Monthly Archives: October 2014

Website Upgrade

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I would just like to add an historical note which is very pertinent to Charlie’s Journals, and that is that before you reach his next entry, which will release next Sunday and was originally written on July 22, 1922, he reached the tender age of 18 years old just two days earlier on the 20th of July 1922.

Which brings me to an announcement about our website.  Firstly, and we may already have let slip this change, Charlie’s written output expanded enormously after the end of July 1922, a point we are scheduled to reach in about 3 weeks time.  From then on, with very few exceptions, his day trips are much more eloquently described, which is great news for all our readers.  Secondly, In response to our questionnaire of a few days ago, the response is overwhelmingly in favour of releasing items more than once a week.  Bearing this in mind, I shall start work on scheduling more stories, all of them in midweek, so that to some extent we start to catch up our backlog, which stretches ahead for years to come.

We also now have a new contributor, Fiona Thomas, our daughter, who is busy promoting this website and all aspects of Charlie on Twitter and Facebook, and she has made a wonderful contact in Tamia Nelson, whose Florida-based website writes in great praise of Charlie Chadwick. She writes eloquently of Charlie and his literary style and I am indebted to her fulsome contribution to the memory and works of Charlie.

No date has yet been set for the increase in our website output, but probably it will be next January, which is only nine more Sundays away.  We are also looking into linking future entries with a geographical listing so that stories about certain geographical areas are all listed together and cross linked to the actual article.  Patience a little longer, please !

Mooching on the Internet…….

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Whilst enjoying my morning coffee (no cake, for once) I thought I would test out the wonders of the World Wide Web and decided to search ‘Charlie Chadwick’ in Google Images.  I scrolled through a selection of colour snapshots of musicians, aspiring models and a few of Charlie Sheen and then, there they were, a small selection Charlie’s drawings.  No surprise really as they were all clearly linked back to this website.  But then, I spotted a rather different web address on one of the distinctive illustrations and felt that I should investigate further.  With much curiosity, I clicked, and what joy……an entire article dedicated to Charlie’s work on ‘Tamia Nelson’s Outside, No Octane Explorations Near and Far’.  I was so excited that I felt I had to get in touch with the author, Tamia Nelson: geologist, artist, photographer, cyclist, mountaineer, paddler, snowshoer and skier, to say thank you for sharing Charlie’s story even further afield. She was keen to hear about many of the new developments on the site here and very graciously offered to re-run her, now revised, post.

Letting the world know about Charlie’s stories and drawings has been my Dad’s passion for so very many years now, it is so rewarding to know that he is finally achieving his goal.  And, in the process, getting to know so many interesting and busy people from all corners of the world.

I wonder what tomorrow’s coffee break will uncover……….watch this space!

Background to the Winter ’14 schedule

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At the moment we have been placing on the website on Sunday mornings, sequentially, all of Charlie’s Journal entries for 1922, and they will have been completed by early 2015.  Now it is the easiest thing in the world for us to then forge ahead with 1923 and then eventually 1924 and so on, but there is an increasing amount of copy as the years mount up.

Some of us, and I include myself in this group, may not live long enough to see the project completed at the present rate of progress, there is so much to publish, and we are considering ramping up the publishing programme so that we could have additional weekly releases, say on Wednesday’s, or even twice a mid-week, such as Tuesday’s and Thursday’s, giving us three times the present volume.  To offset that suggestion of course, is that from about a month’s time the articles themselves become much longer, and we don’t want our readers to suffer overload.  What do you think dear reader ?

Your comments would be much appreciated.

Good Morning, Dear Readers

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Let me take this opportunity to tell you a bit more about Charlie Chadwick.  He first started keeping a diary of his travels in 1922, when he was 17 years old.  As his birthday was in July, and we are currently releasing to the website his journal entries for 1922 (currently up to mid July 1922) you will shortly (by mid November this year) be able to read much more mature and longer articles penned by a much more adventurous 18 year old.  And what a difference that age difference makes !

I have pleasure in revealing his output of stories as his maturity grew.  All his journals were written up in good quality hard backed ledgers, in the most fastidious small neat handwriting and in the main done with a fine point fountain pen.  This shows a degree of forward planning on Charlie’s part.  His very first Journal covered the two years 1922 and 1923.

The breakdown of pages are as follows:  1922 – 34 pages.  1923 – 93 pages.            1924 – 167 pages.   1925 – 260 pages and from 1924 he was starting to illustrate them.

After 1925 all his writings were stories with no date lines but because he left behind another book – his runs log – spanning the 25 years from 1921 to 1947 I can, and do, refer to his actual travels on the ground.  His stories gradually petered out during the 1930’s no doubt due to the pressures of marriage to a cycling wife, Peggy, (known as Jo in all his writings !), and because they cycle camped everywhere.

What you will not learn from his stories, but I can tell you, is that after a courtship of several years – quite common in those days – is that they married at 8am on a Lancashire Wakes Week holiday Saturday, so that they could catch a reasonably early train from Preston to Glasgow, complete with bikes and tents, reaching the Trossachs for their first night.  These two weeks in Scotland, moving on every night, read like a travel writer’s itinerary.  One day I will publish that 16 day route, and for anyone who has cycled in Scotland they really didn’t miss a thing.

Winter ’14 publishing schedule

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Here is this winter’s publishing schedule

  • October 5 – 10 July 1922, Manchester Ship Canal
  • October 12 – 13 July 1922, Flixton and Urmston
  • October 19 – 15 July 1922, Castle Mill
  • October 26 – 17 July 1922, Warburton
  • November 2 – 22 July 1922, Thelwall and Lymm
  • November 9 – 27 July 1922, Bolton Moors
  • November 19 – 30 July 1922, Northeast Cheshire
  • November 23 – 5 August 1922, Sale and Baguley
  • November 30 – 13 August 1922, Boothstown and Blackrod
  • December 7 – 19 August 1922, Chelford and Knutsford
  • December 14 – 20 August 1922, Culcheth
  • December 23 – 26 August 1922, Llangollen
  • December 28 – 27 August 1922, Langollen to Bolton

A Summer Evening’s Run

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Charlie speaks of turning right along his route at the Unicorn Hotel (which is also the route to Barton Swing Bridge on the Ship Canal), which has stood on this corner for many years, although I haven’t checked its presence there for some time.

Charlie is quite right to comment on the view from the top of the Warburton Toll Bridge, which is still going strong after many years, on a truly clear day you can see a very long way.

Revitalising the website

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It is good to have David back from his summer travels. It means that we can find the time to sit down together again (albeit separated by almost 200 miles) and do some proper planning for the next developments of the website – and some much needed maintenance!

My plan is to try and keep you updated, through this channel, of what you have to look forward to over the coming weeks and months. I hope that you will find what we have planned for you as exciting as we do. Here are some of the headlines, but I’ll also add other posts to fill in some of the detail as well.

  • We are currently working our way through a backlog of items from 1922 – see a forthcoming post from David on this
  • The ‘Book” pages are currently undergoing a revamp, not least to take into the fact there are now two volumes with the third well on its way
  • Opening up a whole new ‘regional’ area of the website – see another post from David on the rationale for this

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