FIVE years ago this week, a daredevil grandfather had gone to great heights in supporting his fundraising grandson – by leaping 8,500 feet from an aeroplane.
Gordon Smith, 81, from Richmond, did his first skydive at the weekend along with his 19-year-old grandson Cameron Smith.
The teenager was raising cash for the Duke of Edinburgh Award and collected his Gold Award from Buckingham Palace.
The pair did their jump at Durham Tees Valley Airport in Middleton St George.
Mr Smith, a retired Army Major, said at the time his family were not particularly surprised by his intention to leap from a plane, but he confessed they did think he was “mad”.
“Cameron has completed his Gold Award and I’m accompanying him to Buckingham Palace," he said at the time. "I’m very proud of what he has achieved through the scheme, not least gaining his glider licence and scuba dive qualification.
“I was quite calm about the jump, until my legs were dangling over the side of the plane – then I was quite apprehensive but it was a unique experience.”
Cameron, from Ilkley, West Yorkshire, was very close to his grandfather, who had supported him through many of his activities and challenges for the awards.
Also that week, stuck in a traffic jam with no way of going forward or backwards, and with an out-of-control wildfire threatening to engulf her car, Leia Morgan felt an eerie sense of calm as she thought “this is it”.
Former Darlington resident Miss Morgan, who attended Woodham Academy, in Newton Aycliffe, had been living and working in Fort McMurray, in the province of Alberta, for two years and was enjoying life as a hairdresser.
For several days, she watched the flames and smoke on the horizon grow bigger and come closer to the neighbourhood, but she said that no-one seemed too concerned as, she was told, it had happened before but the fire had never reached the city.
Speaking to The Northern Echo at the time from her emergency accommodation in Canada, Miss Morgan, then aged 30, explained: “I was working at the salon and it went really dark, as though there was going to be a big thunderstorm, and I thought ‘perfect, it will rain and put the fires out’.
“But then lots of people started running outside.
“The dark skies were red and orange and it looked like an apocalypse.”
Meanwhile, disrespectful photographers and goths had come under fire for damaging the graveyard made famous through the Dracula legend and using it as a backdrop for cheap photo opportunities.
Traditional goths were so incensed they had started an online petition calling for St Mary’s churchyard in Whitby to be closed during festival weekends to stop the army of snappers and fancy dress fans trampling over the graves.
Over 430 people had already signed it as supporters got their teeth into the campaign following mounting anger in the town.
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