Not very easy to see, but on the hillside behind these buildings on the North York Moors, there is a road which is going up what is apparently the steepest hill in England.In the early 1980s on my grail quest in the south of France I acquired a fear of driving up hills, when the driver of the car I was in couldn't get the car down into first gear going up a mountain road, on account of his artificial left hand. We were rolling backwards down the mountainside till his wiffe managed to whack the gearstick in.
The BBC wanted people with driving problems for a TV programme and I volunteered. They took me to Rosedale Chimney Bank (the hill in the picture) in the village of Rosedale Abbey, gave me some hypnotherapy type of treatment, and set me loose on the hillside road. Repeatedly. On camera. Round tight bends. Forwards and in reverse.
They never used the footage, but I've been much better since, and I know what a Dolly Grip is.
For this TV-show-that-never-was, the state-funded BBC paid for hotel rooms for me, the therapist, the producer, the gofer, the sound man, the cameraman and the guy to put the fixed camera in the car. They hired two cars, paid all these people, and paid train and cab fare home to London for me and the therapist.
It was a hell of an experience though.
I now drive an automatic. It was the cure all the time.
By "grail quest in the S. of France", do you mean Rennes l'Chateau by any chance???
ReplyDeleteThis photo is beautiful. Isn't this the area where "James Herriot"/Alf Wight practiced veterinary medicine?
JoJo, that's exactly what I mean - look in my April archive at Rat Scabies and the Holy Grail.
ReplyDeleteI actually don't know precisely where James Herrioe country is, I'm ashamed to say.