Week in the Life of Pateley Bridge column with Keith Tordoff

Read all about it! Well, if you could get hold of a newspaper because they were all sold out in Pateley Bridge. More of that later. On Tuesday, March 7 in the evening myself and my wife Gloria went along to the Crown Hotel in Harrogate.
Taking part in live interviews with BBC Radio York following the good news about Pateley Bridge.Taking part in live interviews with BBC Radio York following the good news about Pateley Bridge.
Taking part in live interviews with BBC Radio York following the good news about Pateley Bridge.

We had been invited to give a talk to the Harrogate Brigantes Rotary Club with charities being the beneficiaries. Prior to the talk we had an enjoyable meal courtesy kindly of the Rotarians where I was sitting with their President Mike. I asked Mike what business he had. Mike I thought replied “I am in antiques”. There then followed talk about porcelain, paintings, collectables, and even my beloved Austin J40 pedal car which has pride of place in my living room.

Just before Mike introduced us, I said to him “where is your antique shop?” He replied “I don’t have one, I am in IT”. Oops!

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Should have gone to… (apparently they also do hearing aids!). We were introduced to the assembled Rotarians and gave our talk which seemed to be very well received.

Thank you to the Harrogate Rotarians for a most agreeable and enjoyable evening.

Myself and Kirsty went back to school (it was Kirsty’s old school) on Thursday morning at the kind invitation of St Cuthbert’s head teacher Lynette Brammah to talk to the children at their assembly. We were asking the children to design a logo for the Pateley In Bloom bid this year with the offer of prizes for the best including a treasure chest of sweets and four runners-up vouchers to spend on sweets. On hearing the prizes on offer, the children’s ears seemed to prick up and when asked later if they had any questions, the first one asked was “what was the first prize?”.

The children sang beautifully at the end of the assembly and they are truly a credit to their parents, the head and her staff.

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On Friday morning, myself, Kirsty, Alison Reilly from Dacres with her daughter Millie and her friend Gracie Atkinson, plus local resident Jenny Coleman, conducted live radio interviews with BBC Radio York as the news had come out that the Sunday Times would be featuring Pateley Bridge in its survey of the best places to live in the UK.

Come Sunday morning, and very early on, all copies of the Sunday Times had been sold out around Pateley Bridge, as I mentioned at the beginning of this piece.

Proud as punch Pateley was, for the first time in the five years that the Sunday Times have been running an annual feature on the best places to live in the UK, listed on it.

While not this year winning the best place to live in the North at least we were there, and if we work hard, next year there is no reason we cannot be the winners!

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Following on from being awarded the title best High Street in the village category of the Great British High Street Awards in December last year, the future looks bright for Pateley Bridge.

Ever complained about being stuck behind a tractor? Well if you were on the road to Pateley Bridge on Sunday, you could have been stuck behind 167 of them!

The tractors had set off from Knaresborough on a memorial run for Mike Spink a young man who was killed while in New Zealand, and his fellow Young Farmers came up with the idea of the tractor run to raise money in his memory.

A fantastic spectacle and a fitting tribute raised more than £7,000 for the Yorkshire Air Ambulance. We featured this on the Nidderdale Facebook page and so far there have been nearly 20,000 viewings.

So there you go – never moan if you get stuck behind a tractor again!