Photograph Quiz:
Photo no. 147:- Which is the former show jumper Harvey Smith? Which is the horse and what is the horse called?
Dear Blog,
I have no interest in horse racing, period. The Grand National last Saturday did attract my attention however. Why you ask? Blog, I am glad you asked that question. The trainer was pictured with her husband and the horse .. which is what caught my attention. And the pub featured in some papers also drew my interest. Let me explain to you Blog…...
Many years ago when I had just started running, my club at the time, Bingley Harriers, was asked to provide ‘marshals’ for a cross country event. I had just started running and knew nothing of the sport and assumed that cross country was what we did. We ran, they marshalled!!! But being wet, very wet, behind the ears I was happy to volunteer with a couple of other youths from the club … in fact there was only a couple of other youths in the club. We were a small club at that time in those days, the glory years were yet to come. We did not have many members, our strength in quality being the fact that we seemed to attract all the good runners from the local grammar schools around the small village of Bingley, Bradford Grammar, Salts, Keighley … So I turned up on this freezing afternoon at the allotted time on this farm on the top of Marley Hill which happened to look down on the cinder running track at Keighley; presumably it was a Sunday. I think I was the only one to use the track at the time, but more of that some other time Blog. The point is that I turned up to marshal at this cross country event and it turns out to be a HORSE cross country event. So what? Life is all about doing different things. I was stationed by nasty high sandstone wall with a fearsome drop on the opposite side to the one used by the horses on their approach the obstacle. My duties were unclear. Horse after horse refused and I didn’t blame them one little bit. In a change of circumstances, if they had been marshalling and I had been doing the cross country course, I would have refused at that wall, packed my kit and gone home. Many of the riders took a couple of half-hearted attempts then gave up, presumably acknowledging that the wall jump was too risky to endanger their expensive horses and risk injury to the animal and or themselves. Then along comes this big brute of an animal and the horse was pretty large as well! First trial ... refuses. Second attempt .. refuses. Then the horse gets a real whipping from the rider, but the third attempt is still unsuccessful. More whipping and the horse decides it is better to die honourably doing his duty for God and the Harvey rather than die in agony from the beating the rider was giving it. Now I knew nothing about horses then and I know nothing about horses now. So the treatment meated out to the poor animal might have been normal practice and to the untrained young eye, the beating might have appeared far, far worse than it actually was. Enquires later revealed that the rider was Harvey Smith. The Harvey Smtih but this was years before his notoriety. Years before his personalised number plate. Years before his medals. I was given to understand he was well known locally but not nationally. That was all to come later. The following Saturday, Bingley Harriers had a normal winter pack run over the country and the lead runners took us over the moors up behind the school we used for headquarters past the farm where Harvey Smith had his base. It looked different in set up from the other farms around even then. We went past Dick Hudsons pub and out onto the moorland.
Now that was the pub featured in the publicity blurb surrounding the Smiths, it was the one nearest their farm. It is called Dick Hudsons. And the significance for me was that there was an annual whit race walk from Bradford to there and then back to Bradford. Godiva were very successful at the event pre-war and immediately after WW11. I’ll dig out a photo or two for you Blog, if I can remember. Or you remind me if I forget. Coincidentally, the time before last when I was up in Keighley, the family went for a meal there. It was still a bit too much on the yuppish side for my taste. But then, each to his own! Next time I visit Gods Own County, I shall go for a long trudge up onto the moors around there for old time’s sake. The style in the wall behind the pub, goes out on to the open moorland, and if you follow the path for a mile or two, you come out at the top of Ilkley Moor buy gum. If you veer the run to the right, you can do a loop past the Cow and Calf rocks, swing down left towards the town of Ilkley then climb back up past the kids paddling pool, along the very rough stony bridle way to Keighley gate, where you have to option of running down the tarmac road to Keighley, or taking a left up to the Transmitter Masts before dropping back down to Dick Hudsons. The kiddies paddling pool you past as you start up the moorland climb was always the focal point of a family hike from our home in Ingrow. One very, very cold summer’s day, my parents allowed me and my sister to paddle in the freezing cold water. No one else had ventured out on that cold June day. My sister lasted a couple of strides but I was a man with a capital ‘M’. I was the only child in the water. THEN. I was the only child to slice the bottom of his right foot open on a piece of unseen glass in the water. I do claim credit for giving all these film makers and film directors the idea of the flowing blood in horror films, the scene of the blood in water used to heighten the tension before the shark ATTACKS. My cut was a very bad one. Very bad. We had to spend quids to catch a bus back home. And that was unheard of. And Blog, you will not believe me when I tell you that I still have the scar sixty years later, and more unbelievable, is the fact that the damn thing still plays me up. Must remember to get it seen to when I have time.
Colin
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