These days, when I’m on my early stroll at 5.30am, I can definitely tell that the year is turning and changing; same when I’m on my evening stroll.
The nights are drawing in, closing their curtains earlier, opening their curtains earlier. I know that soon, when I’m early strolling, it will feel like I’m wandering through the middle of the night.
Thinking about this early morning and late evening darkness brought to mind a stroll that I did with some pals from Darfield Church’s youth group, accompanied by the curate of the parish, one night in late summer in the early 1970s.
We decided, for reasons best known to ourselves, that it would be exciting to do a midnight walk in late summer, setting off from Darfield Church at the stroke of midnight as one day slid into the next and arriving home, tired but elated, at around the same time the milkmen were passing on their floats.
I guess the reasons were to do with a sense of adventure, an idea of the potential scariness of walking through the night, the excitement of seeing the dawn break, and the possibility that we were doing something out of the ordinary.
And, let’s face it, there’s always something exciting about staying up all night!
So we gathered in the car park in front of the church at about 11.40pm. We all had backpacks with too many sandwiches and far too many tins of pop. It felt really late. Everywhere was closed, even the Cross Keys, and it was really dark.
A light was on in a house, and then it went off. The streetlights seemed feeble and pathetic, a bit like a not-very-good streetlight tribute band. The sky seemed endless. In those days there were no security lights to leap into action as you walked by.
The weather was kind to us; I remember it was warm and I remember that I took off the jumper I’d put on and stuffed into my backpack which, incidentally, in those far off days I would have called a rucksack.
One thing I remember about the walk is how quiet it was. There were hardly any cars or lorries and no planes or helicopters crossing the sky. When a car passed us as we wandered along the pavement it was an event and we waved.
We began by walking down Darfield’s churchyard, scaring ourselves silly with ghost stories and ghoulish noises. One of our party slipped on the steps to much hilarity. We walked together, about seven or eight of us as I recall, down the road, turning left down Fitzwilliam Road to go to Great Houghton.
As we walked up towards Houghton past Middlecliffe the moon came out; in my memory, and it may be a false memory, it was a full moon and it felt at the time that this was all the security light we needed.
I said earlier that there wasn’t much light but as we walked through Middlecliffe you could see the lights of Houghton Main and hear the sound of coal trains rattling along the line that was on the site of the road that goes past ASOS into Grimethorpe these days.
It’s hard to bring to mind so many years afterwards, but at night the pits were an amazing sound and light show dominating the landscape.
Again, this could be false memory but I seem to recall a police car passing and the coppers slowing down but then carrying on past us when the curate gave them a cheery wave.
We walked through Great Houghton towards the woods that I know as Houghton Woods but which have other local names too. A man tottered down the street towards us; he looked like he’d (as they say) had a good night.
‘GERROOOAM!’ he said in a voice as loud as a combine harvester. ‘GERRROOAM AND GERRON YER OWN PART!’
We ignored him and carried on, and I’m sure that, later on when he was slumbering in his bed, we’d feature in his dreams. Our curate wasn’t from Yorkshire and couldn’t understand what the man was on about, which is probably just as well.
We ate our sarnies and pork pies in Houghton Woods as nameless creatures scuttled around. We wandered home as light began to break and the dawn was spectacular. We talked about it for ages and the fact that I’m still thinking about it now shows just how good it was.
