Mike through his time at Parwich Shop and involvement in local groups and Dales Housing, is well known to most of our readers. Thank you to David for allowing us to reproduce this:
The invisible ribbon that connected Mike’s journey in life ran right across the open landscapes of the North of England…. the dales and the hills, the moors and the lakes.
Lakeland fells: first, as a young child he was evacuated from Newcastle to the bomb-free open spaces of Keswick and Cumberland.
Teesdale: his teens spent at boarding school in Barnard Castle taught some old fashioned virtues; his housemaster – the fearsome Bentley Beetham, Everest climber and an artist with the cane.
Borders: with estate management a possible career, he went to agricultural college and then farming in Northumberland, countryside he had come to enjoy on many family farm holidays in the Cheviots.
Yorkshire dales: a lengthy stay shopkeeping in Harrogate, always made the more enjoyable by the surrounding dales and his sailing boat at Whitby.
Derbyshire: newspaper life in Sheffield but he loved nothing as much as battling with the snow in his 4×4 from home on the Derwent dams … and always with his dogs as company.
The Peak: journey’s end but, working or retired, it was all lived in a community he embraced warmly and surrounded by countryside he loved; both were fulfilling of his simple tastes of life’s pleasures.
Wherever the weatherman-on-the-hill is now, may the days and nights be gently warm and winds soft…no doubt with a black-and-white friend beside him.
PARWICH.ORG 
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