Child from Home by John Wright Read Free Book Online

steep banks, I caught sight of a pretty, stone-walled, humpback bridge and a shady beck with tumbling waterfalls that glinted in the sunlight. The lady told us that in the early days of the line, there had been a steep incline near here. There was a fatal accident on it in 1864 when the rope snapped and the coaches raced back down the incline killing two people and injuring many others. Plans were drawn up to prevent it happening again, and the four-mile stretch of line to Goathland that we were now on was laid in 1865. The old incline was on the other side of Eller Beck.
    I was discovering so many new and exciting things; it seemed to me like a magical journey through an enchanted land. Passing on again by the pretty village of Goathland, the steam train headed south into Goathland Dale and the wild and narrow gorge of the Eller Beck. Many years later, Goathland was to become known as Aidensfield in the popular TV series Heartbeat and it was called Hogsmeade in the Harry Potter film, The Philosopher’s Stone. On the open moors we saw several hurdles before the line began the long drag up from the Raindale area to Fen Bog, where I was spellbound by the stunning views and refreshed by the purity of the moorland air.
    Beside the single-track line the sun glinted off the clear purling waters of the lovely Pickering Beck. The word beck comes from the Norse ‘bekk’, meaning a stream, and in these parts a small waterfall is called a ‘foss’. A little further on, to the east, lay the huge natural amphitheatre called the Hole of Horcum. The line skirted this strange but natural phenomenon that was a quarter of a mile across and 400 feet deep. Mam told us about the legend of the Hole. Some call it ‘The Devil’s Punchbowl’ and local legend has it that Wade, an angry Anglo-Saxon giant, was having a row with his wife Bell. He scooped out a handful of earth to throw at her and left this deep depression. Having missed her, the resulting heap of soil formed the high hill called Blakey Topping a mile or so further east. Some say it was the devil himself who dug out the great hollow. The deep grooves near the bottom looked to me like gigantic fingermarks. Round here nature was wild and untamed, and perched high up on the eastern flank of the marshy hollow Mam pointed out the old Saltergate Inn, saying, ‘The Devil was once trapped in its kitchen and a peat fire was lit to keep him in and it has been kept alight ever since.’

    My imagination ran riot and I prayed that the fire would never go out. In reality, the ‘Hole’ had been formed by the power of glacial melt-waters and collapsed springs following the last ice age. Above it masses of blooming heather turned the rolling moorland purple with tall sere grasses and reed clumps standing out in fawn and umber. I glimpsed isolated stone cottages and farmhouses and the beauty and serenity of it all took my breath away.
    After skirting the high bluff of Pickering Moor the train began a long gradual descent. In places the steep sides of beautiful Newtondale rose up to about 450 feet; in the old days the trains had rolled down here under their own gravitational pull. The slopes of the deep and lonely gorge were clothed in lovely trees and shrubs, and Mam said, ‘I’ve never seen such glorious autumn tints.’ The beauty of this remote eleven-mile-long stretch made a powerful impression on my young mind. I was seeing Mother Nature in her natural state, and her clean vibrant colours and leafy grandeur contrasted so sharply with the grime of our mucky old town.
    Steaming onwards we passed close to a flat area on the eastern side of the line where a derelict, partly overgrown track bed led off to mounds of fallen stone. The area was gradually being colonised by grass and weeds. An old dried-up reservoir overlooked the former mine workings and ruined stone buildings. There was an air of neglect and melancholy about the place and bits of