Belle of the Back Streets walk around Ryhope

Saturday 14 September 2019 is a day that will stay with me for a very long time.  As part of Heritage Open Days, along with my friend Paul Lanagan, we led a guided walk around Ryhope taking in the locations from my debut novel Belle of the Back Streets.

I'm Ryhope born and bred and although I no longer live there I have family who do and I'm a member of Ryhope Heritage Society. I may have left Ryhope but it hasn't left me. And now, all of my novels with Headline are set in old Ryhope at the end of the first world war in 1919.

I'm a huge fan of Heritage Open Days, local history and heritage in general. So much so, that this year I was honoured to be invited to give the welcome speech at the official opening of Tyne and Wear Heritage Days. You can see some pictures of my speech and read more on that here.

Now then, I've never led a guided walk before and was very nervous indeed. But my pal Paul is a confident tour guide and entrenched in local history and heritage with his roles at Houghton Heritage Society and Houghton Feast. I knew I was in good hands.  The sun was shining too, which was a great start to the day. With our walking boots on, off we went!

We had 21 guests on the walk (25 including Paul and his wife Kristie and me and my husband Barry). I had to keep the group this size to be manageable but could easily have ended up with a group twice the size, such was the interest in the guided walk. I may well run another next spring when Pearl of Pit Lane comes out in paperback and we can look at the locations for Belle of the Back Streets, The Tuppenny Child and Pearl of Pit Lane too.

Anyway, back to the walk yesterday.  We all met outside of Ryhope Workingmen's Club and once I'd ticked everyone off my list, my husband Barry handed out a raffle ticket to each person on the walk. The raffle was to be drawn at the end of the walk and the winner would receive a copy of my second book set in Ryhope, The Tuppenny Child.

Here are some wonderful pictures from the work. They belong to a lovely lady called Beverley Ann Hopper who has given me permission to share the photos online.  At each stop, Paul asked me questions about Belle of the Back Streets, about my writing life and about Ryhope's history. I'm no expert on the latter but I (hope!) I did as well as I could. We had lots of photos of old Ryhope to show everyone at each stop. Paul even did a reading from the start of the book at our first stop, which was a memorial to the miners who had lost their lives at Ryhope pit.

At Saint Paul's church the vicar, Reverend David Chadwick, allowed us inside as a group, which was fantastic as the church and the vicar of 1919 - Canon Percival Young Knight (who I've fictionalised as Reverend Daye) - plays an integral role in my books.

And once inside the church, there was a coffee morning taking place in aid of Macmillan Nurses. We all had a welcome sit down, a cuppa and a biscuit.

Also on our walk, we visited the site of Ryhope's coal mine. Here is the group walking into the playing field which stands on the site now.

We also saw where the church, cinema, police station, rhubarb field, Co-op store, cattle market, railway station and various pubs are located that are mentioned in my books. All the while, the sun continued shining and it really was a day I will never forget.

Here are some of the group walking past The Railway Inn  pub which plays a huge role in my second book, The Tuppenny Child.  We were on our way to see what remains of Ryhope train station at this point.

And when we got to the train station, which was our last official stop on the guided walk, Paul did something that made me cry. He took out his copy of Belle of the Back Streets again and read the final paragraph. It made me cry when I wrote it. It made me cry every single time that I read it and when Paul read it in front of the group, I had a lump in my throat again. I also sang something, but it'd be too much of a spoiler to reveal what that was.

Thankyou, Paul.

Then, before it was time to head to the Albion Inn, another pub which plays a huge part in Belle of the Back Streets, I drew the winning raffle ticket and the lucky winner won a paperback copy of my second novel which hits the shops next week, The Tuppenny Child.  Unbeknown to me, Paul had bought a runner's up prize on the walk - a stottie cake from the baker's shop on our walk. A lucky runner-up won the stottie.

And then it was time to end the walk and say goodbye. Some of us went into the pub for drinks and lunch while others headed home.

Thank you to everyone for coming on the walk yesterday, it really was a day like no other and I will never, ever, forget it. Thank you especially to Paul Lanagan, whose idea this all was. I have to admit I took some encouragement to agree to the idea because I am painfully shy and this was very much out of my comfort zone. But I think you can agree from the picture of me and Paul below that I really did enjoy it.

Thank you also to my husband Barry for being the raffle ticket man, the shopkeeper selling my books at the end of the tour and for keeping the walkers together by being "the man at the back".  Thank you to Paul's wife Kristie too, and especially to Janet Robinson at Sunderland City Council for all of her support with Heritage Open Days.

Shall we do it all again next year?

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Glenda Young

Author of historical novels with Headline

Twitter: @Flaming_Nora

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