Old Friends

We have enjoyed a short visit by Mike and Jenny. They were the first friends we made after our marriage. As our first as a married couple they are of great sentimental value. Jenny taught with Annette at Prenton Girls High School in Birkenhead. Latterly our efforts to get together have been dogged by problems. Both Jenny and Mike have had periods of waiting for operations which has limited their ability to travel.  North Wales to the Midlands ( or now Whitby ) isn’t so far but enough to be a barrier.

When we first knew them we were still living in a flat at Parkgate on the Wirral. We met up a few times on the Wirral exploring the pubs alongside the Dee estuary. We also started on tentative plans to visit France along with some friends of theirs but these plans never quite worked out. Both Annette and Jenny were constrained to go in school holidays which was not good for anyone else.

Jenny taught English and Drama after a period overseas teaching English to foreign students. Mike was working as a buyer at the John Summers steel works on the Dee. In the massive steel industry shake up of the 70’s and 80’s steel making closed and the plant just did steel coating. Mike was made redundant and after a spell at Deeside Titanium finished up running a small café at Holywell. This was rather out of the way at a historic site. It was a tea room during the day and also catered for evening groups

Our time together at Whitby on the first day used the tour bus to take us around town and out to the abbey ruins. As it happened it was armed forces day complete with band. The highlight was definitely a Hurricane flypast. I was surprised again by how ragged the Merlin engine sounded. Usually the Battle of Britain memorial flight appears together and with Lancaster, Spitfire and Hurricane the six Merlin engines sound as one. I had noticed before that a single engine sounds quite different possibly because it is throttled back for its passes over the town. We also visited the Scarborough Arts Forum exhibition in the Pavilion. Annette was introduced to the organiser and will consider exhibiting there another time.

On our second day we went to the North Yorks Moors Centre at Danby. I discovered I was completely wrong in thinking it was a converted row of houses. We found out the whole is a converted shooting lodge. I can only say it is massive being at least 200 metres long but quite shallow. Sitting outside for lunch on a fine day I could see that one end is decidedly more opulent with a fine terraced garden. As the exhibition reminds us the main commercial activity on the moors is leisure with grouse shooting an essential part.

There are preliminary plans for big potash mine at the eastern end. A small mine exists at Boulby. The new plan by Sirius is immensely controversial although the visual impact will be small. The mine will be a kilometre deep and the plan is to carry the mined potash( a fertiliser ) by a conveyor in a tunnel some 36 miles to Teesport.

It seems clear that this is very important for the local economy. Tourism is the Whitby lifeblood and jobs for young people are hard to come by. There is a hope that Whitby will become the support base for the Dogger bank wind farm. This would be over 50 miles offshore and I imagine Whitby will face strong opposition from Teeside

I was amused to see an entry about cats, after all the Facebook comments and pictures, on a Whitby tourist web site. It read “ We like cats too. Lets exchange recipes”