9:42am Friday 19th March 2010
By Stephen Lewis
ISOBEL Zarb “absolutely loves living in Helmsley”. Her face shines with eagerness as the words tumble out. “My mum grew up in Ampleforth. She came to Helmsley when she was my age. My ancestors are all from around this area. There’s a real sense of community. Everybody knows each other.”
She pauses for breath.
“You can just walk into town and talk to everyone. In a place like York, I don’t think the young people and the older people take much interest in each other.
But in Helmsley, everybody talks to everybody. There’s an old lady who lives across the road from me. She’s 85.
Every day she stops and chats to me.”
Isobel, clearly, isn’t disenchanted with rural life. Yet according to a recent report from the Government’s rural advocate, Stuart Burgess, there is a crisis in the countryside. The lack of jobs, the lack of things to do, and poor broadband or mobile phone coverage are all prompting young people to give up the rural life in favour of large towns and cities.
As a teenager, doesn’t Isobel find it frustrating living in a small town like Helmsley?
“Not really,” the 13 year old says.
“Maybe when I’m a couple of years older.”
She wants to travel when she grows up, but she wouldn’t live in a city. “I couldn’t imagine it. In Helmsley, I can walk around on my own at night time.
In a big city like London, I wouldn’t dare to.”
So does she see herself spending all her life in Ryedale?
“It depends where life takes me,” she says. “I definitely could live in a rural area. Not necessarily in Ryedale. But I like being in the country because it is so free.”
That is a common view among the six teenagers at Ryedale School in Nawton interviewed by The Press.
All come from small rural towns or even more remote villages or hamlets.
Jack Hugill, 15, lives in the tiny hamlet of Skiplam, on the fringe of the North York Moors. “It’s between here and Kirkby[moorside] but you go up a long way,” he says. The others laugh.
“There are about five houses, spread out over a mile.”
He likes it there. “It’s pretty peaceful, so you can do what you want without upsetting people. I’m into sport. Golf. I can stand in our front garden and hit balls into the farm fields. My dad’s the farmer.”
Yes, it can be frustrating sometimes, he admits. “I often think that the people in Kirkby are really lucky because in the evening they can walk out and go to see people. For me that has to be organised, and that involves parents.”
He doesn’t want to be a farmer when he grows up. “I think if I move away, I will find more opportunities.” So what would he like to do? His face splits in a smile.
“I want to go into some sort of teaching.”
Would he think of teaching at Ryedale School? There are several teachers now who grew up in the area, his friends chime in.
“Perhaps,” he says. “If there was an opening, but I’d have to think about it.”
Verity Johnson, 15, lives in Barton-le- Street. It is full of older people, she admits, and there aren’t many children or teenagers, but she likes it.
Internet provision isn’t great and her family is on dial-up. “That can be quite frustrating.” She doesn’t use Facebook much, because it takes so long.
“But I’m happy to not have broadband,”
she says. “I like to ring people up and have a chat.”
Barton is a nice place to live, she says.
She can listen to the church bells on Sunday. And because it is a small community, there is no generation gap. “I know everybody.”
She relies on her parents to drive her to visit friends. That, or the bus. But Malton is not far. “You can get the train from there. We can meet up in York to go shopping.”
Like Isobel Zarb, Lucy Waines, 15, is from Helmsley. Unlike Isobel, she says it can be frustrating for a teenager. Her two closest friends live in the town, so it is easy for them to meet up.
“But when I talk to some of my friends, they often feel out of it. It is hard to go anywhere.”
Lucy goes to a dance school in Kirkbymoorside. “I think there’s more to do in Kirby.”
Jolley Gosnold, 15, from Hovingham, and Joe Sails, 16, from Kirkbymoorside, are both quite happy with their rural upbringing.
As a boy, Jolley had a great time climbing trees and doing all the things boys do in the countryside.
As you grow older, he admits, you want more. He now goes to dance school twice a week in Leeds – it’s a bus and train journey away, or else his parents take him. And when he grows up, he will probably move away. “I’m quite adventurous.
I like to try new things.”
He’d like to go to London and New York, places where there are a mix of cultures and ethnic backgrounds. His sister is studying for an international baccalaureate in South Africa, and he’d like to try something similar one day.
But he doesn’t regret his Ryedale upbringing. Some city children don’t even know what a cow is, he points out.
“And they don’t get to see the beauty and the hills that we get to see every day.”
A rural upbringing needn’t limit your options, adds Joe. His brother is in the Helmsley indie rock band One Night Only, and Joe is also a keen musician. “I play in the brass band at Kirkby. All my friends are in it, and my dad has played principal cornet for over 30 years.”
If anything, he believes, talent stands out all the more in rural areas. “In a large city, it may not be noticed.”
Yes, you have to make things happen.
“But because of the lack of things to do, because you only live in a small town or village, you get involved, you make an effort.”
RYEDALE School was built in 1953, just outside the village of Nawton, halfway between Kirkbymoorside and Helmsley.
There was a railway line through the village then, which brought children to school.
“Then along came Beeching,” says school head Geoff Jenkinson.
Now most of the 560 pupils from the huge rural catchment area get to school by publicly funded bus – or else are driven by their parents.
Not ideal, perhaps, but there are huge advantages to living in a place such as this, Mr Jenkinson says.
The children who come here are growing up in one of the safest, most beautiful parts of the country. They are healthy and active, and not subjected to many of the bad influences that afflict teenagers in inner-city areas.
And because they have grown up in the countryside, they have learned to be independent and resourceful.
“In an area like this, you have to be.
If there are not immediate, easy ways of doing things, people find ways of doing things.”
The school offers more than 70 clubs and activities, and the children face no educational disadvantage. Through the Ryedale Sixth Form Partnership, involving this school, plus Lady Lumley’s, Norton College and Malton School, the children are offered a range of sixth form courses across four sites. It is a good example of the resourceful way rural communities come together to solve their problems, Mr Jenkinson says.
Yes, finding a job in Ryedale in the future is an issue, he admits. But his pupils get a first rate education, and new high-speed technology is changing the nature of work, and making it more feasible to live in rural areas, he says.
There are some inconveniences to the rural life. “But that’s the price you pay. I wouldn’t swap this for the world.”
IN HIS ‘Tackling Rural Disadvantage’ report published two weeks ago, the Government’s Rural Advocate Stuart Burgess warned that living in the countryside was not a viable option for young people. “(They) are having to leave in search of jobs or housing or, having left for further or higher education, see no future in returning,” he said.
Dr Burgess identified a number of problems. They include:
• Lack of affordable housing
• Poor public transport
• Lack of suitable jobs
• Lack of decent broadband and mobile phone coverage
• Isolation and exclusion
Lack of broadband and mobile phone coverage was a major factor restricting the growth of rural businesses, Dr Burgess said. And it was also a major cause of exclusion for rural young people.
“The use of mobile phones and social networking is such an integral feature of young people’s lives that they have a real sense of exclusion from being unable to participate.”
In a response to Dr Burgess’ report, North Yorkshire County Council issued a statement outlining steps it is taking to tackle the issues.
These include:
• Plans to introduce high speed broadband to three business parks in the county
• Real Start, a pioneering apprenticeship scheme launched by the county three years ago which has already provided employment and training for more than 300 young people, is to be extended in partnership with district councils
• More affordable housing being developed through the community fund
• Wheels to Work scheme – the loan of mopeds and electric bikes to enable young people to get to work or find training
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