DIARY - Greatwood School marks world book day - a week after the great snows

Daniel Czajka, from Czajka Care Group, which operates Beanlands Nursing Home in Cross Hills, chose to support the mental health charity following the devastating loss of the son of a colleague. Kilimanjaro is the highest mountain in Africa, standing at almost 5,895 metres above sea level.

“Young Minds helps to improve the mental well-being of children and young people.,” said Daniel.” A greater understanding of mental health at a younger age is essential, and this can only be achieved by creating awareness and helping to encourage young people to talk more openly. If we can do this, it will ultimately help to prevent so many tragedies, and also benefit society as a whole.”

Daniel reached the summit of the mountain at 7am, local time, having started out on the last stage of his climb at midnight. “With the travellers’ bug I picked up two days before the summit, it was definitely more of a challenge nursing my stomach along the way, but it was also the most rewarding thing I’ve ever done. During summiting night there was a huge snowstorm, which did make things a little trickier. In total the climb took six days from the start to the summit and back down.”

Not one to rest, Daniel is now in training to climb Mont Blanc in the summer, when he he hopes to raise more money for Young Minds.

Czajka’s managing director, Konrad Czajka, says: “We are all very proud of Daniel for raising a significant sum for Young Minds, which does such invaluable work supporting vulnerable young people. In the past he has taken part in various gruelling fitness events like tough mudder, to raise money for a whole host of charities including Cancer Research, Shipley Stroke Club and Alzheimer’s Society, and we will all be backing him again later this year with his charitable challenge climbing Mont Blanc.”

THE death – at the age of 88 – of Sir Roger Bannister, who was the first runner ever to beat the magical ‘four minute mile’ barrier has certainly evoked special memories for those people who are now in vintage years themselves, who still recall hearing the news in 1954 that the most iconic of all athletics time barriers had finally been broken.

Amongst those remembering that virtuoso feat was Skipton’s ‘Mr Sport’, Roger Ingham, who has since on more than one occasion had the privilege of meeting one of his boyhood heroes, namely, Sir Roger., so I am told.

However, the first occasion of the two Rogers meeting up turned out to be a somewhat unique if not bizarre happening, for later that same day in the same sports field, the Skipton man also met the next British athlete after Bannister to hold the coveted World mile record, namely Derek Ibbotson – yet the two great legends did not in fact manage to meet each other!

The occasion was in 1974 at Grasmere Sports where Ingham, soon after winning a race, was congratulated by Bannister, who was himself a guest of the president. Then later that same afternoon whilst milling through the crowds and trade stalls around the running circuit, the Skipton man was confronted by Ibbotson – already a pal – offering his own congratulations.

Roger Bannister’s world record three minutes 59.4 seconds was soon after beaten by Australia’s John Landy recording 3-58.00 before Yorkshireman, Ibbotson, in 1958 reclaimed the record for Great Britain with a time of 3-57.2.

As Bannister and Ibbotson at that juncture were two of only three British athletes to have held the world mile record who were still alive, Ingham commented that he thought that it would be grand for the pair of them to meet up. The Skipton man therefore guided Ibbotson to Grasmere Sport’s president’s enclosure only to find that Bannister had already ‘done a runner!’

DUE to the snowy weather, Greatwood School in Skipton was very likely one of many which was forced to cancel celebrations around World Book Day - that one day in the year when parents across the land dig deep to find the perfect costume to send their child to school. One parent of a child at the school, I’m told, reported that their child had been really disappointed when school was closed due to the weather, and World Book Day couldn’t go ahead. So, to make sure no-one missed out Greatwood re-scheduled the event for Friday, March 9 instead. The children came into school as a favourite character from a book. All the children enjoyed this and were very excited to show their friends their costume (pictured), talk about who they were and the book they were from. During the day they completed lots of fun, educational activities relating to the enjoyment of reading and Acting Headteacher Mrs Marshall visited all the classes to share a story with the children.

CURLEWS have been much on the mind of my walking colleague. She tells me she was recently walking through snow drifts, caused by the recent return of winter, when she noticed curlews - and a lot of them too. Curlews in Craven are of course, the first sign of spring - and are mentioned as such in the recently published Date With Mystery, the third in the Dales Detective series, written by Julia Chapman, who has set her books in fictional Bruncliffe, which is really Settle. 50 years ago, in March, 1968, the Craven Herald reported how ‘country lore’ had it that the birds put off their return to Craven, if there was any indication of late blizzards - so, seeing as they have already arrived, they can’t have been keeping a watchful eye on the Met Office warnings, like the rest of us. Whoever wrote the diary page back then comments that he or she had been walking across a far western fell and had seen parties of curlew flying in from the west. He or she reported that for the previous four decades, curlew had been nesting at lower altitudes, and it was then common for birds to rear families in meadows at river level.