Viewpoint

Today

Yesterday was Daddy's birthday. He would have been 116 years old. I raised my cup of tea to him and remembered fondly. There was a legend within the family that, on Daddy's 100th birthday, we would all gather at his favourite place to celebrate. His favourite place was Caterham Viewpoint.

In My Day

We regularly made the trip to Caterham. It was an easy bus journey, broken at South Croydon with a walk up Tupwood Lane to the top. Tupwood Lane started in typical suburban Surrey manner with spacious houses and elegant drives, but gradually it became more rural with bluebell woods.

Nothing ever quite prepared one for the dramatic opening that was the viewpoint. At the edge of the North Downs, the steep scarp dropped away and one could gaze out towards the South Downs and imagine the sea just out of sight.

here was plenty of time to ramble through the adjacent woods and to play on the open space. Somehow it never seemed very busy, as though just we and a few discerning others had discovered it.

Later, when we had bikes, the boys and I would cycle there for no reason, it seemed, other than to cycle back.

After Daddy's death we planted a tree at the viewpoint with a plaque set into the ground beneath. When the first tree disappeared we replanted.

After Mamma's death Caterham somehow dropped out of our viewpoint. On Daddy's 100th only Beatrice, Lizzie and I were there to toast the now treeless plaque with champagne, although David had gone there the previous weekend.

And last year, the gathering of us and Beatrice's family found that even the plaque had gone, leaving a somewhat obscure concrete plinth still stubbornly adhering to the chalk.

Whatever happens at Caterham it's our viewpoint of Daddy as a force for good in our lives that really matters and endures.