in our lifetime'

Those 11 words, in the headline above, were spoken at midnight on New Year's Eve by a man in a crowd of hundreds on top of Otley Chevin.

And they perhaps sum up best the awe-inspiring sight that met the masses who had made the muscle burning climb up the hill, their torches winding the way through the trees like a snake of light.

With Otley's bonfire already ablaze (curiously constructed of hundreds of redundant window frames, donated by Otley firm RG Fowlers) the sight that met the crowd of more than 1,000 almost defied description.

With good weather giving perfect views, those on top of the Chevin found themselves standing on a hill-top surrounded by a sea of dancing lights as fireworks flew, it seemed, from every garden in every house below.

To every point of the compass the sky was illuminated in a display that overpowered the senses. Ridiculous as it may sound, forget New York, Sydney, or the Southerner's Dome, there can have been no more spectacular sight to see in the new age. The thousands of people in the pubs below will ever know exactly what they missed.

And if music was to have accompanied the majestic lights

display, it could only have been the song Smoke Gets In Your Eyes, as the wind mischeviously blew smoke and sparks over the watching hundreds.

And standing guard over it all was the new Chevin Cross, a reminder of the true religious nature of the whole night.

The event was organised by the Otley Millennium Association and one of its members, Robin Costello, who helped supervise the event on the night, said: "It was a magical night. Everything went very, very well. Obviously we had prepared for various

disaster scenarios, such as groups of youths running riot, but the whole thing went brilliantly and everyone was in superb humour."

As the man said, such a sight will never be seen again.

(Bonfire 52-07-C / Cross 52-07-D)

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.