Skipton Market: Yorkshire trader affectionately known as Billy “Biscuits” Collins retires after 40 years working at markets all over the region

Throughout his career, Billy “Biscuits” Collins, 67, had forged close relationships with his customers from all around the region including Thirsk, Ilkley, Bradford and Scarborough. Until around eight years ago he was travelling 800 miles a week just to get from market to market.

When he turned 60, he decided to stay in one place when an opportunity to work at Skipton Market came up. After eight years of working there he felt the trading business was very physically demanding and decided to retire.

“I always said that winter would be the time when I finish because it’s quite [a lot of] work, working on markets,” Mr Collins told The Yorkshire Post.

“It’s mainly the winter time that I found very hard these last couple of years. Also trading isn’t what it was; people’s shopping habits have changed as well, so there’s a decline in trade and markets.

“I’m quite fit but I do find it tiring what we do. When you get there in the morning, the stall that we had there needed about 120 bars to make the stall, so it’s quite physical [work].

“Prior to working at Skipton Market, we used to do five different markets across five areas in three counties, so every day I did a different market.

“But then when I was coming up 60, [at the time] I was travelling over 800 miles a week just to and from markets and I wanted to be nearer home with less travelling, in a way that was one step towards retiring, although that was eight years ago. That’s why I went to Skipton.

“As many markets are failing now, one thing that Skipton has is that it attracts tourists, it attracts coach companies, the old town, not just the market. Which means that people have something to go to Skipton for and while they’re there they shop on the market, whereas a lot of towns that don’t have those attractions by bringing tourists in have failed.

“Looking at the market industry, Skipton is one of the few markets that still has its head above water by foot-fall.”

On Thursday (August 25) organisers of Skipton Market announced on Facebook that one of their long-standing traders will retire and that was his last day at the market.

Throughout the day messages of support came flooding in under the post from past and present customers. More than 220 people took to social media to show their support and the post has received more than 3,600 likes.

There are many aspects of his job that he will miss, mainly his customers.

“I won’t miss getting up at half four in the morning, but what I will miss is the customers because we had regular customers that came in every week,” he said.

“We had regular local customers that came in every week that we knew by name, then also we had people that might come every two or three weeks from other towns, even as far away as Liverpool, we had customers and people from Ilkley and Bradford.

“They were still regular customers who we knew by name. And it shows by the comments we’ve had on the Facebook post.

“I miss buying the stock; the nature of [items] we had were sweets, biscuits and cakes, we had different things every week, so there was an excitement in going to buy your stock.

“There was an excitement in the morning when you got there, putting the stall up but then actually putting a display on, what we call putting a flash on, making the best possible display that you could to attract the customers, I’ll miss that.

“The other thing [I’ll miss] is when you can’t wait to go home after you’ve had a good day and count the money to see how you’ve got on. I’ve been very passionate about what I did.

“It was very nice to get comments from people from other markets that we did, like there’s a lady from Leyburn who commented. It was quite nice to read that those people haven’t forgotten us.”

Now that he is retired, Mr Collins has plans to explore all Yorkshire has to offer with his wife including visiting all the markets as a guest.

He admits he has never explored the areas he has worked in as he never had time before. He shares his plans post retirement.

“It’s about more time for us, mainly me and my wife. I love my garden, so more time for gardening and DIY jobs, and also the fact that we can go visit places because we’re not working every day,” he said.

“We can get up one morning and think, oh we’ll go to Otley for a few hours today or we’ll go to Skipton even. Because one thing I’ve never done, and all the market towns I did previously when we were doing different markets over the week, now including Skipton, is I’ve never been round those towns because you used to get there in the morning, you’d set your stall up, work all day and then come home at night.

“So it would be nice to go back to the places where we’ve worked like Cheshire, Scarborough where I’ve worked, and even Skipton, and actually spend some time walking around.

“Take Skipton as an example, I’ve never walked around Skipton, I’ve never walked along the canal, never been to the castle or the woods at the top. It will be quite nice to go one day and do those things and see what’s there.”

Skipton Market officer, Toby Garbutt, said: “He’s got a lot of experience in trading. He’s been there for as long as I’ve [worked as the market officer]. I’m a local person, my dad knows Billy, my friend’s dad knows him, he’s been there and established community relationships.

“As you can see with all the comments on the post, you can see how many people are going to miss Billy, I mean people travel all the way from surrounding towns and cities just to come to the market to see him.”