The Yorkshire Gliding Club is celebrating its 75th anniversary.

Ian Noble reports

PILOTS are soaring into history over Sutton Bank as the Yorkshire Gliding Club rattles up its 75th anniversary.

Gliding enthusiasts are gearing up to help mark the diamond anniversary of a club whose windswept buildings hold a wealth of aviation history, including links to worldfamous flyers like Louis Bleriot.

But members of the club, located near the famous Kilburn White Horse, are not resting on their laurels and are looking forward to taking off into a glorious future.

Graham Evison, club chairman, said: “It’s a major achievement and what we are trying to do now is to get as many people interested in gliding as we can.

“One problem is that young people today don’t want to go outside, and another problem we have is that people think it’s an elitist sport.

“It’s not an elitist pastime; we’re very down to earth and we have about 175 members drawn from various backgrounds.”

The club’s humble beginnings stem from the early 20th century, when pilots used the updrafts near the bank for gliding.

Erik Addyman was one of the first people to fly at Sutton Bank when he took to the air between 1909 and 1936.

A friend of Frenchman Bleriot, the first man to fly across the English Channel, he also knew Samuel Cody, of the Flying Circus fame.

He also knew Polar explorer Roald Amundsen, was a reservist on Andrew Irvine and George Mallory’s ill-fated 1923 Mount Everest expedition, and was a failed applicant for Robert Scott’s doomed 1911 trip to the South Pole.

His grandson Robert Addyman, of Harrogate, has a large amount of historical material relating to him and flying at the time.

He said: “He was building a glider at home and his mother heard of a plane crash and tried to destroy it.

“He went gliding and reached altitudes of 1,000ft, and he was involved in Bleriot’s Channel crossing. He died in 1963.”

But it was not until April 20, 1934, that Phil Wills, Fred Slingsby and Norman Sharpe came together to create the Yorkshire Gliding Club.

This was a boom time for gliding clubs, with 80 in the UK, including nine based in Yorkshire, under the British Gliding Association.

An estimated 10,000 people watched flyers at Sutton Bank on one weekend in October 1933 alone, while records, such as soaring to 8,000ft and flying for 13 hours, were broken.

To get airborne, planes were catapulted into the air using elastic or were winched aloft by replacing the rear wheel of a car with a winching drum.

Among the early flyers was Moyra Johnson, of York, who was photographed for the front page of the Daily Mail as one of the few female pilots.

She took to the air in 1935 when the gliding bug bit and even now, aged 93, she still flies occasionally.

Now the club president, she said: “There really were very few women flying then.

“My father, Henry Horsley, was building a glider in the garage and he brought me up to be interested in flying.

“I was 20 years old when I got my pilot’s licence and I was very competitive, which meant I didn’t want to be beaten by the boys.

“I used to work behind the bar here and loved to hear the boys talking about flying, and I picked up tips from that.

“I did it just for fun and I never entered any competitions.

“I still fly now and I still get a thrill out of it. It’s really exciting to be up there in a glider.”

The Second World War stopped glider flying nationally and it was not until the 1960s that it really took off again.

Local businessman Eric Reed offered a low interest loan to help rebuild the Sutton Bank clubhouse in 1965 and he beSince then, the club has blossomed, with modern glider designs and a club record set by Ian Stromberg in 1986 when he reached 31,000ft.

Glider pilots can now reach distances of 200 miles with ease, and new pilots can try a glider simulator at Sutton Bank.

Gary Verity, chief executive of Welcome to Yorkshire, formerly the Yorkshire Tourist Board, has also praised the club.

He said: “I’m thrilled to mark the 75th anniversary of the club.

“We are delighted to be part of this and we’d like to wish the club every success for the coming 75 years, and hope they are as successful as the last 75 years.”

The club is keen to mark its anniversary and plans a series of events, including a scheme to get 75 youngsters up in gliders this year.

Among the events planned are a midsummer open week around July 4 and a week of showing off vintage gliders from August 30 to September 6.

Anyone interested in trying out the sport can get further information from www.ygc.co.uk.