On the Line
The basic principle of this project is very straightforward but it took one helluva long time for the initial idea to come to fruition.
We need to go all the way back to late September 2003 and a holiday in New England. We had started with a few days in Boston and then hired a car to travel around the north-easterly states in the autumn to coincide with the fantastic changing of colours on the trees. We had travelled through Massachusetts, Vermont and New Hampshire and into Maine where our destination was the coastal town of Bar Harbor.
The Graycote Inn was a very quaint, traditional place in a lovely location to explore the town but unfortunately the owner, Roger, was a bit of a prat. He had annoyed me even before we arrived; when I’d been in contact with him to make the reservation he, quite bluntly, told me that staying for only two nights would simply be nowhere near longer enough to see and do everything that the area had to offer. When we arrived he insisted on talking to us for ages, informing us of all sorts of banal stuff that we didn’t really need to know, and thus using up some of that incredibly valuable time. He specifically warned us about eating out at the more touristy places “because they’ll make you sick.” All we wanted to do was chill out, go for a stroll and start exploring.
Beautiful place, prattish owner.
One lovely touch that we much appreciated was the inn providing some refreshments (including fresh baking) between 4 and 6pm; just as we would be getting back after a full day out and about. On the second afternoon we were relaxing in the lounge when a couple arrived. We sniggered, perhaps too noticeably, as they were put through their full introductory spiel and we watched in pity for them as they shuffled from one foot to the other, clearly wanting to just check in and get to their room.
Noting that we must be very close to the Canadian border and with not much of the U.S. to the north of us, I began to wonder if this was the most northerly we had ever been. I asked Rog if I could perhaps borrow an atlas. “Political or Geographical?” he snapped, in what proved to be one of his friendlier customer service moments. A quick glance at the map showed that we were way further south than I had imagined and that Bar Harbor was actually on a similar line of latitude to the south of France. The line from Hull passed through a lot of remote parts of Canada, further north than all the major cities. Blimey, that was an eye-opener. We sat a little longer and I perused the map checking out the places that coincided with the lines of latitude and longitude from Hull. And there’s where the idea to try and visit some of them was spawned.
Nothing then happened for five and a half years.
Fast forward to March 2009 when I was on a canal-walking trip with some mates heading through Lancashire to end up in Wigan for a match. I shared the idea of the project with them and it was greeted with some interest and enthusiasm. In the May, Mike and I were walking to a game at Villa Park and we gave the idea, and its practicalities, more serious analysis. This was also the day when the name ‘On The Line’ was formally assigned and the idea of some ‘official’ merchandise (T-shirts?) was broached. From then on things started to move forward relatively quickly. I did some proper research into which English counties the lines passed through (neither of them enter any part of Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland) and also which countries. For my birthday that year, Jan’s sis bought me some of the OS Landranger maps that covered most of the East-West line and I bought myself a GPS gizmo. Getting serious.
A lovely walk on which to plan a project.
Clearly the crucial bit of information I would need would be the coordinates of the place where I was born and this was not going to be easy as a lot of Rosamond Street, and the terraced houses on its neighbouring streets, had been demolished in the ‘70s and replaced with a new housing development. I didn’t have any luck getting hold of a suitable map from the local history section of Hull Library because they were temporarily closed for refurbishments. Thankfully a colleague in the University Library who worked on its map collection found one for me which still had Rosamond Street in existence. Thank you Elaine! On a weekend when Dad was visiting, he told me that he had never been back to that part of Hull since they moved in 1965. We identified the street corner that was the location of the shop and house where I was born but then an internet search showed how much it had changed in the meantime. Only a short length of Rosamond Street still existed at the Hessle Road end, perhaps less than 100 yards, and the part that remained at the northerly end had been renamed Tranmere Close. Using the old map alongside a current one, it was possible to locate where the house had been, and to note that one of the new dwellings was now situated on part of the site. I wanted to get an accurate a reading as possible of the true location but I really didn’t fancy knocking on the door of a complete stranger asking if I could take some GPS readings and expect them to understand why. The option of trying to do it unannounced didn’t really strike me as a good idea either; I could find myself clambering over a garden fence, edging into position and finding myself stood on the kids’ trampoline or worst still, in the outdoor hot tub. Let’s leave that for the moment and deal with it later ‘on location’.
The spot where the house I was born used to stand.
The project took a huge leap forward on Saturday 24th October 2009. City had a home game and I went over to East Yorkshire early to pick up Dad. I bought a Hull A-Z from the shop in Tickton and we headed off to Rosamond Street. Blimey, it was a bit grim to say the least. Whilst we were stood there checking out the situation, faces appeared at the front window of the house that was on the site of our old home. The residents looked a bit concerned, understandably I suppose as I stood there with GPS, camera and notebook. I decided not to worsen the situation by taking any photos there and then so we went for a stroll around the neighbouring streets.
This is all that's left of Rosamond Street.
The local pub, The Lion, one street away, was boarded up and looked like it had been closed for quite some time and everywhere else just looked a bit rough and run down. When we got back to Rosamond Street I took some photos quickly before the curtains started twitching and also took readings at points that were easy to identify so that I could extrapolate those figures to come up with the ones that I really needed. I was quite happy to get away, to be honest, and the good news was that I had the numbers!
In case you're wondering, we drew 0:0.
(When Mum and Dad sold the shop and we moved to Beverley in 1965, our Uncle Keith and Aunty Anne took it over. This photo shows Anne with our cousin Sally and their dog, Simon, stood on Rosamond Street a year or so later. We think that the person who took the photo must have been stood in front of the shop, perhaps in the doorway. This is looking southwards, towards Hessle Road).
The next few weeks involved me getting ready for the big project kick-off which I’d decided would be in the new year; January 2010 would be a nice, clean, easy to remember start date. I created some spreadsheets ready to record all the action and then drew accurate representations of the two lines on my Hull A-Z, on my road atlas and on the OS maps. The most fantastic outcome of all this preparation was that I discovered that City’s stadium was directly north of where I was born. How brilliant is that? That Christmas David bought me more of the OS maps to complete the full set that I required. Everything was now in place, I was ready to rock and roll.
Towards the end of December I decided to set myself some targets. Would it be feasible to do one trip each month for the first year? Well, there were plenty of places within an hour or an hour and a half’s drive from Sheffield and, as a fallback position, there are dozens of locations in and around Hull that would be very easy to arrange. So, yeah, I think that would be possible. I quite fancied involving lots of different friends to take the photos for me and perhaps it would be neat to choose the first four locations so that one was East, one West, one South and one North of Rosamond Street.
I had some good fortune to help me with the first location because City were drawn away to Wigan in the third round of the F.A. Cup and the game was scheduled for the first weekend of the new year. I made arrangements with Mike to meet up just off the M62 and then car-share the rest of the journey to the match. We were going to meet close to Ikea and the East-West line runs very close to there; it runs close to long stretches of the M62 in fact. Annoyingly he changed his plans the night before so I went on my own and witnessed a terrible 4:1 defeat. Never mind, not to be thwarted for long, we had a home game v. Chelsea the very next weekend and it was an early kick-off so I planned to go back to Tickton after the game and ask Dad to take a photo close to Tickton Grange. Well, that idea got kiboshed as well because the game was called off due to the lousy, wintery weather. Having plans scuppered and things not go exactly to plan were to become recurring themes in this project over the years but, fear not, the first OTL was just around the corner…
