Stepping out of retirement to renew his relationship with the Craven Herald, former Dalesfolk writer John Sheard is back as a regular columnist. He’ll be bringing his take on local issues as well as interviewing various figures from around the area and a regular “Notes from Nature” piece.

HERE I go again. Back to the keyboard having once again having retired my retirement plans, lured back into print by the Herald’s all new, singing and dancing colour supplement. But why?

A year ago, several national newspapers suggested that Skipton and the Yorkshire Dales were the best places in England to retire to.

The Guardian chose this as its number one “idyll” – their word, not mine – for such things as health care, low crime, reasonable council tax and, of course, the sheer beauty of the Dales.

Now, however much it pains me to agree with The Guardian – it was a great paper when I first started scribbling, then the Manchester Guardian before it moved south – but on these points they were dead right.

But they were dead wrong on the main point: this is a lousy area to retire to because once you get here, you start working again.

My wife and I came here to semi-retire in 1987 and, within months found ourselves working harder than for years.

Two years ago, after half a century in the job, I “fully” retired. But my wife goes one better – she has “fully” retired twice and is still at her third job since we arrived.

But this still doesn’t answer the question: why? And the reason, I feel I can say as an unbiased offcumden, is the folk: they are friendly but tough minded, decisive but forgiving, suspicious but welcoming, shrewd but open-minded.

For a wrinkled old hack like me, who has spent his life talking to people for monetary gain, there is an adage that does not quite say it all: these are not folk who call a spade a shovel. They need a JCB.

I had spent almost 30 years talking to people who were “economical with the truth” – to use the phrase immortalised by Maggie’s top civil servant – or who downright lied.

The late Pat Phoenix, the legendary Elsie Tanner of Coronation Street, put her hand on her heart and denied rumours that she was about to get married to fellow actor Alan Browning.

She had sold the story exclusively to the (also late) News of the World, which was to pay for the wedding and the following luxurious honeymoon.

And then, of course, there were the politicians, to whom prevarication, obfuscation and sometimes downright mendacity are second nature.

And so we came to the Dales and started meeting folk who told the truth with such force that I sometimes found myself shaking my head as though I had been punched on the nose.

And what stories they told in my 200-odd Dalesfolk features on these pages.

Like the man who was happy to be buried alive as a Japanese prisoner of war because the trench he was digging collapsed when the Nagasaki A-bomb exploded, thus saving him from a horrible death by radiation poisoning.

Or how the late Fred Trueman took me bird watching in his garden – the same Fearsome Fred who, one Christmas, helped out the Gargrave florist by home delivering some of her holly wreaths because she was overwhelmed with orders.

And the very, very sad ones like the Wharfedale rugby-playing, Ermysted’s school master who was dying from motor neurone disease – but insisted on talking to me to raise public awareness of the disease and the need for more urgent research for a cure.

So why have I retired my retirement and come back to keyboard?

Combine human interest stories like this with a lifelong interest in the countryside and its wildlife, and the temptation to return was irresistible.

It’s good to be back.