Jon Avison: A true Dalesman looks back

Jon Avison mulls over the accolade. He has just retired from one of the top posts in the Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority. Tributes poured in.

The chief executive, David Butterworth, described him in glowing terms.

"Jon has been an outstanding officer for the National Park Authority. The words 'true Dalesman' are often been mis-used, but Jon really is a true Dalesman in every way."

It's the final two words, "every way", that amuse us as we chat about his life and career. He has spent it all in the Yorkshire Dales, and we both know that the male inhabitants have a folklore reputation for being tight with money and perhaps a little terse of tongue. As if... Surely, David Butterworth would not be so cruel?

Jon took early retirement this autumn from his job as head of Park management and deputy chief executive

of the Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority, aka the YDNP.

The fare-thee-well and 60th birthday cards stand on the window at home. A densely coated tabby cat strolls across the lawn. Jon's recently acquired Mazda camper van sits in the garage. He'll be off to the holiday house in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada soon, via Slovakia, I think, he said, to see some friends.

His work with the YDNP has been fruitful, from his early days as area ranger for Malhamdale, where he supervised paths and some 400 steps up the side of Malham Cove.

Those were the days when the Army and Air Force

would pitch in for free with work gangs and heavy transport and the occasional Chinook.

"They will not do it now. They will not compete against paid-for contractors", he explains. Nor can he enlist schoolchildren. "We'd give them a stone in a bucket and ask them to take it up the path. That's no longer allowed".

So much has changed. Farmers would once readily help with transporting things, like posts and masonry, for restoration projects. Now, he says, they ask "how much?"

In the same 30 years, the YDNP has gone from a county council-run organisation with a staff of 40, to an independent authority with a staff of 140 and a budget of 9m a year, of which 6m comes from central government. There is strict accountability and monitoring, which is as it should be, he says.

Jon Avison was born in Harrogate. His father was a manufacturer's agent and had enough money to buy a farm at Hampsthwaite. Jon, who had three sisters, went away to Sedbergh School.

On a normal day in 1966, the family were driving on the Doncaster by-pass. A lorry jack-knifed and hit their car. The only survivors were Jon and one sister.

Jon went on to study at the Royal Agricultural College and, in his twenties, managed Stockton Farm, at Harewood, for Arnold Burton, the tailoring king.

Thousands of motorsport enthusiasts will have seen Jon. The Harewood speed hill climb course blasted through the farmyard, halting at milking time when Jon would take the herd across the track.

"You could be in the bathroom or kitchen and hear them roaring through," he reflects.

He had wider ambitions and was interested in organic holistic agriculture and, naturally, wanted his own farm.

He saw a way forward and left to join the Yorkshire Dales National Park, with a plan. A weak one as it turned out.

He would get a smallholding and use the Land Rover,

which the job would bring, to take his sheep to market in Hawes.

Well, there was no Land Rover, just a van, and plenty of Park work to keep him busy, but he did get his smallholding in time, which he farmed for 18 years in the Ribble valley, not far from his present home.

He loved his time in Malhamdale and has never moved far away. His job in Park management was equally rewarding, with a challenging array of issues and one notable agricultural crisis.

He remembers the horror and scale of the 2001-2002 foot and mouth epidemic. All the Army stuff, the culling, the closures, the changes that followed.

"It seems surreal," he reflects.

The YDNP took one call from a farmer, who, in all seriousness, asked that a river bridge being used by rabbits should be blown up in case they were spreading the disease.

A key part of his work has been with volunteers. "I got a lovely letter when I retired from a retired teacher, who had been a Dales volunteer for 20 years after meeting me in Malham. She said her weekend career as a volunteer meant more than her first job as a teacher."

National Parks are a force for the benefit of the majority but they get flak. Wrangles over planning restrictions make the Press, but, says Jon, the reality is that 90 per cent of applicants say they are happy

with the process.

Protecting old byways from the ravages of recreational 4x4s and trials bikes has been a struggle, and he counts

the traffic restriction orders as one of his greater achievements.

"We pushed hard to make it easier to define the legal use of the roads and have the authority to put traffic regulations in place. It's been a real success over the last 10 years".

Summing up?

"It has been absolutely great. The best job in the country."

He adds that he has been fortunate to be doing something he enjoyed and that he believes he has made a difference to the area.

Next, the future: travel and music. A stalwart Lancastrian called Holgate, a brass founder, built the current Avison family house in the 1860s. It is a strong, matter-of fact-place with good floors and ornate cornices. A piano, several guitars and a banjo give a clue to one of Jon Avison's passions.

There is a music studio in the cellars where he writes and records for his virtual group, The Moonbeams,

who live as far away at Canterbury.

"We hardly ever meet," says Jon. Favourite guitarist? "Oh, let's say Bert Jansch. He's good enough."

The various Moonbeams add their contributions in turn to the musical pieces and Jon assembles the whole.

One of their rare get-togethers was at the Maypole pub, in Long Preston, to celebrate Jon's 60th.

They may gather again on New Year's Eve for a bit of blues and folk and doo wop.

CW 20/11/10