A trip to Robert Dover’s Games stirs some wonderful memories (From Evesham Journal)

A trip to Robert Dover’s Games stirs some wonderful memories

11:27am Thursday 2nd July 2009

• Print
• Email
• Share
• Comments(0)

THE Robert Dover’s Games stirred up some wonderful memories for artist and historian Michael J Barnard, which he shared with Gerry Barnett.

Mr Barnard’s sketch is of lovely memories of the Vale and the north Cotswolds during 1943 to 1945.

“As the afternoon light casts its shadows over the meadows of the Dover’s Hill escarpment and its adjoining meadows and pastures, memories of the leisure hours spent on these most beautiful slopes are recalled every time one changes gear to negotiate the winding, sometimes hair-raising roads of these local hill climbs,” he said.

During the war years, bicycles were the means of climbing the slopes, armed with saddle bags full of sandwiches and Brearley’s pop, joining up with friends from the nearby airfields to spend many happy hours in glorious sunshine, just enjoying the wonderful views and filling log books with all the activity on the airfield itself and the aerial movements of the Wellington and Whitley bombers.

Mr Barnard’s watercolour recalls a fleeting memory of two WAAF friends who on the visits of the lads to the airfield packed their parachutes and always with a joke their advice was: “Jump, count four then pull.” Thank goodness, he said, the occasion never arose.

A B17 Flying Fortress can be seen orbiting a radio beacon on the airfield. Known as “Buncher,” aircraft from the First Air Division Group’s USAAF 401st Bomber Group in Northamptonshire assembled over Honeybourne airfield on their way via France to Germany.

The ladder, Mr Barnard said, brought back memories of Mr Haydon’s cherry trees, lovely juicy fruits which were always a must in season on their trips.

This pretty Cotswold village with steep meadows and road rising from its boundary walls surrounding the lovely parish church of St Lawrence had 14 scattered sites around the village, home for 2,250 men and women of the RAF and RCAF, post code “Somewhere in England,” said Mr Barnard.

“To park the car today by the church and walk the road up the hill is like walking with happy memories and those delicious cherries,” he said.

“To be able still to free-wheel with legs akimbo down Weston Subedge hill some 60 odd years later is a sheer joy,” he said. “Speeding through the warm lemon light of a lovely summer’s day into the villages with memories of the faces of friends standing outside their homes is so special.”

Mr and Mrs Fred Cole outside Smokey Joe’s, the service canteen that never closed, and Mr Jack Foster at the Seagrave Arms tending his bird cages hung outside the pub were wonderful memories. Specially evocative was the smell of wood shavings from the timber yard where all the family’s ladders for plum picking were made.

“All unforgettable. Thank you Robert Dover for reminding me,” he said.

• Print
• Email
• Share
• Comments(0)