Early Thursday morning 20th May 2010 Steve picked us up at gates of Teesside University in his people carrier. Unfortunately for Steve we soon dubbed him Wing Commander Biggles when it was realised that he’d somehow crunched the wing mirror the day before in a narrow digital Saltburn back alley while off to work with a group at Destinations.
To his credit, the good humoured Wing Commander had somehow digitally optimised the sun so that the day would be ideal for a group of digital learners to trail around Whitby taking photos of unsuspecting and often photo-shy buildings to add to the Digital Visits site!
King Edwards Square (Teesside Uni)
At a gallop we flew off to Saltburn (I’m sure we should have been on the road but Biggles knew best!) where, not-withstanding a return to the back alley where the wing commander knackered the wing mirror, we picked up a few digital learners, to take to Whitby.
It was here that the story of Biggles was related and became Steve’s new code name! For back in the first world war in nearby Marske by the Sea author W.E .Johns was – “appointed flying instructor at Marske-by-the-Sea in Cleveland. Aircraft were very unreliable in those days and he wrote off three planes in three days due to engine failure – crashing into the sea, then the sand, and then through a fellow officer’s back door. Later, he was caught in fog over the Tees, missed Hartlepool and narrowly escaped flying into a cliff. Shooting one’s own propeller off with the synchronised forward-mounted machine-gun was an accident, but it happened to Johns twice. The Commanding Officer at Marske was a Major Champion, known as ‘Gimlet’, a name used later by Johns for the hero of a series of stories. Johns served as a flying instructor until August 1918 when he transferred to the Western Front. He only performed six weeks of active duty as a bomber pilot before his De Havilland DH4 was shot down, his observer Second Lieutenant Alfred Edward Amey was killed and Johns was taken prisoner on 16 September 1918; he remained imprisoned until the end of the war.” (Wikipedia) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._E._Johns
Having picked up and manoeuvred the Biggles Mobile out of the digital alleyways of Saltburn by the salty-surfers sea, we headed for the real destination – Whitby. The Wing Commander was en route for a meeting in Whitby and planned to eject us at the railway station to take some digital photos, ensuring that his journey was truly a multi-tasking one.
Along the way, gliding over the moorland and North Yorkshire sea-cliffs, through Loftus, Boulby, Staithes, and Sandsend – past purple-heather sheep walks, Boulby Alum mines, where, scientists study Dark Matter and where (on top of the cliffs) it’s alleged that Beowulf was buried, Trevor and John discovered they had much in common on local historic front, with involvements with projects studying the history of the Ironstone / steel community at Skinningrove to a project that happened at Ryedale museum and pointing out things along the way. John and Trevor had never met but a rapport and contact had been established as a side-line to the Wing-commanders intent. Sue had been a creative writer in one of Trevor’s classes and so some discussion was had on that topic.
On arrival at Whitby Railway station, Wing Commander Biggles drove off to give of his considerable digital wisdom to a school establishing some kind of digital endeavour lost on us analogue human beings! The sun was dressed to the hilt in all the golden delight of the universe and Whitby was alive with camera-clad human traffic moving through the slow cobbled streets where bent-over banks begged for public donations and charity and steam-stamping buses picked up tourists for a trip around virtual Victoriana, and Popeyed sailors press-ganged open-wallet tourists to take a trip on their slow-boats to China! We followed the crowd along the docks, snapping the sails on the basking boats, capturing the atmosphere, the bridges over time – ancient and modern Whitby juxtaposed in a moving jigsaw puzzel of modern life, along the cobbled lane to the 99 steps, snapping the canny shops, Argument Alley, the ale house signs, shop windows, crowds queing for fish and chips, seagulls gliding in the Harry Potter alleys putting spells on the fish-food sea, out to the cliffs beneath the Abbey where John recalled a story of a wreck. Down by the rocks and round to the harbour with its Dalek like moorings and cigarette lighthouses, snapping the boats in their come and gofashion, talking of Cook and some of the myths, taking in some coffee next to Hippy Hippy Shake Fish and Chip shop where a soap bubble machine pumped soap bubbles that floated into our coffee and burst in our faces (we did think they might be speech bubbles floating out from the Biggles meeting), up the hill to the Whale bone arch looking down on some bikers while St Hilda floated aimlessly above Whitby Abbey and the strains of Caedmon were heard in the towers, mixed with hurdy gurdies and ship horns and the din of the human ants nest below.
Whitby Cliffs
Walking along the ice-cream parlour cliffs where the crocodile dinosaurs left their bones and the crazy-golf tourist town acts out its picture-postcard moments in the shifting sands of time. We crawled back down the winding hill where the winding hill people lived with their shipped shaped houses and shops that mixed the scents of incense and chips and the narrow paths and empty pew Chapels down to the station where Biggles would meet us in the sweat-stained carpark. Both John and Sue had taken some excellent shots and mine have yet to be uploaded.
We’d had a good walk with photos galore (many to come to this yet) with laughter and wide-ranging discussion from the annals of history and made our way out of Whitby along the sea-cliffs to Loftus, where we called in to library to meet the organisers of the East Cleveland Digital photographic group and
And now it was time to HURRY HOME back to our Teesside Blighty.
drove off to give of his considerable digital wisdom to a school establishing some kind of digital endeavour lost on us analogue human beings! The sun was dressed to the hilt in all the golden delight of the universe and Whitby was alive with camera-clad human traffic moving through the slow cobbled streets where bent-over banks begged for public donations and charity and steam-stamping buses picked up tourists for a trip around virtual Victoriana, and Popeyed sailors press-ganged open-wallet tourists to take a trip on their slow-boats to China! We followed the crowd along the docks, snapping the sails on the basking boats, capturing the atmosphere, the bridges over time – ancient and modern Whitby juxtaposed in a moving jigsaw puzzel of modern life, along the cobbled lane to the 99 steps, snapping the canny shops, Argument Alley, the ale house signs, shop windows, crowds queing for fish and chips, seagulls gliding in the Harry Potter alleys putting spells on the fish-food sea, out to the cliffs beneath the Abbey where John recalled a story of a wreck. Down by the rocks and round to the harbour with its Dalek like moorings and cigarette lighthouses, snapping the boats in their come and gofashion, talking of Cook and some of the myths, taking in some coffee next to Hippy Hippy Shake Fish and Chip shop where a soap bubble machine pumped soap bubbles that floated into our coffee and burst in our faces (we did think they might be speech bubbles floating out from the Biggles meeting), up the hill to the Whale bone arch looking down on some bikers while St Hilda floated aimlessly above Whitby Abbey and the strains of Caedmon were heard in the towers, mixed with hurdy gurdies and ship horns and the din of the human ants nest below.
