Constable among the Heather

by Nicholas Rhea

  But on that spring morning in the mid-1960s Alf had no thoughts of meeting other vehicles. He had traversed these moors for years without seeing another motor along his route. The regular passage of horse-drawn vehicles and coaches had ended, and major, well-surfaced roads had been built through the dales. They coped with visitors, buses and routine traffic.

  And so year after year Alf had driven to his peat bog at dawn to cut the required number of sods, and year after year he had driven home contented and happy with his unpressurized life. There were no cars, no traffic lights, no roundabouts, no signposts, no bollards and no houses – there was nothing but a rough track for use by the likes of Alf Partridge.

  But one morning another car dared to use the primitive road. At one point the track dips down a gentle slope where it crosses a moorland beck before rising at the other side. Midway down the first slope, in the direction in which Alf was driving that morning, a minor track enters the highway from the right. It was originally a drovers’ road and, as cars were becoming more numerous, some daring drivers occasionally made use of it to cross the moors from the northernmost parts of Eskdale. It was proving to be a useful short-cut. At its junction with Alf’s road, however, it was not readily visible. It emerged from between high banks of heather; indeed, a stranger would not even realize there was a junction until arriving, for there was no road sign to announce the fact.

  As Alf had chugged along his regular route, so a young man in a bright yellow Austin Healey Sprite sports car was hurtling along the drovers’ road. In his low-slung car, he was concealed by the high banks of heather and did not see Alf, and Alf did not see him. As Alf approached the junction, so the yellow flash bolted across his route, apparently from nowhere. From his right, it passed directly into Alf’s path.

  Alf reacted with remarkable speed. He swung his steering wheel savagely to the left, as a result of which he found himself bouncing across the open moorland with his trailer of tools clanking behind. The incident so unnerved him that, for the briefest of moments, he forgot to brake, and so his lovely car cruised for some distance across the smooth grassy patch between the heather patches, then came to an ignominious halt in a bog of sphagnum moss. The engine stalled.

  It pitched Alf forward, and within a very few moments the car began to sink. Alf was still inside, but not injured. He was able to observe the yellow sports car disappearing up the slope opposite but had not the time to take its registration number. He was alone to his fate as his car sank slowly into the mire, and so he decided to abandon his precious vehicle. Happily, the bog was not too deep, so when Alf stepped out, he found himself on a firm base, albeit up to the thighs in peat-coloured water and thick yellow mud as his precious Humber sank at his side. It halted when the mire was half-way up its doors.

  The problem was what to do next.

  Unknown to Alf, the young man in the yellow sports car had halted in Rannockdale to ring the police. Without giving his name, he said he’d seen a car run off the road at Bluestone Beck. The call was received at Eltering police station, and a map revealed that the location was literally yards inside our patch.

  I was in Sergeant Blaketon’s car at the time. With him acting as driver, we were undertaking an early morning inspection of quarries which had explosives stores and were using the occasion to check the accuracy of our Explosives Register. Then we were diverted to Bluestone Beck.

  As we drove down the slope towards Alf’s bogged-down car, I recognized him. I said, ‘Good Lord, it’s Alf!’

  ‘Do you know the driver, Rhea?’ asked Sergeant Blaketon.

  ‘Yes, he’s been a family friend for years,’ I said, and then explained my childhood knowledge of Alf, reinforcing the fact that he had never had an accident or suffered damage to his precious cars.

  ‘In that case, Rhea,’ Sergeant Blaketon said formally, ‘I had better deal with this accident. If there is a question of prosecuting him for careless driving or something more serious, we can’t have a family friend involved in the legal processes.’

  ‘I’d do a fair job on the report, Sergeant.’

  ‘I will deal with it, Rhea,’ he said with an air of finality.

  As we halted near the scene, I could see Alf furiously digging with his peat-cutting spade. He was throwing masses of muck around as he tried to find some solid ground for his rear wheels – in this mess, they only spun uselessly as he tried to force his car out of the bog. And he was in a terrible state. He was smothered in grime; his clothes, hair and face were dripping with wet sphagnum moss.

  It was evident that he did not recognize me when our police car halted a few yards away. In his present highly charged condition, he might not have recognized his own mother, but he had not seen me for years and had no idea I was concealed within that uniform. Sergeant Blaketon strode across the sound piece of moorland to speak to him, as I waited with the car. And I must admit I was amazed at Alf’s angry and belligerent response.

  ‘There’s no need for you buggers to come here snooping,’ were his first words. ‘I can get myself out of this … I don’t need you lot laughing at me …’

  ‘We received a report of an accident …’ began Oscar Blaketon.

  ‘Accident? What accident? There’s been no accident. I haven’t hit anybody. There’s been no crash. No injuries. I was forced off the road, that’s what. If I hadn’t run down here, I’d have hit him … I avoided an accident … the silly bugger … look at this … what a bloody mess … I want none of this in the bloody papers and you can keep me out of court if that’s what’s in your mind … so how am I going to get out of here, eh? Just you answer me that!’

  ‘There has been an accident,’ chanted Blaketon, adopting a rather formal attitude. ‘If, owing to the presence of a motor vehicle on a road, an accident occurs whereby damage is caused to a motor vehicle other than that vehicle, then so far as the law is concerned, it is an accident.

  ‘It conforms to the definition in the Road Traffic Act,’ Blaketon went on. ‘If another car’s driver forced you off the road, then he caused the accident – and the fact that you are sitting up to your eyebrows in plother means there has been an accident, an untoward incident, an unwanted event.’

  ‘Then get after that yellow car and book him for not stopping, Sergeant,’ bellowed Alf. ‘And what about towing me out of here?’

  ‘You’ll need a breakdown truck for that.’

  ‘Well, I can’t do much about getting one from here, can I? Can’t you blokes radio somebody? Get my mate, Eddie Brookes, Milthorpe 253. He’ll come for me. And what about that other idiot, eh? Why aren’t you chasing him and his yellow peril? Running folks off the road like this …’

  ‘Is there any damage?’ shouted Blaketon.

  ‘How should I know?’ snapped Alf. ‘Look at it! How can I say what harm’s done under all this muck? God knows what my underside’s hit under this moss … I could have knocked the sump off, broken an axle, but I’m stuck solid, I am …’

  As Alf chuntered and cursed, Blaketon came across to me and sat in the car. He was in a surprisingly gentle mood, and I must admit I was not accustomed to seeing him like this.

  ‘Rhea,’ he said, ‘you know this character. He sounds a bit irate to me. Now, the way I see it is that there might be a dangerous driving case against the chap in the sports car, if we can find him.’

  ‘And if we can prove it,’ I chipped in. ‘It’s Alf’s word against his; Alf might have been half asleep. I know he’s an old friend of my parents, but, well, he is getting on a bit.’

  ‘True, very true. But if this Alf’s car is not damaged, it is doubtful if there is a reportable accident, eh? In other words, we are not wanted here. We are not duty-bound to deal with this, unless he complains about the other driver.’

  ‘I’d like to get him out of his mess,’ I said.

  ‘Then radio them at Eltering and ask them to call his friend, Rhea.’

  As Blaketon sat at my side, oddly reluctant to exercise his awesome authority over poor o
ld Alf, I did this small favour. Our Eltering office contacted Eddie Brookes with the story, and he said he’d come immediately with his breakdown truck to tow Alf from the bog.

  ‘I think, under the circumstances, we should depart, Rhea,’ said Blaketon. ‘I agree this is one driver’s word against another, and if this man is a friend of yours, he might talk himself into a careless driving charge if I quiz him too much. You must admit he’s a bit irate, he’s not thinking straight, he might say too much and drop himself further into the mire.’ And he glanced at the bog as he chuckled at his own joke.

  ‘He has good reason,’ I said.

  ‘He had no reason to talk to me like that,’ said Blaketon. ‘I’m only doing my duty. I’m not responsible for his accident.’

  ‘Sergeant,’ I said, ‘this is his first accident in more than fifty years of driving. I’m not surprised he’s a bit angry, especially as it’s not his fault. I’m sure you would be the same. I know you have a clean driving record …’

  ‘Then let’s leave him,’ he said quickly. ‘If I stay until the breakdown truck arrives, Rhea, I might see the damage on his car, and I might make it an official traffic accident, which means he could be the subject of a report for alleged careless driving.’

  ‘Thanks, Sergeant,’ I said. ‘Can I have a word with him before we leave?’

  ‘Right ho,’ he said, not offering to accompany me. This was not the normal Blaketon, I realized, and I could not understand why he was so gentle with Alf.

  I wandered over to Alf, who, upon seeing my approach, launched into a tirade of abuse against everyone, especially drivers of yellow sports cars. But when I removed my cap, he recognized me.

  ‘God! It’s young Nick!’

  ‘Hello, Mr Partridge.’ I used the name I’d called him in my youth. ‘You’ve got yourself into a bit of pickle, eh?’

  That set him off again, but I calmed him down by saying we were leaving, and explained the reasons, adding that Eddie’s truck was on his way.

  ‘This’ll ruin my record, Nick,’ said poor old Alf. ‘All these years without a scratch and now this …’

  ‘It won’t ruin it,’ I said. ‘There’ll be no official entry in our files, especially if you don’t make a formal complaint about that yellow car.’

  ‘But my car’ll be ruined. Look at it, up to the doorposts in muck and plother …’

  But we left it at that. He decided not to prosecute the yellow peril. If he had made a formal complaint, it would have been difficult, if not impossible, to prove the case, and Alf would have been called as a witness. That alone would have destroyed his own long record. I felt we had achieved a diplomatic result.

  As I drove Blaketon back to the office, I suddenly realized why he had been such a wonderful help to poor old Alf. A few months earlier, during the snowfalls of that winter, there’d been a rumour about Sergeant Blaketon’s driving into a ploughed field somewhere in these dales. He’d been off duty at the time, but it had required a farmer and his tractor to drag him out; no official report had been made and there’d been no damage to his car. We had heard through gossip, but Blaketon himself had never said a word about it. I wondered if Alf or Eddie had been involved in that. Obviously Alf didn’t remember it, but it did help me to understand why Blaketon was sympathetic to poor old Alf’s predicament.

  Several months later I saw Alf in Eltering. He was driving the same car, and it looked immaculate.

  ‘Hello, Mr Partridge,’ I greeted him, then added, ‘The car looks great!’

  ‘There wasn’t a mark on it,’ he said. ‘It was mucky and wet, but there wasn’t a scratch. That sphagnum made a soft landing for it.’

  ‘So your record’s clean, eh?’

  ‘Aye,’ he said. ‘Thanks to that sergeant of yours.’

  Another harrowing tale involved a serious accident to a caravan unit. A couple from Norfolk, where real hills are a rarity, came to the North York Moors for a caravanning holiday. They decided to tour an area where there are numerous hills of 1-in-3 gradient (33 per cent) and where anything up to a gradient 1-in-10 (10 per cent) rarely warrants a ‘Steep Hill’ warning notice. For the local people, these gradients present no problem; for the tourist, they can be terrifying, and most certainly they do sift the good drivers from the bad or hopeless.

  We call these hills ‘banks’. There is the White Horse Bank near Kilburn whose gradient was not, in my time at Aidensfield, mentioned, in case no one believed it. There’s the fascinating, winding Chimney Bank at Rosedale, which even the locals admit is ‘brant’. That means ‘steep’ in the dialect of the region, i.e. about l-in-3 (33 per cent). There are many others, especially in Eskdale, but one which causes a certain amount of angst among dithering drivers is Sutton Bank near Thirsk. It is not particularly steep, but it is a mile long with three gradients, the first being l-in-4, the second l-in-5 and the final one l-in-4.

  Until recently, tourists would examine their maps to see that this A-class road led to Scarborough from the Al and would head towards it. Even if the tourist maps do include a ‘Steep Hill’ symbol at these locations, few of these dreamy visitors realize what it means, and so, during a typical English summer, these banks are often blocked by motorists for whom the normal occasions for selection of first gear are as common as their birth or funeral. In the case of Sutton Bank, it was frequently blocked by little men in Morris Minors who tried to tow caravans to the summit. The failure rate was high, even when the towing car was a powerful one such as a Volvo or a Mercedes, and a local farmer with a powerful tractor made a fortune from towing such incompetents to safety on the plateau above. Happily, caravans are now banned from this hill – but the hills are not to blame; it is the drivers who are the problem. The local people have no trouble with the hill – even our ancient lady drivers can cope.

  Unfortunately for Mr John Plumpton, he was one of those hapless drivers. Utterly hopeless, he braked on every corner, even on level roads; he could not reverse into a parking space and had never previously towed a caravan. His wife, Sally, wasn’t much help either, because she couldn’t drive at all and was nervous at anything faster than 25 mph. For a man of his calibre to venture into our hilly moors and dales with a heavy load forever on his tail was an act of sheer stupidity. It is like climbing Everest in plimsolls.

  It is times like these when police officers ponder upon their role in society, for so often we spend time clearing up the mess left by the nation’s hopeless and incompetents. In this case, John Plumpton’s lack of skill almost had fatal consequences.

  For reasons which are not clear, he decided to take his caravan down Sorrel Bank, which descends from the moors into Maddleskirk. Almost a mile long, it is a narrow, twisting bank with gradients of around l-in-4 (25 per cent), which is not particularly steep for this area. At the foot, the bank emerges onto a well-used road which leads into the village via the floor of the dale. The latter is not a classified road, so at that time there were no junction markings, and in fact there was no ‘Steep Hill’ sign on Sorrel Bank. The road is very narrow, being only the width of one vehicle, and the approach along the top skirts a pine forest as it affords superb views across the Vale of York. When it reaches Sorrel Brow Farm, the road suddenly dips as it begins its rapid descent towards the western end of Maddleskirk.

  John and Sally Plumpton sailed majestically into this dip, and before John realized what was happening, his unit was gathering speed. Very quickly, the combined weight of car and caravan urged the wheels to turn at an ever-increasing pace. With no places to run off the road, it was like descending one of those fairground chutes, each corner bending so sharply and dropping ever downwards that the road beyond was out of sight. I don’t think John actually steered his car down that hill. I think the camber of the road and the high verges guided the front wheels along the road surface without any effort by him. In fact, I don’t think John had any control at all; when I interviewed him some time later, he could not remember even having changed to a lower gear.

  In sim
ple terms, he panicked. As the car and its caravan bolted down Sorrel Bank, he simply let it run free, and it knew where to go. In his panic, he either missed his brake pedal or omitted to use it; he utterly failed to make use of his gears for additional control, and it was a classic case of driving at its very worst. Men of this calibre ought to be severely tested every few years – they are a liability to themselves and to others. The outcome of Plumpton’s panic was that this huge moving combination of run-away vehicles careered down that long, winding hill totally out of control. By the grace of God, nothing was travelling the other way. The road was empty at the time. Fortunately the road which formed the junction at the bottom was also empty, and so the car and caravan hurtled across but came to an ignominious end at that point.

  Opposite the exit from Sorrel Bank, the verge was high but wide, and there was a hedge containing a solid sycamore tree, behind which lay a field. That field also sloped steeply from the hedge and levelled out some yards below, at which point it produced a thick clump of hawthorn trees.

  John and Sally must have had a good view of this field as it rose to meet them, but as their car just missed the sycamore, the leading edge of the caravan hit it. This demolished the caravan; it disintegrated into a pile of matchwood as the car separated from it and continued down the field, rolling over several times until it came to rest among the hawthorns. The roof was flattened, the car was wrecked and the caravan lay in exploded pieces around the sycamore.

  A villager called the police and ambulance, and I arrived to find this mayhem. Of the caravan, very little remained, and the family’s belongings were scattered across the verge and the field, with several pairs of Sally’s knickers decorating the hedge, and John’s clean socks dangling from some elderberry trees. The couple were trapped in their upturned car, and we had to cut them free, both badly injured.