North Yorkshire Outdoor Education Service
New date for the opening of Great Fryupdale Outdoor Centre is set.
Following a postponement earlier this year, Great Fryupdale Outdoor Centre near Danby in the heart of the North York Moors was set to re-open officially on the 19th September and who better to open it than world famous Himalayan mountaineer Alan Hinkes. Alan, who made history last year by becoming the first Briton to climb all 14 8,000 metre Himalayan peaks including Everest and K2, was a schoolboy in Northallerton and stayed at the old Centre in Fryupdale back in the 1980s. He has very fond memories of his time there and has kept an eye on the Centre’s mixed fortunes ever since.
The Centre started its life 200 years ago as the school for the children of Fryupdale and was built by the people of the dale. Forty years ago it closed as a school and the children moved to nearby Lealholm Primary School, but the Local Education Authority kept the building and converted it into a residential Outdoor Centre to be used by children from all over the old North Riding.
‘Danby Fryup’, as it was known, operated for over 30 years under the stewardship of Cook/Caretaker Wendy Hodgson who still lives next door! Sadly, in the year 2000 the financial pressure of maintaining an old building finally became too much and the County Council had to take the difficult decision to close the Centre. The story may have ended there had it not been for the dogged persistence of a local Councillor and a group of Scarborough school children. Their begging and pleading for the Centre to be kept open led the ‘closure’ to be changed to ‘mothballed until money appears’.
After three years sitting empty, Great Fryupdale Outdoor Centre’s saviour arrived in the form of the Big Lottery New Opportunities Fund who granted £200,000 to the County Council to refurbish the Centre and re-open it. The work was finished in 2005 and all the people involved in the story will be there on Tuesday to see Alan Hinkes unveil a commemorative plaque. Those school children from Overdale Primary School who wrote the letters will be there, or at least their younger brother and sisters will be, as will that local Councillor … he is Herbert Tindall and is now Mayor of Whitby!
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