Retired Old ■■■■:
Oh, there IS someone else who remembers the hundredweight-and-a-quarter sacks Not quite so bad when they were tipped down a chute, but a real back-buster if you had to carry them up steps into a granary. (“He’s not here today but I can show you where he wants them stacked”).
Talk about the Good Old Days.
And those beet pulp bags. Coming down a shute’s ok if you get yourself in exactly the right spot. Too far back and the bag sent you running to catch up with it down the trailer and usually falling flat with the bloody thing on top.
Too far forward and it just bend you double, backwards. Then you still fell, but this time on top of the bag with a broken back and scambling to get out of the way of the next one doing its best to make a lorry driver sandwich out of you.
Whichever way it was once you got behind it was the devil’s own job trying to get them dragged back and stacked. Even then you weren’t done. Soaked in sweat from roping and sheeting and itching all over with the flaming stuff inside your clothes.
And now here’s me looking wistfully at Gauthier’s only flat trailer each time I pass the yard and thinking ‘oh yes, those were the good old days’.
rigsby:
wasn’t it just grand when you loaded beet pulp out of a store , all gone diamond shape and set solid . you needed to rope them well .
Hiya …good old days a…i know Bewick likes to see a nice roped and sheeted load, i’ll not say he’s not done dried pulp as i’ve taken it
his area yeras ago. how high and wide was the load(don’t know how to scrub that out) pile you ended up with when it was the 6ft long
hesion sacks. i did a load somewhere near Barrow. i just parked in the town . all these tractor,s and trailers come taking loads of me,
not a bad tip really.still scratching now, that must have been around 1974.i remember the store it come from, it was just up the road from Kings lynn on the Sandringham road turn right at the second roundabout, a huge hanger, full to the brim with blisters, sweat and icheness
all guarded with sacks.
John
Aye that would of been The Brooklyn I think, The one before that was called Mucky Meggs which hard a lorry park beind it, A lot of McPhees lads used to park up there & get a lift back to Newcastle after they had loaded at The Darlington & Simpson Rolling Mill for the midlands, The good old days Eh Regards Larry.
Retired Old ■■■■:
Oh, there IS someone else who remembers the hundredweight-and-a-quarter sacks Not quite so bad when they were tipped down a chute, but a real back-buster if you had to carry them up steps into a granary. (“He’s not here today but I can show you where he wants them stacked”).
Talk about the Good Old Days.
Had to endure similar to that ROF but in metric methods. One significant reason I joined the Red Arrows as manual handling on here is the odd bit of 1RB driving.
Retired Old ■■■■:
Oh, there IS someone else who remembers the hundredweight-and-a-quarter sacks Not quite so bad when they were tipped down a chute, but a real back-buster if you had to carry them up steps into a granary. (“He’s not here today but I can show you where he wants them stacked”).
Talk about the Good Old Days.
Had to endure similar to that ROF but in metric methods. One significant reason I joined the Red Arrows as manual handling on here is the odd bit of 1RB driving.
The hundredweight-and-a-quarter sacks weren’t so bad, it was the two hundred weight sacks of grain in the squirrel sacks that built your muscles up.
Cheers Dave.
Retired Old ■■■■:
Oh, there IS someone else who remembers the hundredweight-and-a-quarter sacks Not quite so bad when they were tipped down a chute, but a real back-buster if you had to carry them up steps into a granary. (“He’s not here today but I can show you where he wants them stacked”).
Talk about the Good Old Days.
Had to endure similar to that ROF but in metric methods. One significant reason I joined the Red Arrows as manual handling on here is the odd bit of 1RB driving.
The hundredweight-and-a-quarter sacks weren’t so bad, it was the two hundred weight sacks of grain in the squirrel sacks that built your muscles up.
Cheers Dave.
That was my 1st job when I left school. Left on the Friday; Monday taking these bags off a drier then weighing them, tying with a twist wire and then stacking them 2 high with no gaps in between! The joy of unloading sacks of sugar beet pulp after that. Peter
Aye the one you refer to Prattman, Was called the Willow, It was opened by a fellow who used to have an old bus at Melkridge in the 50s, He was turfedoff his pitch there for some reason & re-located to the one you mention, But not one of my fave watering holes, his cups of tea were minute, They were hardly big enough to house a banties egg, Mind you he was a real nice Pheasant Plucker sort of a bloke If you know what I mean, Regards Larry.
Tidderson, Dave & Muckaway,
Do I not miss all that handball
Everything from the woolsacks, corn (found out I’m allergic to barley dust), flour, hay & straw, fertilizer, animal feed, spuds & cider apples & perry pears, which were invariably collected early on a frosty morning when the hessian sacks were dripping in juice, leaving your legs soaking wet for the rest of the day. Eating apples were loaded by forklift at the packers but half the time they were offloaded by hand. Bringing them in from the farms involved stacking the bushel boxes on pallets by hand so that the packers could use fork trucks. Same method was used for blackcurrants bound for the Ribena factory, the only difference was that they were collected in the evening after you had done a full day’s work. Fruit from various docks were also stacked by hand- you weren’t allowed to bring the dockers’ pallets out with you. Before the advent of bulk milk tanks and tanker collections there was the joy of heaving full churns around. Sugar beet, mangels and firewood blocks were loaded with a specialist “beet fork” but the upside of hauling beet was that the load was washed off the lorry into huge pits using a high-pressure water jet.
When I came back to carrying sugar beet after about twenty years the job had graduated from platform lorries with “greedy boards” to bulk tippers but the farmers still expected you to stand on top of the load in all weathers chucking out the great clumps of mud that came up the elevator.
Nowadays I find it quite therapeutic to toss a hundredweight bag of spuds in the van having just dug them off the allotment!
Not too sure what all that’s got to do with cafes so I’m expecting a bo**ocking!
Anyone remember the black horse cafe on the A30 just before Exeter? I had a night out there in the 70’s ,parking was a nightmare but the boss used to wake you with a cuppa then get your breakfast going-brilliant.Then there was a garage further down just by a place called Lewdown again on the A30 owned by a bloke called Graham,he later got a cafe between Taunton and Bridgewater.I remember when he got a microwave at Lewdown and we all thought it was a marvel
glyn1206:
Anyone remember the black horse cafe on the A30 just before Exeter? I had a night out there in the 70’s ,parking was a nightmare but the boss used to wake you with a cuppa then get your breakfast going-brilliant.Then there was a garage further down just by a place called Lewdown again on the A30 owned by a bloke called Graham,he later got a cafe between Taunton and Bridgewater.I remember when he got a microwave at Lewdown and we all thought it was a marvel
Hi Glyn 1206
Stayed there a few times in the 60s , it was at Honiton Clyst,not bad Digs.
Ben.
The “Singing Kettle” at Acle. An old railway carriage roughly halfway between Gt.Yarmouth and Norwich on the A47. It closed in the seventies and,I was told, taken to the North Norfolk Steam Railway for preservation.Not my photo I hasten to add. Regards to all Haddy.
Hi.
Cafe at Stibbington ? A1. Used to call in there mid night 'ish,on the way home,70’s. A crowd from london,i thinmk it was Robinsons ?,half cab Fodens,did a change over there. It was rumoured ■■?, that some times a “Lady” would travel up with one of them,and while he had his break in the cafe,the “Lady”,would play the beast with two backs for money in the lorry park. Good Cafe those days,only trouble was launching yourself across the A1 to go north bound on a foggy night,it did seem to lay there in the winter,but…8-9-10… GO.
hulltramper
glyn1206:
Anyone remember the black horse cafe on the A30 just before Exeter? I had a night out there in the 70’s ,parking was a nightmare but the boss used to wake you with a cuppa then get your breakfast going-brilliant.Then there was a garage further down just by a place called Lewdown again on the A30 owned by a bloke called Graham,he later got a cafe between Taunton and Bridgewater.I remember when he got a microwave at Lewdown and we all thought it was a marvel
I am another who remembers the ‘Black Horse’, seem to remember it was 24 houre opening, used to cab it in (then) new D series Ford flatbed in the car park, no additional charge if you bought your meals there as I remember.
MrJake:
I am another who remembers the ‘Black Horse’, seem to remember it was 24 houre opening, used to cab it in (then) new D series Ford flatbed in the car park, no additional charge if you bought your meals there as I remember.
Not quite so bad when they were tipped down a chute, but a real back-buster if you had to carry them up steps into a granary. (“He’s not here today but I can show you where he wants them stacked”).
