|
|
Big Josie
of Boot
The
name of our walking group, BOOTboys,
is only partly
to do with footwear worn on the hills and nothing to
do with any hooligan sub-culture.
It is also partly in memory of a night in 1973 when we chanced
upon the Burnmoor Inn at Boot in Eskdale.
Actually,
it is not exactly true to say "chanced". We
had heard tales of the Inn and its eccentric landlady,
Big Josie as she was known, and we wanted to see if
they were true.
After a day's walking on the fells
we found out. They were true. Somewhat tame by modern
day standards but rather risqué in the early
1970s.
|
|
Having seen for ourselves, in the best
traditions of investigative journalism we made an excuse
and left.
Josie was Austrian. She had a
daughter by a soldier who was killed on the Russian front in WWII. Subsequently she met and married John, a
British soldier, and they settled in Eskdale, at Boot's Burnmoor Inn.
Many years later, her teenage daughter was brought over from Austria to
look after her step-brothers.
After John died, Josie started
to drink heavily and her eccentric behaviour
developed. Her antics were legendary. Several
descriptions exist on the web and Eric Robson, in his
book "After Wainwright", relates the tale of a typical
Josie encounter.
Eventually
she was drinking a bottle of gin a day and the doctor
advised her that unless things changed she had less
than six months to live. She left the Burnmoor
Inn and moved to Gosforth where she became a more respectable
woman who stopped drinking.
Josie
died in 2001. Boot
would never be the same again.
|
|
|
If you want to follow The
BOOTboys
let us know and
you will
receive automatic notification of new BOOTboys reports. Click on to contact us. BOOTboys are
also on Facebook
For
the index pages of our various outings click
on the relevant link below:
Photos
have been gleaned from many sources although mostly
from me and other BOOTboys.
Likewise written comment.
I apologise if I have
failed to acknowledge properly the source or infringed
copyright.
Please let me
know and I will do my best to put things right.
Unless stated
otherwise, please feel free to download the material
if you wish.
A reference back to this website
would be appreciated.
E-mail addresses on this web site are protected
by Email Riddler
Spam Trawlers will be further frustrated
by Spam Blocker:
help fight spam e-mail!
BOOTboys©
is a Lakeland Enterprise production brought
to you by
Comitibus
Communications©
|
|
