My little bit of the world part VI

I was born in the little Yorkshire mill-town of Skipton. Geographers would call it a gap town, as it sits in a small break in the Pennines, the North to South chain of hills that form the backbone of England. Years ago the Pennines made East-West travel difficult, so the roads, railways, canals etc., took advantage of natural breaks in the hills which in turn prompted the building of settlements.

The Pennines are mainly rough moorland and while beautiful are fit for little other than raising sheep and this is reflected in the name Skipton - Skip -sheep, ton-town. The local sheep who you met singing in the last post are tough hardy beasts and look nothing like the fluff balls that inhabit lowland farms. When England pioneered the industrial revolution, Yorkshire was all about wool and Skipton supported a number of ‘Satanic’ mills. Now apart from the odd refurbished mill and the canal that served them the legacy is all but gone. Today the town makes it’s money from Tourism due to its position as the gateway to the scenic Yorkshire Dales.



Shortly after I left home to go to university my parents moved away from Skipton, so for several years the link with my birthplace was broken. Then a couple of years ago I was asked to stand in at the last moment as a tutor for a holiday maker’s water-painting class which was being held close to Skipton.

What follows is an account of my return to my home town, which hopefully will provide an insight into a little part of the world and a culture you are not familiar with. The detail is taken from an erratic, rambling diary I occasionally keep.

There’s an old saying that suggests: ‘you should never go back.’ While its origins are probably lost in the mists of time, I do know that where it refers to places which once held happy memories, the saying is particularly apposite . The truth is you can’t relive the past and while you’ve been away things change just as much as you have……

Coming ‘fucking’ home.

Undoubtedly, the best way to arrive in Skipton is from the West by crossing the Pennies from Lancashire. Lancashire is usually somewhere that a good Yorkshire girl wouldn’t normally acknowledge exists. The War of the Roses may have been over five hundred years ago, but us Yorkshire folk have long memories!


So it was that fateful day when I decided to return home. Having driven up North, skirting Manchester and through Lancashire I left the little Lancashire mill town of Nelson with it’s sad, soot-stained, sandstone cotton mills, terraced houses and cobbled streets and took the little winding back road to Skipton over ‘the tops’ as we say via Elslack Moor.


Behind me the looming outline of Pendle where the witches live. As I climbed, the fields quickly gave way to rough moorland and bog. The fields and road hemmed in by bleak stone walls. A landscape with few trees, just the odd rowan or ash. With the car windows open the shrill plaintive calls of the curlews soon absorbed me above the roar of my car - a sound as much a part of my childhood as my mother singing.


After seven years away, I instinctively cheered as my Mazda hurtled down into the long dip marking the border between the Red and White Rose counties. ‘Big Ears’ the old microwave mast had gone years ago, but after clattering over the first cattle grid onto the moor proper, I pulled into the old, puddled lover’s lay-by to enjoy the view, where on a good day the Dales are seen spread out like a great patchwork panorama.


I searched in vain for Pen-y-Ghent, but the rain was beating in from the west and sadly, visibility was down to a couple of miles. Somewhere nearby feeding grouse made their odd clattering sounds. Briefly I reflected on a winter’s night long ago when my boyfriend brought me here in his car. Here in the fumbling dark it can be said, rarely can a girl have been called upon to face such serial disappointment. Well to be charitable, at least the poor lamb had his minute of excitement. Sometimes it’s better to give than receive… anyway I digress. I returned to the car and carried on with my journey East. The densely packed conifers of Standrise Plantation, where we used to go exploring, home to all those wonderful owls, had been felled in my absence and somehow the sodden, scarred landscape of broken branches and stumps seemed to set the tone for the rest of the day. I began to wonder if it was such a good idea returning home after all.

Over the second cattle grid, past the old seventeenth century milestone and then suddenly I was looking down into Airedale and the Pennine Pass in which Skipton sits. Hovering over the town an ominous black cloud, suggesting Skipton was not giving up its reputation of being the ‘Piss Pot of the North’ without a struggle. Flanking it, the characteristic pimpled slopes of Flasby Fell, the familiar and much-loved backdrop to my childhood. Briefly, my optimism returned and then suddenly there it was, our village nestling into the hillside dominated by the old mill chimney. Suffice to say if I’d have been born a hundred years earlier I would have spent my working life there as a bobbin doffer, raising in turn my own children as mill fodder


Minutes later, I was passing under the giant beech trees and I was back in the village. Despite everything appearing overgrown, little seemed to have changed. On second thoughts the little wooden hairdresser’s shop was now a butcher’s and the mill had been turned into flats for Yuppies from Bradford, but having said that ‘The Mill’ looked all the better for losing the black grime of the Industrial Revolution. I turned alongside the beck and parked up.


By now the rain was coming down stair-rods. The grass seemed longer than I remembered. The ducks had either all gone, or were perhaps taking shelter. As mad as it was my reaction was instinctive. I kicked my sneakers off, pulled on my cagoule and carefully slithered down the bank into the beck. After weeks of rain the water was running deeper than normal, but I stood there knee deep in the brown swirling torrent, and looking up at the heavens felt like screaming ‘I’m home!’ Memories of happy hours spent here netting sticklebacks and tickling the big brown trout that lived under the wall came flooding back. My hair was getting wet and cold, lazy rivulets of rain were finding their way down my neck but I made no attempt to pull up my hood. Instead, I looked into the leaden, rain sodden sky and smiled. It felt good to be home.

There was so much I had to see, but I knew it could wait. I would come back later; hopefully camera in hand, if and when the rain abated, but for now I was ravenous, so I climbed back up the bank to my car and headed for Skipton…… to be continued

Glossary
Bobbin doffer: a girl who changes the bobbins as they fill up on the spindles.
Yuppy: young upwardly-mobile professional
Beck: stream