Shining armour: Sir Nigel
Last Saturday’s blog reported an enjoyable afternoon at Birtley Town, where the East Coast main line runs immediately outside the ground. On that occasion, regrettably, not a whiff of steam.
It reminded Keith Nicholson of the afternoon a few years back when he umpired a cricket match between Seaham Harbour II and Whitburn II, aware that a special visitor was expected on the tracks beyond the eastern boundary.
“At the toss I informed the captains that, while the cricket was important, it was not as important as a class A4 steam lcomotive and that the game would be stopped briefly” Keith recalls.
Exactly upon its hour, the wonderfully imperious Sir Nigel Gresley approached from the south. “Dead ball was called and self and all the players on the field turned to watch. Of course we all waved and most of the people on the train waved back.”
Splendid – but we have further, thrilling, news. Birtley host Seaham Red Star in the Ebac Northern League first division on Saturday April 6. On that very afternoon, at 15 46 precisely, Sir Nigel is scheduled to steam southwards from Newcastle Central, passing Birtley about five minutes later.
If that doesn’t double the crowd, if that doesn’t attract every football photographer in the land, then I’ll eat hay with a cuddy.
*Gresley Rovers are a football team in the south Derbyshire village of Church Gresley, now pretty much part of Swadlincote and that neck of the world where all are addressed as “Duck” or, on special occasions, “Ducky.”
When Spennymoor Town visited in the FA Vase, December 2009, the day was only fit for duckies.
The place name, alas, owes nothing to Sir Nigel. Rather it’s believed to be a corruption of the old English meaning gravelly woodland clearing, or some such.
The Rovers had a mascot ingeniously named Elvis Gresley. The Moors, then Northern League members, had a mascot called Tigger, but someone had left him at home on top of a wardrobe.
Thus deprived of their talisman, our boys surpisingly lost 1-0.
*Gresley Drive is part of a newish and rather attractive housing development in Shildon, where the sledging field used to be and across the tracks from Locomotion, the National Railway Museum.
The other roads are similarly named after great railway engineers of the steam age, many of whom also had steam engines named in their honour.
There’s Sturrock Court and there’s Ivatt Walk, Wordsell Way and Peppercorn Close – remembering A H Peppercorn and nothing to do with cheap rent.
But what of the several street signs which indicate Sterling Way? Either they’re quids in (which, of course, is wholly possible) or they mean Sir Patrick Stirling (1820-95), a Scot who became locomotive superintendent of the Great Northern Railway and whose engines broke several speed records.
It may be that none from Persimmon Homes is a blog reader. Someone should tell them, nonetheless. It would be terrible if, in the Cradle of the Railways, Sir Patrick were best remembered as a spelling mistake.
*We dander round that way this morning, then over the fields past the new glamping/fishing/marrying development – “a little piece of paradise” it says, though that could be said of all of Shildon – and past Middridge Grange, garrison in the Civil War for Byerley’s Bulldogs.
Back in town, there’s chance at last to raise a glass of the award winning Chocolate Honeycomb Stout (5.2 abv) at the George Samuel Brewery tap, said by the lady of this house to have the aroma and taste of a Crunchie bar and thus, for her sweet tooth, perfect.
Grass Routes 