How Wilf forgave the RAF bombers (From Craven Herald)

How Wilf forgave the RAF bombers

9:26am Saturday 5th July 2008 in Dales Folk By John Sheard

This column has marvelled many times at the roundabout routes that many people follow before they fetch up here in Craven. They come, as might be expected, from Bradford in their droves and from London and the Home Counties in significant numbers.

But I have profiled a man whose father fought his way out of Poland as the Nazis invaded and ended up running a quarry in Ingleton and a lady, now a specialist nurse in Skipton, who came into this world in a military hospital in Benghazi, North Africa.

But, surely, there can only be one person working actively for the future of the Dales landscape and the prosperity of its scattered communities who was born in a German air raid shelter as his town was being bombed by the RAF.

To say that this was how Wilfried "Wilf" Fenten first saw the light of day in 1945 would be an unforgiveable inexactitude. His first glimpse of this planet was the dingy, smoke and fear-filled shelter deep underground as above him the earth trembled and his neighbourhood burned. It was just a few weeks before Adolf Hitler committed suicide and Nazi Germany finally surrendered.

It is a long journey from there to a seat on Horton-in-Ribblesdale Parish Council and a passion for the Dales and its key role as a centre of "responsible tourism". But Wilf, as he is known to everyone because no-one can spell his name correctly, tells it with sombre concentration - and a leavening touch of humour.

If his birth wasn't bad enough, his early years in bombed-out Germany were even worse. His soldier father had been captured at Stalingrad - some say the bitterest battle in human history - and it was years before they knew if he was dead or alive. He eventually came home a sick man.

Yet young Wilfried harboured no grudges. Not only did he forgive the RAF for his unwelcome welcome party, at school he developed a deep interest in England and finally came here as a youth on a cycling holiday. The bug bit and as a young man he found himself in London, working as a technical translator. There he married teacher Hilary, a great lover of the open air, and they had two sons who took to the great outdoors with relish. When the boys were old enough, they set out to walk the Pennine Way - and ended up in a B&B at Horton.

"That was it," says Wilf now, at the family home in a 17th century farmhouse in Selside, just a brisk walk from that seminal B&B. "Our youngest boy was old enough to go to secondary school and he didn't want to do it in London. And they had just invented the fax machine. It's amazing what that machine did for us, although it is now virtually redundant. It meant I could work here in the Dales and our son was able to go to Settle High School. It was a huge risk, of course, but we were hooked by Ribblesdale and have never regretted the move for a minute."

Now there are some people who say Dales folk are pretty suspicious of strangers - and in Selside they didn't come more exotic than Wilf. Yet the locals warmed to him immediately and he was voted on to the parish council - "That was one of the biggest honours of my life," he says with some emotion.

He must have been good at it, because, when all the parish councils in Craven were asked to choose someone to represent local interests on the Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority, Wilf was elected unopposed. And that in turn led to the next, and current, phase in this busy life.

Wilf and wife Hilary, now chairwoman of the Craven Branch of the Campaign to Protect Rural England, had for years been interested and active in landscape conservation. They knew how important tourism was to the local economy - but also understood the risk that mass tourism, particularly by car, could actually destroy the peace and quiet visitors come to enjoy.

So Wilf began to study what he calls "responsible tourism" - the key to which, he believes, is getting local businesses involved in the tourist trade to work closely with the national park authority to achieve both aims: conservation and viable business. "Perhaps, in the past, the two had been too far apart," he says. "There was some suspicion between the two, but now we are working together."

Because of his language skills, Wilf soon found himself being invited as a translator to seminars on national park and similar bodies throughout Europe. This became more and more time-consuming so, eventually, he turned professional and is now the UK managing director of Europarc Consulting, a pan-European group which advises national and regional governments on how to square the circle and make mass tourism good for the environment.

On the day I met him, he had just returned from a seminar in the Carpathian Mountains of Romania. The following day he was off to Holland, Selside's very own jet-set king whose experience and knowledge is of great benefit to us here in the Yorkshire Dales. All thanks to the fax machine...