Walking on the Moors and another childhood memory floods back in. Walking above the wonderfully named village, Chop Gate. In the distance the huge Bilsdale Transmitter. Before Satellite and Cable, that mast sent out the TV signal across North Yorkshire and Teesside and when I was a kid, to our little black and white family TV. Every Lightning strike here (and there was many) and we lost our 3 TV channels (Hawklad thinks I’m joking when I say only THREE channels). It was radio or nowt for days, sometimes weeks,until some poor soul, climbed this monolith and fixed it. It’s over 300 metres to the top. No internet back then to keep you constantly informed of service restoration, Dad just would keep the TV on, static relentlessly flickering across the screen, waiting patiently. I remember Dad setting off to the Working Men’s Club and leaving me on TV watch, with instructions to come and fetch him if it came back on. He didn’t want to miss the Horse Racing and Wrestling. I wanted it back on as well, they scrolled the latest football scores across the bottom of the screen while the likes of Big Daddy and Giant Haystacks lumbered across the ring. I lived with the faint hope that my so called football team would manage to actually win a match. Bilsdale got hit by lightning more times than that happened…..

Chop Gate, pronounced here as, ‘Chop Yat’ is a proper Moors Village. If we had been a day later, Hawklad could have seen his first Brass Band concert in the Village Hall.

A few minutes steep climb and you are in the wilderness.

We walked for 3 hours and only encountered sheep. Even walking through the village, we never saw another soul. It’s wonderful that we still have places like this in our crazy, mad world.

We so need places like this. Trump Free Zones……Quiet, Peaceful, Unspoiled.

43 thoughts on “Strikes”

  1. I remember those days. Our reception problem was different. On our second hand TV very like yours, acquired when I was 15, someone had to stand in the right position holding a coat hanger to get a picture

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  5. Three channels? I grew up with two. My great aunt had a TV set that only got ITV – she didn’t have to pay a licence but she had to walk down the hill to my grandmother if she really wanted to watch BBC. 🙂
    Lovely pictures of the Moors, and good point about Trump Free Zones.

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  8. I love these stories and scenery, Gary. We need these wide open spaces and moments – literally and figuratively – in our lives to get through the madness in the larger world that surrounds us.

    Just don’t say the word “oil,” and you’ll be ok from the crazy Cheetos man.

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  10. Yes! Terrible traffic disruption here in Ireland. I’m trying not to use heating oil by going on long nature walks. I’m just back from one and it was stormy… but beautiful. There’s a lovely glen behind us with a little waterfall… and a forest on the hillside. Thanks for sharing your experiences too.

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  12. Ahhhh… the good ole’ days. We were the first household in our street to get a TV, and were the most popular for the same reason. Kids from all over would come to watch – some I knew, some I didn’t. But, all were welcome! Life truly was simple…
    Love your images, Gary, and your reminder to stay ‘cool’.

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  13. The scenery is stunning, and your story of the TV and 300m tower climb to restore it is so cosy and nostalgic. Those sound like simpler times, don’t they, even though today’s high technology times are marketed as truly simpler. It’s simpler to only have three channels, to only look forward to one small thing, rather than be overwhelmed by choice, most of it cheap and substance-less. And it’s truly truly wonderful indeed you still have beautiful empty SOULFUL places like that to tramp about in for hours without encountering a single soul…. what a lovely post. Truly made me sit back and relish my tea today. Simple things, simple things, in this chaos.

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