MY BROTHER HUGH Born 5th October 1920 died 9th May 2006
appreciating all the marvellous animals, birds and other fauna. We would fish and swim in the river Pang and also in the Thames at Pangbourne under the bridge for perch using hemp seed for bait amongst other things. Eventually we were caught and had 5 guns to surrender to Bellamy (Known as the Horse). He was very fair and most intelligent and he refused to beat me until I could understand and appreciate the reasons for him so doing.
During the coming holidays I would spend in Scotland in Ayr at Brecon House home of Old Mrs Anabel Yarrow, the Mother of my Mother’s school friends, and heiress of the shipbuilding fortune. It was wonderful at Craigraploch, by the sea with 200 ft cliffs covered in seabirds and pigeons. There I would shoot rabbit and pigeon. The Farmer gave me 6d for every pigeon and the butcher 4d a rabbit which I shot with a .410 getting on average 15 bags out of a box of 25 cartridges. When I went back to Bradfield I was flush with cash! One day I saw the only Snowy owl anywhere on the farm roosting on a steep hillside, it must have been blown over from America. The cliffs with all the sea birds were fascinating and one day I got stuck on them and had to climb back up with a 6 ft overhang, clutching tufts of grass. Luckily I was very light and made it. Another day with another boy at the cliff bottom we stripped naked and went for a swim in the rock pools, only to find that a local girl had pinched our clothes. We found them hidden but we were furious and then chased her up into a hollow in the moors where we stripped her much to our amusement. But then suddenly realizing just what we had done and the enormity of our offence we helped her dress again, and not a moment too soon as her father appeared over a rise……we were 15 years old at the time.
In the autumn of 1938 I went to Harper Adams Agricultural College, Shropshire as Bellamy had said to Mother that however long I stayed at Bradfield I would never get my Matriculation as he said I had a failure to memorize. I enjoyed Agricultural College, they worked us hard but I was interested in soil science etc.
Whilst at college I bought my first motor- bike for £15 ( about £750) today. For 3 months I would constantly practise on it drunk and sober. I learnt how to skid it, and how to control a skid and eventually was even fined by the College authorities for riding it standing on the saddle at 40 mph through the college grounds! I also practised in the fields falling to the left and to the right, so that I had complete confidence that in an emergency I knew how to bale out, and jump off to save myself from serious injury. However one sunny summers day 3 of us went for a trip to Lake Elyrnwy and Bala in Wales. The sun had heated the tar on a small cambered Welsh road, and we were going fast downhill at about 50mph. The back wheel slid on the buckled camber, I braked slightly and the bike went over and the small stand caught the road and the whole machine was spinning. It was all so fast and I was flung off, my shirt ripped to shreds off my back but I was hardly scratched, and as I tried to jump clear my ankle got caught in something and was very badly wrenched and I ended up on the side of the road with my head on the hard grass. I was stunned temporarily, the bike continued down the road, and the pillion seat full of compressed red foam rubber scattered everywhere, the wheels were bent, the handle bars twisted, the dynamo fell off and I eventually was lucky to sell it for 30 shillings, the price of a couple of second hand tyres. Still it had been a good lesson, and I learnt a lot of useful road sense that stood me in god stead all my life, and how to react quickly!