Back in the autumn of 1930 the Yorkshire Observer, sister paper of the Telegraph & Argus, was flying high. Or at least its name was, on the wings of a glider presented by the management of the newspapers to the newly-founded Bradford Gliding Club at its Apperley Bridge headquarters.

I was reminded about this by a letter from Mrs Jean Gadsden whose father, Roy Watson, was one of the club's founder members. In its early days the club also flew from Baildon Moor. But then it absorbed the Leeds Gliding Club and sought a more suitable venue.

"Sutton Bank was discovered' and became their permanent home," writes Mrs Gadsden, who recalls as a young girl spending Spartan family weekends under canvas there until members built a DIY wooden clubhouse.

"The primitive string and sealing wax' gliders of those days were launched manually by a catapult-type contraption and frequently landed in a farmer's field at the bottom of the Bank", she adds. "Mind you, they got permission from the farmer to use his field in case of emergencies."

The club was renamed the Yorkshire Gliding Club in 1934 and thrived until 1939 when the war started and it closed down temporarily, After the war it was re-formed.

"Today it flourishes in a custom-built clubhouse and boasts beautiful, high-speed machines," reports Mrs Gadsden, who recently visited Sutton Bank.

It made her wonder if there is anyone "out there" who might have family records/photographs from those early days at Apperley Bridge and Sutton Bank. Names that sprung immediately to her mind include Clarence Jowett, of Jowetts Cars; Norman Sharpe, founder of the Bradford Gliding Club and a member of the Sharpe family of greeting-cards fame; Harold Holdsworth and Maurice Verity.

If you have any material or information relating to the club's early days, please drop a line to me and I'll pass it on to Mrs Gadsden.