...who lived next door but one at number 21 Northumberland Road. Jon and his buddies took me under their wing when I was young and showed me all that Linford had to offer. This village had it all every thing that a future adventurer could want to play on.

We had woods perfect for camping and making fires that you could lose your self in on both sides of the village, on the other side of the “Golden Gates Forest” as we called it was a lake of about a square mile in size and was excellent to go fishing on and then run away from the security when you were spotted.

There was a stream that ran along the bottom field, perfect for catching frogs Newts and stickle backs. At the top of the village was a place we called the pit and was the dread of every parent in Linford that bore a son, this place was the Holy Grail of natural playgrounds; it was about a mile wide and stretched for about another mile and a half north. Within this wonderland was a huge lake fed by a stream that had cut a ravine in to the land which every childhood engineer loved to take on the task of damming, two massive quarry’s that had cliffs about 100 ft high perfect for climbing, abseiling and digging caves, a huge area of sand hills and bumps and small cliffs almost like God had created the perfect Bmx/mountain bike track, all of this had woods and tree’s galore running all over the whole “Pit”.

And to top it all off, just off of the “Pit” was “Rabbits Hill” the name says it all and was where as kids we learned how to snare rabbits and Shoot air pistols/rifles and become crack shots with catapults.