Monthly Meetings

Our next meeting at Crockham Hill Village Hall is on Wednesday 26th March.

This month's speaker is Neil Hanson who will deliver his talk entitled Inn & Out at the Top.

In a long and very chequered career, among a bewildering variety of other jobs, Neil Hanson has been an Oxford graduate, a plasterer’s mate, an ice cream salesman, a holiday camp redcoat and – simultaneously – an art critic and a rugby league commentator. He’s edited the boozer’s Bible – the Good Beer Guide – ran, and later owned, Britain’s highest inn, in a wild and remote corner of the Yorkshire Dales, went round the world twice and worked a a print journalist and radio broadcaster in Britain, Australia and New Zealand.

He is now a very successful author with over 60 published books to his name. As well as his own work, he’s also a “ghost writer” for, among others, sports stars, showbiz legends, captains of industry, SAS men, pilots, a treasure diver, an explorer, a kidnap negotiator, an undercover investigator and a spy.

“Inn & Out at the Top” is a laugh-a-minute tour of the quirks and foibles, highs and lows of running Britain’s highest inn – so isolated that its next-door neighbour was 4 miles away and so high above sea level that it had its own climate, with winds that could tear car-doors off their hinges, and winter snows that cut off the inn for weeks on end.

A hugely engaging storyteller, Neil Hanson’s account of his time at the inn, grappling with tight-fisted farmers, eccentric characters, bizarre local customs, naturist weekends, “lates and lock-ins”, police raids by appointment, rats in the attic, close encounters with magistrates and planners, and the shooting of a famous double glazing commercial, is suitable for all audiences.

Regular meetings are held on the last Wednesday of the month at 2pm in Crockham Hill Village Hall.