4th August 2007. I caught the 14.15 no. 22 bus to Granby, planning to follow the Rushcliffe Way to Aslockton and catch the train home. It had been an overcast morning but blue skywas spreading from the west. The journey seemed endless, it takes almost an hour. Leaving behind Gamston and Morrisons where shoppers returning to the country piled on we started to wind along country lanes, up through Tollerton by the aerodrome and along by Hoe Hill. The vale of Trent spread away in the east with the Nottingham skyline and Colwick Woods falling behind to the north. We twisted and turned between all the parked cars in the old miners’ estate at Cotgrave and most people got off. A smelly unshaven chap with a shopping bag got on and sat just in front of me. I hoped he was just going to the shops in Cotgrave but he wasn’t. Over the GranthamCanal and past the CountryPark, the brakes squealing every time we pulled up. We came to the traffic lights at the A46 (Fosse Way) crossroads. They’ve changed the route now the no. 22 terminates at Granby instead of Harby and Stathern. When the lights eventually turned green the driver turned left along the Fosse Way and put his foot down to try to keep the big lorries and speeding holiday traffic off his tail.
We crossed the GranthamCanal again at FosseBridge locks, that marvellous point of the canal where you see your first glimpse of BelvoirCastle. Though only about nine miles away, it will be another 18 or so canal miles before BelvoirCastle dominates the canal’s skyline. The canal was engineered to follow the tranquil contours of the Vale of Belvoir and there is a 20 mile pound with no locks between FosseBridge and Woolsthorpe-by-Belvoir. It meanders below the gold and green patchwork of summer fields and the sleepy villages of red brick, pantile and golden stone: Kinoulton, Hickling, Hose, Plungar, Harby, Barnestone and Redmile and crosses briefly from Nottinghamshire into Leicestershire before entering Lincolnshire.
We had a long wait for a gap in the traffic hurtling west before we can turn off the A46 onto the Cropwell Butler lane. A cluster of red brick and whitewashed cottages, many low-roofed and one of them timber beamed, a profusion of flowers and leafy corners and a village green, then we were out into country lanes again with wide views of the Vale of Belvoir. The unkempt man got off at the first stop by the council estate in Cropwell Bishop and I could breathe more freely. With only five passengers left on we went down the main street to the church then up by the dairy to the industrial estate where a crew change took place. Our original driver was dropped off at his front gate on the way out of the village, we dropped off a couple who had talked non-stop since West Bridgford at Langar, a couple more people in Barnestone and then I was the only one left.
Approaching Granby we turned right into the lane from Bingham and there was a green gypsy caravan parked on the grass at the corner. I was sure it was George Gaskin, the knife-grinder who I’d not seen since 2004 and who we’d searched in vain for around Epperstone and Hoveringham in June. I couldn’t wait to get off the bus in the village; my plan to walk the Rushcliffe Wayabandoned, I walked back down the hill with a spring in my step. It was him. A different caravan and an old black Volvo estate car instead of his horse, but I recognised the knife mill. He remembered me too. He’s been ill. “I was taken ill with my heart on New Years’ Eve, I’d never been ill before. They took me to the hospital at Norwich and they had to replace two valves in my heart. I was in for five weeks. They said my arteries were all furred up; I eat a lot of red meat you see, I always eaten a lot of meat, I’ve just been and got some from the butcher’s up there.” “That must have been awful for you stuck indoors all that time.” “It was; I went out on the grass whenever I could, in fact when I left, the sister said to me, You may as well have had your caravan out on the lawn, with all the time you’ve spent out there. The doctors said it would be too much for me to take the horse this time, so I’ve left my black cob with my three other horses back in Norfolk and got my car instead. I’ve got to go back for a check up in a few weeks time, and then it should be all clear.” He’s still got his other caravan and he’d just had it done up. He agreed that it was nice to be out in the fresh air: “It’s what we all need; fresh air and sunshine are the biggest healers of all. Being cooped up with buildings all round is what brings on the stress, that and the pressure to get big houses, big cars and more and more, that’s what breaks marriages up and ruins lives” he says. “Stress is no good for you, I don’t do stress.”
He told me about a lady who he first met at Wymondham, she was a nervous wreck, she was shaking all over and even though she was only 42 she looked more like 62. Her marriage had broken up and she was having to sell the house; she’d worked in America and all over the world but she was an absolute wreck. He’d left one of his caravans in Wymondham with a chap called Dave and asked him to sell it for him when he could. A bit later a car drew up and it was this lady with a thousand pounds. “She needn’t have brought it to me, she could have left it with Dave. I wondered what she was going to do with it. A few weeks later she was back again and I wondered had she changed her mind, it didn’t matter anyway, I still had her money. But she said to me, I’ve brought a tent, do you mind if I pitch it by you, I said, No I don’t mind and then she said she’d got rid of her house and she’d got a horse. She asked if she could bring her horse and caravan and pitch by me while I taught her the ropes. So she went and brought them and she was with me for five weeks and off she went. She said to me ‘You’ve given me my life back.’ I gave her six months and thought she’d have had enough of it by then. But no, she’s still travelling ten years later and she looks years younger, more like 35 now and she always says when she sees me ‘George, you gave me my life back.’”
I thought of the saying ‘Inspiring others towards happiness brings you happiness’; wherever he goes, people are pleased to see him again. I told him that our meeting at Epperstone three years ago had given me a new perspective on life and made me treasure the gifts of freedom and fresh air, “Yes because you’ve got time to talk to people and you’re a wanderer at heart like me.” I asked if he got much hassle from people while he was travelling, “No, everyone’s lovely, they’re glad to see me, there’s a lot of good people around you know.” I shuddered to think of the urban thugs who attack and rob to fund their addictions. I hope he never crosses the evil ruthless paths of those whose feet run to evil and make haste to shed innocent blood.
“I’ve been up at BelvoirCastle and the Duke and Duchess always make me welcome, they invited me to come on their lawn but I was fine where I was; they always bring their children to see me, they’re a lovely couple.” He spoke too of someone who’d given his name to his son, “I was really touched by that.” He said a couple he sees sometimes had sold their house and bought a property by a lake in Scotland, “with two turrets and all, and they said they wanted me to come to them and be their gardener, ‘you’ll have it all to yourself most of the time, because we’re abroad a lot’ but no, I’d miss all this and the travelling”. I said “The climate would be a lot less kind to you too.” I said how much I love the hills of Scotland and the peace and wildness. He said he’d been to Scotland once, “up by Stirling and Clackmannanshire but I think I like it round here best. I never really know whether I’m in Nottinghamshire, Leicestershire or Lincolnshire, but if I was ever to settle anywhere, I think it would be the Vale of Belvoir, not that I’m going to!” He spends the winter at Acle in the Norfolk Broads.
People were waving as they drove by, including the local policeman. I noticed the array of garden implements he had on the grass for him to sharpen. “I like to go up to the pub and talk to people, I always like to find the old people, they can remember so much and they’re so interesting. It’s like when you go in a library, all the new books with shiny covers, nothing about them; it’s the old one’s that’s interesting. Someone up in the village was telling me that Gypsy Lane up there is called that for the gypsies who used to live up there. One winter, a woman burned to death in her caravan. I never knew that.”
He went on to say he’d been talking to a young chap several evenings, all smartly dressed. “Then the other night this older chap came and was talking to me and said his son was dead; ‘You were talking to him last week’ he said to me. ‘What him?’ I said and he said ‘Yes’. He was only thirty eight, it was a heart attack, it frightens you – that was stress and pressure.”
He finds it so often when he goes back to places; he asks after someone he’s been talking to last time, and they’ve died. “It’s quite upsetting. I was up at Tickhill near Doncaster; I was talking to people trying to find out about the past, as I’d spent a lot of time there with my parents when I was young. I was talking to this old chap and asked if he knew of Alice Dale (she was my first girl friend really) and he said yes he knew her and I couldn’t believe him when he said she’d died when she was only 28. I still thought of her as a young girl, 14 or 15, she wore the loveliest frocks, all flowery, all the girls wore frocks then, not like they do now. I’d be coming back from the pictures on the bus and she was there with her friends and I think I must have looked at her and caught her eye, and she said to me (she was a lippy miss), Do you want my photograph? And I said, Yes, I live down at the caravans. ‘No chance’ she’d said or something like it as she sat there with her friends. Well I thought no more about it, but a few days later I came home and my Mum said to me, There’s some girl come and brought you her photo. Well, I was over the moon. Alice Dale her name, I still thought of her as a young girl, so when that chap said she’d died young, I couldn’t believe it. He never said whether she’d married anyone or not. But I went and bought twelve red roses and went up to the cemetery and searched and searched until I found her grave and I left those red roses on it.”
He said, “People don’t dress like that now, they don’t wear proper clothes, or what I thinks normal. Now the landlady at Skillington, she’s only about 35 but she still dresses lovely, the old fashioned way with flowery frocks. You know, I was outside Morrisons in Norwich one morning and I looked at all the men going in, all of them, they were wearing jeans and trainers, even the 70-year olds, they looked proper daft, I thought. I’ve never had a pair of jeans all my life, I’ve always worn proper trousers and always boots, never anything different”. He’s certainly a dapper dresser, with a blue striped shirt, red neckerchief, black trousers, black suede waistcoat, black hat and shiny brown boots, nothing scruffy or sloppy about him, quite unaffected and a true gentleman
We talked about the railway and he said “The last time I went on a train, it was an old steam train, it cost me 12 shillings from Doncaster to Manchester.” I said I remembered the fare from Nottingham to London being 37/6d. He said when he’d left Dunkirk in 1964 and travelled to Ireland his fare had been just £4. I don’t think he could believe me when I said the fare to London was over £100 now. “London, horrid place, I’ve only been there once and I don’t want to go there again. I’ve been in Birmingham, Liverpool and Manchester too, but I didn’t like London. Now back in the 1960s Nottingham was a nice city, but not now. A friend took me over to Manchester a few years ago and I couldn’t believe how it had changed. It was awful, the traffic and all the buildings.” Sitting there in the sunshine amid the summer hedgerows, with his finch singing brightly in the cage on the caravan door, the dust and noisy bustle of cities seemed quite unreal. This is what life is about, fresh air and sunshine.
He said ‘I was up at two this morning and it was so lovely I went and sat outside, yes the sky was full of stars. I’m always up at six any. Yes I’m always early to bed, by ten and by seven or eight in winter.’
I said I was heading for Aslockton, and he said “It’s not far, you just go up the road and off to your right to Whatton, it’s a lovely lane. I’m going to Whatton next, then to Scarrington where the horseshoes are and Car Colston, lovely village that isn’t it, and in a few weeks time over to Epperstone” In fact while I was there a lady called his mobile phone and asked him when he’d be over there, in a few weeks time he said. I asked where I should send his photos to, he said George Gaskin, c/o 1 Church Lane, Sewstern, Lincolnshire. He usually gives that address to leave him things as he always goes that way. He gets things sent to him from all over the place, even from Americans.
I headed off up the lane, with a new vigour coursing through me, my mind completely calm for the first time in weeks, Across the River Whipling and then through some woods, mature oaks, planes and beeches, with Private Keep Out signs repelling the urge to explore them. A lodge house with a twisty chimney stood at the corner where the lane to Whatton branched off. Swallows twittered in the sunshine. A delightful lane, a narrow strip of tarmac between wide grassy verges, a two-mile long canopy of mature trees past Whatton Manor which is a horse stud farm; fields of horses with Belvoir Castle in the distance. Everywhere fortified by electric gates and high fences and distant dogs barking. Glimpses of cornfields, blackened and battered by recent storms, frame by hedgerows. At the end of the lane, a traction engine on a trailer, a sharp turn left to cross the A52 with cars and coaches scorching along the tarmac, back into the peace of a summer afternoon once I got into Whatton. Village green and shady trees. Bramble by bus shelter laden with juice ripe berries. Down by the church, Sunbeam Street. A sundial on a grave stone, ‘I only show your sunny hours.’ The gate to the footpath locked and chained and a notice ‘ Cows with calves being born, keep your dog under control.’ The stile at the other end over grown by prickly hawthorn, nice view of church with pine trees and grange and pantiled barn by dried up fishpond. I began to think I’d never find the station even though Whatton church looks so close when you go by on the train; but I need have worried because the train was twenty minutes late. There was a game of cricket in the field by the station, with church beyond and mature trees: a perfect English summer afternoon scene.
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