Rtn Francis Whitbread: The Yorkshire Dales

Sadly, we started this week’s meeting with a minute’s silence in memory of our member Rtn John Parkinson, who died on Tuesday. He was our President for 1997-98.

We had Stephen King and Tony Stringer, respectively President and a Past President of the Rotary Club of Chelmsford Rivermead, as our guests. The speaker was our own President Francis. He is a keen cyclist and talked about one of his favourite cycling areas, the Yorkshire Dales. He had a rolling slide show of photographs of the Dales on display as he spoke.

He spoke without notes, impressing us all not only with his memory but also with his comprehensive knowledge of the area, starting with Bolton Abbey, where J B Priestly is buried.

From there he described the routes to various places of interest and mentioned James Herriot a number of times. We all knew that was a penname for the vet Alfred Wight. (James was actually his first name but he was known by his second, Alfred.) What we did not know was that he was originally going to use a different penname but discovered that it was the real name of another vet. That evening he happened to be watching a football match where the goalkeeper Jim Herriot shone. That decided him on the penname he should use.

When the BBC made the TV series based on Herriot’s books they intended to film it in Derbyshire. The actor whom they asked to play Siegfried said he would only do so if they were filmed in the Yorkshire Dales where the stories are set.

Our President highly recommended Zarina’s tea shop in Kettlewell. The real Calendar Girls lived in two nearby villages and Francis said he was once served by one of them in the local Post Office; she was fully clothed.

The famous Wensleydale Cheese nearly went out of production between the two World Wars but was saved when Kit Calvert acquired the Wensleydale Creamery in the mid 1930s. President Francis had a large box of Wensleydale waxed truckles and invited us all to “take at least one”. (I was among those who took two. There were still some left at the end. Webmaster)