Letters: In defence of a scout hut

In the mid 60s, I persuaded a small committee to try to buy the school room (as it was then), after the county council let us down from buying it at a knock-down price as had happened at Northallerton a few months earlier. Both Bill Rukin and myself lost a few nights' sleep, trying to make £2,000 out of the £96 we had at the time. I made a five-year plan on how to raise the cash. We did it in four years, thanks to the hard work and dedication of that small committee, I had to give up a good job so I could have more time to run things, taking a 25pc pay cut meant a reduced pension at 65, so I am still paying for it now.

Thirsk scouts started in 1908, but because they never had a home of their own were always closing down and starting up again when a room could be obtained. I know of five sites of before Picks Lane.

A lot of important people have come out of scouting - US presidents, UK prime ministers, all the astronauts who landed on the moon. At least one Sowerby scout was knighted for his work, a Thirsk scout is a lecturer at Durham university, others are head masters at schools around the country, one in the USA.

Don't knock the youth of today by knocking their HQ down. By the way it's not a hut, it has 15ft walls and a pantile roof, built to last for many years yet.

DAVID F BROWN

(former Thirsk scout leader)

Ingramgate,

Thirsk.

A road record?

Sir, - I know that many people are worried about the decline of the Market Place in Bedale and wonder why the town is no longer visited by shoppers.

Having a business which operates in Northallerton and Bedale, and travelling the road at least once a day for the last 20 years, I can identify one of the primary reasons.

In all of that time there seems to have been at least one set of traffic lights guarding the road between Aiskew and Bedale. Sometimes during the summer this multiplies into three sets of lights, making a 15-minute journey take up to an hour.

To the passing visitor it must seem amazing to see the patchwork patterns of tarmac outside Gill's garage, as they sit watching the traffic lights, sometimes with workmen in attendance, one day from Yorkshire Water, the next British Gas.

Several clients now joke every time they come to our sales, wondering whether this stretch of road qualifies for the Guinness Book of Records!

M W DARWIN

South Parade,

Northallerton.

I'm just a townie

Sir, - I stopped reading Countryman's Diary some time ago having read it from time to time when I first started taking the D&S Times.

But then Nicholas Rhea starting ranting on about all the things (and there were many) which irritate him most, all the things which encroach on his idyllic life out there in the countryside. And I began to have a quiet complex.

You see, I'm a townie (although I was born but half a mile from the nearest farm) and to add to my sins, I enjoy a walk in the countryside. Worse, I have committed the most cardinal sin of all. I own a touring caravan.

Mr Rhea, of course, is entitled to his opinions, I just wish he would stick to the original script when writing his weekly column. What finally killed my interest in Countryman's Diary, was when I began to get a mental picture of Oscar Blaketon when reading the "diary", much in the same way that Reggie Perrin did in The Fall and Rise of Reggie Perrin, whenever his mother in law was mentioned.

Now, what's the connection ? Surely it can't be that our weekly columnist had written a goodly portion of himself into his Heartbeat character?

Actually, I was drawn to his article (D&S Jan 5) mainly because it contained a photograph of a caravan site at Rosedale Abbey. So you don't know why we caravanners don't like parking our caravans under trees Oscar (sorry Nicholas)? Well it's perfectly understandable. You being a simple countryman, you were not to know the wily ways of us townies.

M MIDDLETON

Willow Road,

Darlington.