Swineyard Hall, near High Legh, Cheshire

Below is the Priest’s House in Prestbury.  It demonstrates that not all priests lived like paupers !   Charlie comments: Always popular for the Sunday run, between 1923 and 1930, Tom and I became very familiar with the local country, always quiet and pleasant away from the main roads.

Your Editor comments as follows:  When my wife and I first got married we rented an old vicarage in Darwen, Lancashire, unfurnished, for the princely sum of £2 per week.  Interestingly, there was ample evidence of at least one servant living in the cellar, with its own fireplace and kitchen, next door to what would have been a very well stocked amply sized storage room for wine bottles.  Stone shelves on three sides, but all the wine was gone !!

And the entrance hall, to complete the picture, was enormous with wide doorways and terra cotta tiling, and 6 rooms and a kitchen with a large heating stove all on the ground floor.  Alterations prior to our stay had created two self contained flats upstairs.

Please!     is Charlie’s footnote to the above.

This is Charlie in Peckforton Woods, 17th January 1926.     The second picture down from the top is our happy trio..Left to right: Charlie, Tom Idle and Blackberry Joe.

This is Charlie in 1923, Aged 19, and the top picture is of 21 year old Charlie climbing Moel Famau in 1925.  This mountain was always a hard slog whichever way you started on it.  And rarely do we see Charlie without his trademark jacket – its over the saddle !

This lower picture of Arenig Fawr,  for me, encapsulates all of Charlie’s stories of crossing this 17 mile wilderness, always in inclement weather, sometimes at night, a track forever stony, with gates to open and close, and always a terrible desire to reach Ffestiniog and the welcoming arms of No. 6 Sun Street, where dwelt his current passion – or so he thought !!  For more information see Charlie’s story “In the Spring” on page 159 of his book Volume Three.

These two shots above (taken March 1st 1925) were taken from the Malham Tarn to Settle road above a village called Langcliffe.  I too have memories of this road with its superb views covered all over in snow, and building in company with the local CTC section a large snowman.  Perhaps there were one or two snowball fights as well !!

One of these pictures shows Tom Idle fixing a puncture in the River Goyt. Tom’s Ivorycord tyre has punctured ‘at last’ is Charlie’s pithy comment.  Elsewhere Tom is bowing to the River God  !!

Sunday, February 8th – ‘a fill-dyke’, when we tried to make a passage of Chee Dale from Wye Dale to Millers Dale.  After scrambling over rocks and through water we reached the narrows with the river rushing wall to wall.  The river won, and we beat an arduous retreat.  Four months later, on June  7th we made the passage.

The half timbered building photograph is of Beeston Smithy. Charlie comments thus: “Beeston Smithy where we often dined. Mrs (Mother) Stockton made excellent currant cake, and the teapot was monstrous”.  This day, Sunday 10th May Charlie is getting his new bike, a Grubb, run-in by cycling round his favourite haunts in Cheshire.  Another note about his new steed.  The bike was fantastic but it took a lot of experimenting over a few months to sort out a comfortable saddle.  He went through a lot of borrowed saddles before he was assured of total comfort.