Road to Freedom for Girl on a Golden Rudge

Road to Freedom for Girl on a Golden Rudge Re-published by kind permission of Down Your Way from their issue of June 2012 One extremity-numbing Saturday morning in November 1953 a friend and I set off on our bicycles for a weekend at Aysgarth Youth Hostel, a YHA buzzword on the strength of the warden’s…

Billy Blacksmith of Barrowford

Billy Blacksmith of Barrowford Published in Countryman magazine August 2011 Whenever I think of William Henry Whitaker, aka Billy Blacksmith, one of my strongest memories of this burly jocular man is of him reading our newspaper, but we took his evening visits in our stride because, as a staunch Yorkshire man, he derived great pleasure…