My fond memories of James Herriot: the vet who explored a magical land

The familiarity of the words culled from a popular hymn doubtless helped an author with a modest disposition to achieve worldwide sales. Herriot books were to sell by the million. Not all the characters in his books have our sympathy. Yet in Herriot's world, justice and basic human kindness usually triumphed in the end.

I first met Alf Wight, alias James Herriot, at his home in a village near Thirsk. Invited to the town to officially open a Dales craft trail, I hoped that when my official duties were over I might seek him out for a chat about his work in the Pennine Dales and North York Moors.

Alf replied to my written request by phone, agreeing to a meeting. He spoke in a gentle, low-key voice that had a faint Glaswegian inflection. Alf, born in Sunderland, was there for only three weeks. Then the Wight family moved to Glasgow. As a city boy, he grew up in what he described to me as "a world of bustle and trams".

I met him at his home in the quiet, off-the-main-road village of Thirlby. When I commented that this must be in marked contrast to the noisy Glaswegian years, I was reminded that Glasgow is flanked by attractive country. Caught up in the Great Outdoors movement of the 1930s, Alf had spent much of his boyhood and youth on the Scottish mountains. It was in Glasgow that he trained as a vet.

At Thirlby, I was greeted by Alf and Bodie, his Border Terrier. Alf, in the twilight years of his life, seemed bemused by the fantastic success of the Herriot books, the first of which was penned when he was in his 50s. The stories were heavily fictionalised. He did not want to offend friends and clients.

A vet's world at the time of his entry was "large animal" orientated.

Newly-qualified as a vet, he entered the farming world with a special knowledge of five species of animal – horse, ox, sheep, pig and dog. "The poor old cat never had a mention." Alf was basically a "horse doctor". He considered this situation absurd, for although a fair number of horses existed in the Yorkshire countryside when he qualified, "the tractor had taken over almost completely".

Alf qualified as a vet in 1939, the year in which war broke out. Jobs were scarce. After a short spell with a vet based on Sunderland – at three guineas a week – he found employment at Thirsk. Donald Sinclair was senior partner in the veterinary practice. He and his brother Brian were to appear in the Herriot books under Wagnerian names – Siegfried and Tristan.

Alf's links with the Yorkshire Dales came about because Donald had business links with Frank Bingham, a vet based on Leyburn, in Wensleydale. He was concerned almost entirely with tuberculin-testing of cattle. Frank had offered the lucrative job to Donald Sinclair, who passed on the practical aspects to Alf. Frank in turn would say: "Oh, while you're at such and such a farm, just castrate a couple of colts."

It was while helping Frank that Alf began his love affair with the dale-country of the Pennines. A magic moment in his early association came after he had been motoring over Bellerby Moor, from Leyburn to Grinton. He had drawn his car off the unfenced road to let out the dog. Sitting on a rock outcrop, he beheld the valley of the Swale. "I felt as though I had suddenly been transported into a magical land."

Many apocryphal tales were told about Frank Bingham but to Alf he was "a wonderful chap… One of my favourite men." He would be mentioned in one of Alf's books under the name Ewan Ross. Frank had a car, though some vets were still going around on motor bikes.

Alf had a car, of sorts. The brakes did not work. The most anxious time came when he was descending a steep and winding road between the moor-top and West Witton, in Wensleydale. The brakeless journey included negotiating a hairpin bend. Happily, Alf managed to keep the car on

the road.

As a vet, he met farmers who were dabbling with "cures" not far removed from black magic. "It was a very funny time in veterinary practice, with all those awful old treatments." That was probably what motivated Alf to write the first of his many books.

Herriot Country, his literary creation, was to be defined as "the area between two lines drawn from the heads of Coverdale and Swaledale, across the Plain and over the Hambleton Hills to the North York Moors and the lovely villages of the Coast."

My Dales experiences overlapped those of Alf. We talked about t'owd days, when families were old-established and life was austere. There were no fancy breeds of livestock. Fields and fells were populated by Shorthorn cows and Swardles (Swaledale sheep].

Jim Wight, his son, was to recall that the wild, bleak scenery of the upper dales made a strong appeal. "Get him up on to Tan Hill in later life and he would stand and take deep breaths. Then he'd say: "My, but this air's fantastic." In 1978, Alf purchased a cottage at West Scrafton, Coverdale, revelling in the charm of this isolated little valley.

A typical farmhouse kitchen was stone-flagged, with a gargantuan kitchen range that received a weekly application of black lead. Pig-meat – a basic food – was suspended from hooks in the kitchen ceiling.

At spring-cleaning time, the stored wings of geese that had been slain for the Christmas market came in handy; they were used to remove dirt and cobwebs from behind large pieces of furniture.

Personally, I was surprised when, in a poll organised by the Yorkshire Dales National Park, to mark their 60th anniversary, I was voted

the area's greatest living cultural icon.

Surprise was quickly followed by delight when, in a related cultural icon poll, for those who were dead but still revered, I found myself associated in name with – James Herriot.

As they say in the Dales: "I were fair capped!"

Herriot: A Vet's Life by WR Mitchell, Great Northern Books, 15.99, ISBN 9781905080779. To order from the Yorkshire Post Bookshop, call free on 0800 0153232 or online at www.yorkshirepostbookshop.co.uk. Postage and packing is 2.75.