SNCR 2007 - NORTH YORKSHIRE, 13-14-15 July - from Peter Watts The SNCR Weekend started on the Friday evening with a Noggin and Natter at the Crown Hotel in Boroughbridge. By the time Sara and I arrived, I think that with the
exception of Secretary Paine, all those who had travelled from the East, West and South were there, Simon Bishop, Bill Haverly and Sandy looking very smug, as clutch failure and a jammed gearbox respectively on their Singers had forced them to come in their modern cars. Knaresborough turned out to be very picturesque, and Mother Shipton’s Cave was not just the tourist trap we half expected. The story of an illegitimate child, Ursula, born in the cave in 1488 during a violent thunder storm, and turning out to be something of a witch or prophetess, was fairly
believable, but there was no doubting the magnificence of the natural rock formations adjacent to the River Nidd. The spring forming the Petrifying Well, the water of which has such a high concentration of calcium salts in solution, that objects placed in the waterfall become covered in a thick coating of calcite in months, was not only very pretty, but also fascinating. The cave itself was formed by the same waters that now supply the Petrifying Well, the mineral deposits over 1000s of years collapsing about 6000 years ago, thus forming the cave. A life-size figure of Mother Shipton stands in the cave, and there is another in the Museum, where some of her legendary prophecies spin around her head.