Terry Freeman spent most of his biking days as a teenager cycling between High Melton where he lived and his Granddad’s Farm Melton Brand, which was between Cusworth and High Melton.
In the summer of 1964, Terry was enjoying the holidays at home from school. It was Monday 27th July, a beautiful warm day as he remembers. Around tea time, he was playing on his bike outside his home on Hangman’s Stone Lane, High Melton when he noticed that a glider had been circling the village. Eventually, the glider in question came very close to his house at low altitude, just missing the chimney, before coming to land in the field of corn stubble just behind the house.
Terry flew off on his bike down the road into and across the field of stubble towards the aircraft, only to find that a local farmer had got there before him. They became the two witnesses of the pilot’s official landing. The pilot, Mr Philip Wills, had covered 107 miles on that particular day from Camphill, Great Hucklow while taking part in the Northern Gliding Championships. Mr P. Wills was in first place at the end of the initial day.
Story submitted by Janet A. Roberts née Kitson, with Terry Freeman.
Footnote: – Mr Philip Aubrey Wills (26th May 1907 – 16th January 1978) was a pioneering British Glider Pilot who broke several records in his gliding career. He was awarded The C.B.E. and The Lilienthal Gliding Medal in 1954 for services to gliding.
DONCASTER'S CYCLING STORIES 