At the height of summer 1992, I sat on a mossy rock, idly sweating in my shell suit and swatting midges away. Sitting in the dirt a few feet to my left was Rob, munching on a packet of pickled onion Space Invaders he'd taken from the camouflaged backpack we'd brought with us to carry tools and food supplies in. Col was sitting in front of me, digging into the ground with a lollipop stick. Timney had volunteered to gather tinder so Davison could get a fire going to dry his sock and shoe off.
We'd set out that morning, meeting up at the shop at half-nine, where we all chipped in for our supplies: two dozen packets of crisps, four litres of Villa cola and a bit ket. It was all bunged into the bag, which I carried. The bag also contained a hacksaw, a ball of string and an army knife - one of those with a saw blade on one side, a hollow handle to keep things in and a compass on the butt - which belonged to Rob. I'd nicked the hacksaw and string from my Dad's wash-house early that morning. In addition to that, both Timney and myself had Swiss army knives in our pockets and Davison had a big box of Cooks matches.
From the shop we followed the road down to the Toll Bar, then took the cut past the Sykes factory which gave way to a dirt path running between farmers fields. Towards the end of the path there is a steep mud bank, treacherous when wet, that leads down to worn concrete steps which, in turn, lead down to the beach. The last few steps are gone, so there is a two foot drop from the last step to the beach.
This part of Ryhope beach is all stones: rock pools, pebbles and seaweed. Climbing on a rock, I slipped and everyone laughed at me. But then Timney, hopping lightly from one rock to another, also slipped and went down on his arse. He started whimpering that he had broken his pelvis, which made us all laugh even harder and call him a poof.
I've never liked sea-air: it makes my guts ache so I need a shit. God knows why people think that's healthy.
I walked slowly along the beach, the shingle crunching and sliding beneath my feet, looking for bits of worn, coloured glass that look like unpolished gems. I thought how cool it would be to find a bottle with a message in it. Meanwhile, Col and Davison were hunting for crabs. Rob was waving a bit of seaweed around like it was a whip and he was Indiana Jones. Timney was gingerly stepping amongst the rock-pools, still rubbing his backside and muttering to himself.
"There's one! Get it!", Col shouted from away to my left. I turned around and started walking over towards them, as they circled a rock pool, exclaiming excitedly. Davison was rolling his jacket sleeve up and was crouched down by the pool, looking into it intently.
As I made my way over I had my eyes to the ground, moving carefully to avoid slipping. Suddenly there was a shout and a scream of laughter.
"Bastard!"
I looked up and saw everyone laughing and pointing at Davison who was standing, balancing on one foot and swearing.
"What happened?" I shouted.
Col answered: "Davison's foot slipped into the water! He nearly fell in!"
"Ah man! Me fucking shoe's soaked!" he cried. "Me Mam's garna kill 's. That fucking crab's dead when I catch it!"
In a moment, Timney had taken off his socks and shoes and rolled up his trousers to wade into a pool. I just stood watching as they all started catching crabs. Timney got one first and the cry went up to torture it. Davison dropped a large rock on it.
"That's shan that, like," I said quietly and walked away in disgust. They paid no attention.
I wandered off a short distance down the beach and stood staring out to sea, ignoring their shouts and laughter. I tried to imagine being able to see the distant coasts of Norway, Denmark and Holland and wondered how this stretch of coast would look from out there. I've never liked the idea of being at sea; I'm not even comfortable going out on a lake in a paddle boat. The North Sea is a hideously filthy, cold and bad-tempered mass of water. Such a vast, impersonal force can kill you without either knowing or caring. The idea of being out there in a boat scares me: it makes me feel exposed and vulnerable. But at the same time, there is something impressive about it. The cliffs at Ryhope are being eaten away by the sea: it's reckoned that in fifty years time, Toll Bar Road will be under water. It's an eery thing to think about as you stand watching the hypnotic roll of the waves: when all else is gone, the impassive sea will still be there.
After a while they tired of cruelty to crabs and began to drift down the beach, towards the cliffs.
"There's a shit-brick!" said Col, picking up a rounded, navy blue rock and hurling it full force at a large, slime covered boulder. The shit-brick broke in two and Col picked one half up. "Have a sniff," he said to Timney, who did so.
"Gah, Jesus!" he winced.
The ammonia-reeking rock was passed round for everyone to smell, to general disgust, before being thrown away.
As we meandered down the beach we collected odds and ends that caught our eye. Col, like Rob earlier, had picked up a length of seaweed which he used as a whip on Timney. Rob had found an old bike tyre, which he was throwing up into the air. I was looking for bits of flint to strike sparks with. I had half a dozen likely specimens clinking in my pocket.
We came to a part where the cliff juts out a little. There is a small hole that runs through the cliff for a couple of feet, and naturally enough, we all crawled through it rather than walk around it.
By the time we came to that rock called Apple Gouk, the bag was starting to get heavy on my shoulder, so I passed it on to Timney, who carried it with both straps over his shoulders and moved like a commando on the march. We don't call him Rambo for nothing.
The stones abruptly give way to a short stretch of sand. We found a bit of driftwood and scratched our names into the sand with it. Davison and Col had a sort of gladiator fight: driftwood sword vs seaweed whip. Col won easily, as his whip gave him a longer reach, though the seaweed wasn't flexible enough to wrap around the stick and yank it out of Davison's hand as he kept trying to do.
We paused for a while to dig a pit in the sand. It filled with water at just a couple of inches deep, so we put some back - just enough to cover the water and make it resemble quicksand. By now I had a fair bit of sand in my hair because of Rob flicking it about as he dug with his knife. As we lost interest in the pit we started throwing the knife, ninja-style, at the sandy cliff, trying to make it stick in, without much success.
After a while we noticed the tide was starting to come in, so we decided to move on. We came to another stretch of rocks. I found a stone, a rounded triangle in shape and fairly flat. I tried to bore a hole through it with the corkscrew on my Swiss army knife, but got nowhere, so I threw it away.
Eventually we came to that large concrete platform with railings around it. There is a winding path that runs uphill from here, cutting into the cliffs, with steep banks on either side, at the top of which are cattle fields. Towards the top, the path goes under the railway bridge, which is always dark and stinks of cow shit, passes the farm and comes out into Ryhope Village.
We loitered there for a while, but there was little to do, so we continued. A couple of miles down the coast, we could see Seaham, with it's pier extending out to sea in the hazy summer sunlight.
Shortly, we came to a break in the cliffs: the mouth of Ryhope Dene, our destination. Around the mouth of the dene there are many large, yellowish rocks scattered about - evidence of rock falls, of which there is sign urging you to beware. There is a shallow stream which runs through the dene and onto the beach, but that summer the stream-bed was completely dry. The dene is quite narrow and its sides are steep, covered in bushes and, further up, trees. If it weren't for the litter, it would be easy to imagine yourself as an explorer in some African gorge, as you do when you're a bairn.
We headed into the dene, following a thin dirt path, and crossed a little wooden bridge. As the dene curved a bit, the beach and the sound of the waves were left behind us; even the salt-air faded as the vibrant smell of wild plant-life closed in around us.
The path gave way to a gently-sloping clearing where we sat for a while, before going off to explore the trees on our right. We had come here with the idea of making a den - hence why I had brought the hacksaw and string - but we couldn't find anywhere suitable. The area to our right was too steep and densely wooded, while on the left side of the stream, was nothing but a cliff. The only place for a site was the clearing and that was too open: dens have to be hidden. We weren't even able to find any porn: usually these places are littered with scraps of porn mags, presumably left by gluesniffers. One of the tactics used by adults to try and scare kids away from these dangerously isolated places is to give warnings about some semi-mythical monster. I suppose these days its paedophiles, but in those days it was gluesniffers.
So instead we sat in the clearing and tore into our supplies of pop and crisps. I had a Mars Bar in my pocket that had melted in the heat. Inevitably, as I ate it, I got chocolate all over my fingers and as I licked it off I could still taste the sand from digging the pit earlier.
Davison started complaining that his wet foot was irritating him and we all laughed at him again. He suggested starting a fire to dry them off, which seemed like a good idea as we didn't have anything to do. However, what with the muggy heat and the fact that we'd all just stuffed ourselves, none of us could really be bothered to move.
"Gin an then, Rambo; show us your SAS skills and get some firewood!" Col laughed.
"Fuck off! Get it ya'sell!" Timney replied.
"Ah would, like, but Ah dint knarr where to look. Ah wasn't trained by the SAS, like yay were. Gin an, Timbo!"
Timney sighed ostentatiously and got up to look for firewood.
"Fucking Commando Timney," Col said quietly and we all laughed.
"He's nivver been right since he got back from Vietnam," I followed up.
But sure enough, within a few minutes, Timney came back with plenty of dry tinder which he started building into a fire. However, as we had no paper to get the fire started, we couldn't get the twigs to burn, so Davison was no better off.
I believe Ryhope Dene was originally much bigger, but it was cut in two by the railway line and the road that runs from the town centre, along Ryhope Road, through Grangetown, past the Toll Bar, through Ryhope Village and down the coast to Seaham. The other part of the dene, which we called Cherry Knocker after the Cherry Knowle mental hospital just next to it, lies on the other side. The road is much higher than the bottom of the dene. There is a steep flight of wood and earth steps that climb from the clearing, up to the road. They come out next to a railway bridge that's just inside Sunderland's city limits.
The stream (when it runs at all) runs through Cherry Knocker, under the road via what looks like a Victorian sewer. It's a tunnel, maybe a hundred feet in length, and is openly accessible at both ends. For want of anything better to do, we were daring each other to go in. Davison - the damn fool - took up the dare.
The opening is about four feet high. Davison ducked into it and walking slowly, bent-double, disappeared into the gloom.
"Dinnit let him out," Col whispered to us as we crowded around the mouth of the tunnel. We giggled.
"Agh, fuck!" A slightly muffled voice reverberated back down the tunnel to us.
"What's the matter?" Timney called.
"I've just cracked me fuckin' head on the ceiling! The tunnel's getting smaller!" This was followed by some indistinct mumbling. A moment later Davison came back into view.
"Ya not getting out this end, like!" Col grinned and shouted. "Ye'll ha' ta gan reet the way through!"
"Fuck off!" Davison cried and ran at us. He was a big lad: not quite as tall as me, but broader and probably heavier than Col, so we didn't really try to stop him as he barged past us.
"Ha ha! Ye've got a bit of shit in your hair! Shit head!" Rob laughed, pointing at Davison, who did indeed have some dirt in his thick, wavy ginger hair.
He brushed it off and rubbed his head. "That's where Ah hit me heed. Fuckin' knacks. The ceiling gets lower as ya gan further in. Its pitch black in there. Cannot see nowt."
"Mak a torch," I suggested.
"Aye!" said Col. "We'll mak a torch an' all of us 'll gan through! Ha'weh!"
There followed another futile attempt at getting a fire going, with scraps of dry grass and the labels off the pop bottles.
"We'll just ha' to keep lighting a match to see where we're gannin," said Timney as we gave up with the fire.
"D'ya reckon the crisp packets might work?" I asked. "If we put some on the end of a stick and lit it, it might work..."
"We could try it. Ha'way then!" said Col, picking up some crisp packets. "Davison: yay gan fuggie with the matches. Ah'll gan seccie. Who's third?"
"Ah will!" said Timney.
"Then..." Col prompted, picking up a stick and handing it to Davison.
"Ah'm not boshed like. Ah'll gan last," I said.
"Reet, so Rob's fourth. Neil's last."
I "volunteered" to go last because I'm a bit claustrophobic and I didn't like the idea of having someone behind me, blocking my way out. I picked up the backpack (which was much lighter now most of the pop was gone) and put it on.
As I waited my turn to duck into the opening, I was reminded of that part in IT by Stephen King when the Losers Club go into the sewers under Derry. I had read that book twice and it was easily my favourite at that time, basically because it seemed so vivid and familiar, especially in its description of the Barrens, which always reminded me of Tunstall Hills where we often used to play. Plus, I loved the early rock'n'roll - Jerry Lee Lewis and Little Richard and shit - that forms a sort of soundtrack to much of the book. My recollection of IT became even stronger once I entered the tunnel.
The atmosphere inside was cool and damp. The smell was of mud and mould and rotting vegetation. It reminded me a little of the compost heap my dad kept at the bottom of the garden.
We slowly moved some way into the tunnel, each of us bending over (and I, being the tallest, had to bend my legs a little too) with a few feet between each of us - no-one wanted an arse in their face after all. There was a pause as Davison lit the stick and crisp packet torch, but I was too far back and there were too many intervening bodies for me to see much by it.
We continued a short distance and had to crouch even more: the ceiling was indeed getting lower - or rather, the ground was getting higher, but either way, the space was getting tighter. The bag on my back was scraping on the ceiling.
Within a few more feet, I found myself crawling on my hands and knees. The sludge on the ground wasn't too damp, but it was cold and unpleasant to the touch. I was fairly convinced I was placing my hands in rat shit.
Just then, the torch burned out and the gloom faded to utter darkness.
"Ah fuck," said someone up ahead.
"Just light a match," said Col.
A faint glow appeared further down the tunnel.
"Can ya see the end yet?" asked Timney.
"No. It curves a bit. Must be round the corner," Davison replied. "Ah'm busting for a slash."
The match burnt out and we continued a little way further. Once again, the bag was scraping on the ceiling. Unable to see anything, the space felt very close and dank. The pressure increased on the backpack and it seemed evident that soon I'd have to crawl on my belly. At that point, my nerve broke.
"Fuck this - Ah'm garn back."
"Eh?"
I didn't repeat myself, but instead just backed my way down the tunnel a little way until I felt I had a little more space, at which point I turned around and made for the light. God it was a relief to get out of there and out into the sun and fresh air! A few moments later, the others followed me.
"Ya fucking chicken!" Col accused me.
I shrugged awkwardly, a bit embarrassed. "Ah'm claustrophobic, man."
Davison wandered off into the trees for a piss and came back with a pair of black swimming shorts. "Look what Ah've fund! We could use these on the torch!"
He hung them on the end of the stick and lit them with a match. As the outer part of them was made of the same stuff as shell suits, it went up no bother. He swung it about a couple of times in a melodramatic fashion and a small drop of burning plastic flew off and landed on my left hand.
"Agh ya fuckin' BASTARD!" I yelled, shaking my hand vigorously as the plastic melted on to it.
"What's the matter with yay?" Timney laughed.
"Davison, ya fuckin' dick 'ead! That fucking knacks, that! Look at that! A bit of fucking plastic "s melted onto me hand!" I showed the others the black blob on my hand and everyone burst out laughing.
"Jesus!" I muttered as I tried to pick it off. I hissed, clutching my hand tightly as it came away to reveal a silvery-pink patch of slightly shrivelled skin, like that of a hotdog. "Bastard! Stinging like fuck. Look at that - me friggin' skin started melting!"
I stuck my hand in my mouth to sooth the burn with saliva, while my friends still howled with laughter.
The End