have added a second Readers Letters page this month, on the subject of The Great Yorkshire Boundary Debate - CLICK HERE