Page 21 - Club Rockley

Chapter 5
“In Colder Times”
In 1984 I returned to the UK and set up a tour operator Company based in Harrogate in North Yorkshire, of course, selling Holidays to all the Islands of the Caribbean but mainly focusing on holidays to Barbados, naming the new company, “Happiness Island Holidays Ltd “.
By 1987 my new company’s accounts were being audited by Pannell Kerr Forster, Leeds office, I had a big surprise when I discovered that their Leeds practice was now headed by none other than David Lewis, formerly Peter Boos’s partner in the Barbados practice, a member of the Christ Church Investment Club, and an enthusiastic Stage Hand for sev- eral Rugby Club Christmas pantomimes. Also, David’s wife, Vivien, had taught our children, Sophie, Louise and Adam at St Gabriel’s School, how’s that for a massive coincidence!
After the first three years, my “Tour Operator” Company had be- come modestly profitable, and I had thought my days as a risk taking de- veloper were well over. I was still playing squash at the same club in Har- rogate where I had played some 0 years previously and was still playing friendly cricket matches with the remarkable Cardinals CC, the Club I had always enjoyed playing for in the early 1960’s, those “swinging sixties” when ‘The Beatles’ had just “arrived”, the mini skirt was very much in fashion, discos had suddenly become really popular, and the second world war was becoming a faded memory for most of us! socially, things had, of course, settled down a bit by the mid eighties, but Yorkshire had not changed all that much from the days of my youth, except, of course for the arrival of traffic congestion in the towns and cities, which in turn had resulted in the arrival of the dreaded traffic wardens!
One of the best things about the tour operator company was that I was able to join up with my friend John Snow, England’s former leading fast bowler, by then a Travel Agent, and organize several quite successful “supporters tours” to coincide with the England Cricket team’s Caribbean tours. Many of our guests chose to stay at Rockley itself not least because Rockley was chosen as the Host Hotel for many years, for both
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