Memoirs of a Moldywarp by Peter Ryder (From The Northern Echo)

Memoirs of a Moldywarp by Peter Ryder

12:05pm Tuesday 23rd June 2009 in

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Harry Mead admires the pluck of a burrowing band of brothers.

THE unseen North Country here – caves – and a band of North-East explorers called the Moldywarps Speliological Group, perpetuating the Viking word for “mole”. A founder of the burrowing band, Peter Ryder brightly relates some of their adventures and discoveries.

The North Pennines, Teesdale and Swaledale are the chief focus, but among the striking discoveries, towards the southern limit of their territory, are “spectacular” stalactites in a vast cave in a former roadstone mine at Goathland in the North York Moors.

Noting that the mine is only about a century old, Ryder remarks that the formations “disprove the popular myth that such things take aeons to form”.

Cartoons by Cluff, a perhaps unexpected founder Moldywarp, aid Ryder’s entertaining narrative. Introducing him, Ryder observes: “You can see his work every day in The Northern Echo, but it has also figured in such august publications as Punch and Private Eye”.

A body blow – ouch. Good job the Echo is above all pettiness. But Peter might consider himself lucky to get a review.

* Available from (Broomlee Publications, 1 Ford Terrace, Broomhaugh, Riding Mill, Northumberland, NE44 6EJ, no price stated. Contacts: PFRyder@broom lee.Demon.co.uk; Tel:01434-682644)