Deborah Goodall - My Yorkshire childhood

Today I am working just south of Richmond, on the edge of North Yorkshire. Driving here I felt privileged to be able to identify the Tabular Hills to the east and the edge of the beautiful Yorkshire Dales to the west. My knowledge of Yorkshire, its varied landscapes, beauty spots, stately homes, ruined abbeys and castles is far beyond my years.

As the daughter of a dairy farmer my childhood didn’t feature holidays, in fact we rarely left the county, except to visit my dad’s cousin who had ‘defected’ over the border to Lancashire. Holidays simply weren’t on the agenda. Milking cows is tying. We were lucky though – my sister and I – as my dad farmed with his brother, which meant that once a fortnight my dad wouldn’t work on a Sunday.

Sundays, whatever the time of year, were about picnics. My mum would pack a huge cool-box full of sandwiches and quiche, plus my mum’s homemade cakes and treats, and flasks of tea. All to be consumed after visiting some part of Yorkshire: a hidden gem of a waterfall such as Janet’s Foss, a walk up Roseberry Topping, a visit to Fountain’s Abbey and Studley Royal, a walk round the Bar Walls in York or seemingly one of dad’s favourites, a visit to Thruscross Reservoir. Or, one year, a walk ‘in’ the reservoir; there’d been so little rain you could see the remains of the flooded West End village.

We didn’t just stay in North Yorkshire, no, there was East Yorkshire to explore particularly in summer when we would pack up and take journeys to the coast, Bridlington, Flamborough Head and Fraisthorpe beach, via the Wolds where we’d partake in some combine watching.

West Yorkshire, my dad’s home county, brought delight in winter, when we were taken to see the Christmas lights in Leeds or enjoy one of the industrial museums of the area: the Piece Hall in Halifax or the National Museum of Film and Photography in Bradford. We did once, or maybe twice, cross the Humber Bridge, not to go to Lincolnshire, but because it was a marvel of structural engineering.

My childhood memories are filled with great Yorkshire days out with my mum, dad and sister. Excluding visits to the brave relations who lived in Lancashire, I can only really remember leaving the county once that was to go to Carlisle with my dad and his brother to look at a Forage harvester. Of course we didn’t look round the area, just at the farm machinery.

These days I still enjoy Yorkshire mainly from my mountain bike; its landscapes, the diversity of the coastlines and the moors, the Howardian Hills and the Dales. I still occasionally visit a reservoir although am more likely to be running around it than walking. Yorkshire is so varied that I sometimes fail to understand the appeal of foreign travel. Let’s be honest there’s no place on earth like Yorkshire.

These days I am the owner of Aer8 Marketing and am based on the edge of the Howardian Hills in North Yorkshire.

The print version of this article appeared in the February 2012  issue of Yorkshire Life 

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