A Holiday in England - The Smoke, Up North, VCs & Raptors

After leaving Scilly it was a dash back to my place in Kent to do some laundry before jumping back in the car and driving up to London to visit my sister, Carol.

Cornish Wind Farm

Driving through London made me realise how much easier it is to drive just about everywhere else in the world.  The omnipresent speed cameras, traffic light cameras, yellow box cameras, congestion zone cameras, bus lane cameras, speed humps, pot holes, grid locked traffic, nightmare parking, warped one-way systems, ridiculously short timed traffic lights and totally illogical speed limits positively ensure, no, absolutely guarantee that there is not one iota of motoring joy to be had.

However, once safely ensconced at my sister's place with my car in the basement car park, safe from any marauding traffic wardens, I was happy.  I've said it before (but I'm going to say it again) but London really does have the best pubs in the whole wide world.  Fact.  Without doubt.  And so my brief time in London was spent in several pubs, eating pub grub (as well as fish and chips from the local chippy) and catching up with my sis.

Sharky & Me in the Boozer

For the next leg of my journey to North Yorkshire I left London early hours of the morning in order to avoid the nightmare daytime traffic.  Driving at night can be tough (I had to pull over a couple of times to snatch five minutes of zzzzzz) but the rewards of the open and largely empty roads is a blessing that definitely makes it worthwhile.

I had plenty of time so took the scenic route, coming off the A1 early, up Sutton Bank at sunrise, across to Helmsley and on to Kirkbymoorside.  At dawn I was driving across the magnificent North York Moors, on what is without doubt one of the best driving roads I've ever had the pleasure to drive over (particularly when I was using a Honda CBR 600 and in a Porsche 968).  Even the sedateness of the Volvo couldn't distract from the twists, turns, brows, dips, cambers and the ever present risk of crashing into a wayward sheep wandering across the road. En-route I passed the Lion Inn on Blakey Ridge, one of the best pubs in the whole of England - it has to be because it's so remote it would've shut down years ago if it wasn't - and had it been open for breakfast I would have definitely stopped for a full-English.

North York Moors

But it wasn't so I went on to Guisborough and feeling that it was rather too early to be calling at my mate Tom's house I went looking for a cafe for an unhealthy fry-up, but to no avail.  So I took a slow drive to Tom's after wandering around the town and buying a newspaper.  Fortunately he was up and about, as was his better half, Judith.  They had business to attend to so I welcomed the idea of forty winks to catch up on my sleep whilst they went about their errands and tasks.  Later that day we went for a walk around the foot of the moors (being away from England really does awaken your senses to just how beautiful the English countryside is) and then into the local boozer for beer and grub.

North Yorkshire Countryside

That afternoon Judith asked me what I wanted to do whilst I was in the area?  I've been travelling up to Yorkshire and the immediate surrounding area for well over 20 years (I've also known Tom for around 25 years, since the Falklands) and so the imagination was wearing a bit thin.  However, the day before my sister Carol had given me a CD containing research she had commissioned on my grandmother's family tree (my mother's side) and knowing that my grandmother was from "up north" I mentioned this.  We fetched the CD out of the car and, to Tom's yawns, Judith and I started reading up.  I knew that my grandmother's eldest brother had been awarded the Victoria Cross in WWI and following a bit of research on the internet we learnt that there was a statue of him in South Shields town hall, so a plan was hatched to go and visit and pay homage following day.

I'd always imagined that South Shields was a fair trek from Guisborough but it was actually much closer than I imagined and we were there in no time at all.

South Shields Town Hall - Now a Glorified Traffic Island

South Shields town hall is an imposing building close to the town centre.  It's a town hall as town halls used to be: full of grandeur and bristling with a sense of civic pride.  The present day main reception, which in its day would have been a side entrance, was a disappointing typical council office, with matching bland décor, chirping switch boards and a take-a-number-wait-your-turn arrangement.  I was convinced we'd never get to see my great uncle's statue, thinking that in modern Britain it would have been labelled "most irregular" or "not council policy" or being too much or a security risk or fill in a form for your request and we'll process it in 21 days.  We approached the reception desk and by way of explanation made our request.  Surprise of surprises we were accommodated and process with an astonishing speed.  It would seem that people still hold a very high regard in matters relating to those that have been awarded the VC.  We were issued with temporary passes and went from the soulless reception into a different world of the corridors and meeting rooms of the old building.  These were a strange mixture of marble floors and walls, with vaulted ceilings in what I would describe as a renaissance style of building (although someone may want to correct me on that).

Corridors of South Shields Town Hall

We proceeded to what would have been the reception desk in the splendour of the good old days at the front of the building but which had long since been relegated to a lesser and secondary standing now that the reception needed to be manned by an army of civil servants and technology in order to function.  Consider this:

At the height of Victorian power and prosperity in 1851, the Whitehall departments of central government employed only 1,628 civil servants.  Also in that year, when Britain led the world in commerce and industry, the whole public payroll, including postal workers, totalled just 75,000 [in 2003 it was 516,000 and now seven years later has probably surpassed that number by many more thousands].  The vast expansion of the Civil Service has gone hand in hand with Britain's decline.  In 1900, when the British Empire covered a quarter of the globe, the Foreign Office employed 142.  It now has 5,620

 Source: Steve Doughty, Social Affairs Correspondent, Daily Mail 2003.  Words in square brackets have been added by me.

We enquired at the reception desk, which was at the foot of a grand double-turn staircase, where the statue might be, explaining that Thomas Young was my great uncle. Again, we were treated remarkably well and were escorted to the statue that was located in a recess above the first landing of the stairway.   Quite astonishing really.  I didn't really know what to say or think, just a feeling of immense pride and honour that I was somehow connected to such a remarkable person.

Pte. Thomas Young VC

Note:

From the genealogy research it came to light that Thomas Young was born Thomas Morrell.  His mother had died (we assume) and his father then married my grandmother's mother.  Thomas Morrell's father also died at a very early age and my grandmother's mother took Thomas as her own and married my grandmother's father and therefore became Young.  Thomas Morrell also took and used the Young family name.  I'm not sure, but I'm convinced that my grandmother did not know, as did neither of her other 12 brothers and sisters, that Thomas was not in fact her blood relation.  She never mentioned or even suggested this to me at any time and it's my belief that she lived her life believing him to be her true brother.

The following link will take you to Durham Light Infantry web site where there are details about Thomas Young and his VC award on the (it's far more interesting than anything I have to say): Thomas Young VC

We then drove to Marsden Cliffs for a walk along the coast leading to Whitburn where my grandmother and her family originally came from. 

Marsden Cliffs

Souter Lighthouse and Foghorn

We passed through Whitburn and stopped briefly to walk through the cemetery for clues to any relatives that may have been buried there.  When searching through the older parts of the cemetery I was saddening to see how many children were buried there as well as victims of mining accidents and those that had died relatively young (probably through disease or war): previous generations must have been all too familiar with death on a regular basis, a familiarity that we have been fortunate enough not to experience.  It was hard to imagine the village it as it would have been in my grandmother's day when the mines and mining, now long gone, would have been the hub of the village and life in general.

Hartlepool Marina

The rest of the day was spent driving along the coast, passing through Hartlepool and then into Middlesbrough and over the amazing Transporter Bridge.  I'd often seen this from a distance and imagined that the bridge was high above the river but that isn't the case.  In order to allow shipping to pass the bridge's gantries are high above the river but there is a gondola suspended from cables from the gantries that carries the cars and passengers at the same height as the river banks.  It's an amazing concept that works really well and despite the gondola being suspended from cables it has virtually no swinging movement to it as you might expect.

Middlesbrough Transporter Bridge

The Gondola to Take You Across

The following day, we decided to go to the Durham Light Infantry Museum to see Thomas Young's actual VC which was kept there but we very nearly didn't make it.  Being the first one up in the morning I wanted to fetch some gear out of my car.  I'd remembered that I'd left my car keys in Tom and Judith's car so I took their car keys, which were on a key ring containing all the keys for the house and went and unlocked their car and retrieved my car keys.  I then went to the boot of my car, took out the items I wanted and slammed the boot shut.  In that split second, just as the boot clunked closed I had an awful sinking feeling: did I leave the keys in the boot?  Yes, of course I did, along with my car keys as well.  And my car was locked (the boot can be opened in isolation without opening the car doors).  And I don't have a spare set keys (300 quid plus from Volvo - that's 1/5 of the cars value -  and only from Volvo because the key is encoded).

Sheepishly I had to confess to Tom and Judith what I'd done.  Fortunately (for me, not for them), I'd locked their keys in the boot as well and as they were with the RAC there were grounds to call them out.  Within 30 minutes the RAC were on the scene and the man from the RAC jumped out of his van, looked at the Volvo and of course said "That's the worst car in the world to lock your keys in".  Why?  Because even if you open the car there's still no way to access the boot without destroying the rear seats because there's no remote boot release in the car and whilst the seats can be dropped for extra storage space, this can only be done from inside the boot.

After signing a release form to say that the RAC wouldn't be responsible for any damage to the car - I did ask half jokingly if the retrieval process involved one of those hydraulic cutters that you see the fire brigade using to rescue car accident victims -  the guy went to work.   The process involved using an inflatable bladder to squeeze the boot lid over to create a slightly bigger gap between the lid and the body.  A wire was then used to hook the wiring loom leading to the boot and tease it into a position where it could be accessed in the gap between the boot seal and the boot lid.  With the skill of a brain surgeon, the RAC man then used tweezers, scalpel and tiny pliers to separate the cable from the loom that controlled the boot latch (I'm making this sound too easy), whilst I stood over him mopping his brow (not really, I was in the kitchen drinking tea and eating bacon sandwiches).  He then cut the cable and then using a 12v battery connected it to the exposed ends and hey presto! the boot sprung open.  And he did a sterling job in not scratching the car and causing absolutely minimum damage.  Thereafter, the wiring loom was repaired and I can report the patient has made a full recovery.

With the car fixed, Judith and I headed to Durham (without Tom, who has the patients of a 3 year old and finds libraries and museums boring) and went to the DLI museum.  There was memorial plaque outside regarding all those who had served with the DLI and had been awarded the VC.  We did a tour of the excellent museum and went to the medal room to see Thomas Young's VC.  My grandmother often told me how he would often offer to pawn it in the local pub in exchange for a few beers but the landlord always refused to accept it and just gave him a drink anyway, so I suppose it's lucky that it's not hidden away in a private collection somewhere.

Similarly, there's another story where the medal was lost:

Private Thomas Young was known as the "Cornfield VC" because he got drunk one night and lost his medals in a cornfield.
"He had the whole village out looking for them," said Norman Dick, of the South Shields branch of the Durham Light Infantry Association.

Source: The Shields Gazette, 04Jan07 

I'd not been to Durham before but I remember a dragon of a junior school teacher I had being from Durham, and during one lesson she showed us a photo of the Sanctury Knocker on the cathedral.  She asked us what we thought it was and why the handle was so shiny?  Of course, being a bog standard council estate school none of us had a clue: if it wasn't in our street or in Mote Park, we couldn't possibly know. I remember looking at the North Downs from our school playing fields and wondering what was over the other side.  A lost world of dinosaurs perhaps (I was nearly right - it's the Medway Towns!)?  There wasn't any way I was going to know that Durham even existed.  As a means of enlightenment everyone in the class had to write an essay from the point of view of someone fleeing persecution, trying to cross the city to seek sanctuary in the cathedral.  How the hell were we know what Durham city centre was like?

Sanctuary Knocker, Durham Cathedral

I have to say, having been to Canterbury Cathedral several times, Westminster Abbey, St. Paul's, York Cathedral and even Nortre Dame, that Durham is is by far the most impressive. I was somewhat hacked off that the place was full of signs saying "No Photography".  Why not?  Not being one to be put off easily I walked around and surreptitiously snapped away.  I have no idea what the shots came out like as the film hasn't been developed yet and it's languishing in a draw at home so I'll probably never know.  But who cares, it was cocking a snoot to overly authoritarian rules and regulations that mattered.

Durham Cathedral

We'd also learnt that Thomas Young was buried in High Spen cemetery so we headed there.  After wandering around for a while we found his headstone.  It was a lovely place, overlooking the rolling hills of the countryside.  A fitting resting place for a hero.

Final Resting Place

After leaving Tom's I headed a short distance up the road to visit my mate Mark.  I don't really know what to say about him because there is so much to say - certainly more than enough to fill the pages of this blog several times over.  We've also been good friends since we met in the Falklands.  I supposed I could say that Mark is bird breeder by trade but he's not.  Breeding birds, specifically birds of prey, is his passion: his life: his sole purpose.  And he's become very, very good at it, despite having the whole Establishment stacked  him.  Determined, persistent and totally single minded is what he is 

Some This Year's Breeding Successes

As usual, I turned up at a inconvenient time when he was very, very busy but, and I should consider myself lucky (as well as not being mauled to death by the wolf masquerading as an Alsation at the entrance to his property) he always makes time for me - so long as I slot in with whatever he's doing.  Although I draw the line at popping the yoke sack out of and skinning dead-day-old chicks for feeding his birds.  When he wasn't busy, and I wasn't taking photographs of his incredible collection of birds, we'd sit in his field, drink coffee and catch up with what had happened in our lives since we'd last met (Jan 2008).  Invariably, infinitely more interesting stuff had happened in his than mine such is the life he leads and I enjoy immensely the time we are able to spend together.

I stayed for a couple of days before I was off again, hitting the road and flying back south.