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 sky was 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 Grantham Canal and past the
Country Park, 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 Grantham Canal again at Fosse Bridge locks, that marvellous point of the
canal where you see your first glimpse of Belvoir Castle. Though only about nine miles
away, it will be another 18 or so canal miles before Belvoir Castle 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 Fosse Bridge and Woolsthorpe-byBelvoir. 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 Way abandoned, 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
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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 Belvoir Castle 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,
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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
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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
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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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