I’ve changed the title from The Game I Saw this week because I want to talk about pigeon racing.
I suppose after football and cricket I’ve been involved with pigeons the most and have some great memories, particularly the characters who I have met through racing our feathered friends.
My interest really started with fantails when we lived at Ellenborough.
In school holidays I used to go with my dad who was a sales rep for West Cumberland Farmers and it was great going round the farms with him.
Moota turkey farm was one of his calls and when I went there one day I was fascinated by the white fantails that were in a dove cote outside the main office.
Ike Eilbeck was the man who owned the farm and when he saw me transfixed he asked if I would like a pair. I looked at my dad and he didn’t say no so we ended up taking two home with us.
We had a cote erected on poles in the back yard and everything was going well when the birds were disturbed by nightly visits from the local feline population.
I can still see my dad at the back bedroom window with a steel catapult (I’ve never seen a better) and launching whatever at the cats when they visited.
In the end the birds were moved up to behind our garden in my uncle’s field where dad had a couple of hen runs and three hulls.
I then asked if I could try some Birmingham Rollers (a variety of tippler) and a pair came from Abbott’s of Norfolk. Two quickly became a dozen and they were my pride and joy.
They used to disappear into the sky until they were just dots and then tumble crazily back towards the ground, remarkably pulling out of their roll/tipple before they dropped all the way.
My interest in racers developed when I got a stray in with my rollers. I must admit I don’t think there was much attempt to rehome him – a black and white pied cock – although dad did ask Raymond Thompson who flew pigeons in the village and were often flying over our hen pens.
Rather sadly I had to part with the birds when we moved to Cockermouth in 1961 and I gave them to a local man Bobby Younghusband who had a small farm in the village.
My love of pigeons must have smouldered away because soon after I was married I announced that I was going to start racing pigeons.
Even then there was an Ellenborough link because my first loft was transported through from Arthur Ritson. I had gone to school with his brother Billy.
The loft was erected on the Cloffocks; I joined Workington Victoria in 1968 and I got my initial birds from various local fanciers – George Gorley, whom I worked with; the Leech brothers; ‘Clogger’ Graham; Bill Abraham and Jackie Dustin.
The Victoria club back then had 50-odd members and there were three queues on marking night to get the birds through.
The Baggley brothers seemed to have baskets and baskets of birds and I can recall sitting in awe after the transporter had picked them up and the ‘old lads’ were having a crack in the pub.
My first-ever race was a young bird sprint, the first one of the season, and I can still see the flocks going over the Cloffocks in droves – the sky was black.
There was great excitement when four or five, probably more, peeled out of those flocks and headed for the eight lofts that were on the Cloffocks back then.
I didn’t trouble the scorer might be the phrase in cricket and it probably applies to the early days in pigeon racing – but it was a thrill to get your birds back, however far behind.
At the end of the season there was a chap from Northside who regularly came round to see if anyone had any spare birds.
In those days you might breed 24 young birds and probably had about 18 of them left at the end of the season so birds were often given away.
In this particular case, though, I was warned to say I had none spare. The guy wasn’t starting up a loft, he was wanting them to eat!!
With so many lofts on the Cloffocks a shout would often go up that there was a small flock showing – but it was quickly apparent they were of the feral variety.
George Abraham had an answer for that – “They are just Canon Croft’s” he always used to say.
Canon Croft served at St John’s in Workington and George’s inference was that these were birds that used to roost on top of the church.
The first real heart flutter I got on a race came from my first try across the channel. I remember sitting waiting for them to return in late afternoon and seeing them drop to Billy Saffill and Colin Murray; to Ashley Bell; to the Abraham brothers and to Harry Graham.
It was probably up to two hours later that I saw this bird circling and diving for my loft – a dark chequer hen who had flown the Channel the season before for Bob McCarron.
The excitement of clocking my first channel entry was something I have never forgotten. I kept going back to the loft time after time to check she was ok – and she was, sitting tightly on the nest.
I still say that was a bigger thrill than when a year later I, and my race partners, topped the Derwent Valley Federation and Cumbria Combine from Avranches – but that’s for another day.
