That was the night that was!

Well here I am at quarter to twelve starting a blog entry that I had no plans to write earlier today.

A few months ago the owners of the land opposite had stacked up all the old timber debris, left after felling 3 years ago, into bonfires, apparently for burning.

We hadn’t been too pleased about this but had innocently assumed that they’d have to come and speak to us about it before doing anything as rash as lighting them.

How naive we must have seemed to the nice land owners, who picked a day when Kate was in Swanage to light the first fire.

I left the house that morning to head for work and found myself engulfed in smoke. I’d started driving to work, but had been so concerned by this that I’d turned back at Alston to ensure everything was under control. That morning I spoke to the fire service and eventually the land owners and was given enough reassurance that the house would still be there at the end of the day.

However I did make a complaint to the council and made it clear to the land management company involved that we were very unhappy that they had just lit the land without giving us any warning.

I followed that through with that land company so far that they sent a representative to meet us and reassure that in future they would give us advance warning of any future burning.

So it was with a little surprise that 2 days later I found myslf leavimg for work and seeing that smoke was drifting down the fell from a couple of bonfires that had just been lit. So much for being given advanced warning; it was apparent that their reasssurances had been empty promises.

Unfortunate really.

Had they given us warning, as promised, the other day, we might have thought it odd that smoke was drifting over the top of the fell tonight as we left to pick up a curry from Haydon Bridge.

However we just assumed that they’d continued burning without giving us any notice.

So as we drove back along the A69, we were quite surprised to see so much smoke apparently emanating from our fell.

As we got off the A69 and climbed to a higher position overlooking the whole area, we agreed that once we got home we’d ring the fire brigade to set our minds at rest.

Within a mile we realised that the fire brigade were already on site and more were heading that way.

However within 20 or so minutes, all the appliances on site were to be beating a hasty retreat as it became apparent that 50m up the fell, a metal gas main crossed the fell a little way below the surface. At that point all the flashing lights that were buzzing around the fellside and making the fire look like a smoke machine for the fire engine’s disco lights, started to hurtle back down the hill.

This story was later recounted to us by one of the police officers who had been on the fell at the time.

Apparently as he led the 3 fire engines down ( he was proud of the fact that whilst the firemen hqad known about the gas main first, he had got in front) several of the local gamekeepers were heading up the track to see what was going on, which led to a very brief impasse.

The police officer demanded to know what they thought they were doing to which they replied they wanted to check things out.

‘That’s fine,’ said the officer,’ just get out of our way first, there’s a gas main that’s about to blow up there.’

Considering this, apparently the way everyone reversed and 3 point turned was quite civilised. The run back down the hill resembled a world championship rally, though without the skill and finesse of the greatest drivers.

From this point the night went downhill; excuse the pun.

With the risk of the mains going bang, there was consideration that the village may need to be evacuated. The school at Haydon Bridge was opened in preparation and as many police vans as were available turned up to ferry people if necessary.

Interestingly, it became clear quite quickly that the gas main wasn’t too major a concern to the village, just a member of the parish council had popped along and declared that it was threat.

In fairness, it was a threat to the firemen who happened to be stood on top of the main, but for the rest of us, unless we suffered from a very extreme form of soil allergy that may be triggered by falling dirt, we were probably going to be ok.

That didn’t stop the prospect of uncontrolled wind fanned fire, which whilst unlikely to cause real problems, was a potential danger.

Mike moved his horses from the stables and we did get the dogs into the car in case we had to leave quickly.

Fortunately the flames were halted by the fire break that had resulted from the burning last week and by 10.30 tonight we felt able to relax enough to have tea.