Postman pat where is greendale

Travel Guide Greendale Greendale and the nearby town of Pencaster are both fictional but clearly inspired by the area on the border of Cumbria and the Lake District where the creator of Postman Pat lived.

The Post Office Greendale is a large, busy village situated in the heart of the Cumbrian countryside. Winding roads Many of the roads in and around the village are narrow and wind round corners with hedgerows and fields on both sides. Where Next? Featured Book. Fingersmith A gang of fingersmiths, a web of lies, a spiral into the unknown. Read more. Please tick this box if you'd like to receive information and updates from us about our book news.

You can unsubscribe from our emails at any time using the unsubscribe link provided in the emails that are sent to you. Even though he had succeeded in publishing several little stories about Farmer Barnes, he had never earned any real money from it and simply enjoyed it for the pleasure it gave him. But from the beginning, he was excited about Postman Pat. He had actually been asked to write it by the BBC who had told him to come up with a series set in the countryside and, within two minutes of being asked, he had thought of the idea.

When he showed them his 13 stories, the BBC said they liked them and, several months later, when they showed them to the best animator in the country, Ivor Wood, he said he liked them, too. Wood visited Cunliffe in the Lake District and toured the hills, soaking up locations and shooting off a roll of pictures of one particularly amiable postman whom they found up a lonely valley running errands for his customers.

Now he agreed to turn the stories into minute films for the BBC. And when he told Cunliffe that he needed to buy the rights to his creation before he could sink all this money into the production, Cunliffe thought that was sensible enough.

No one could take that away from him. At least, that was what he thought then. Postman Pat was a big success. The BBC repeated the films in the spring of and then again in the autumn. Terry Wogan started playing the theme tune on his radio programme and it ended up in the charts.

The films were repeated yet again, twice a year, becoming a new ritual of childhood. He had signed away his rights. He got nothing for the films when they were repeated over and over again. He was earning a handsome living. And when he wrote more books, he was happy enough to give 50 per cent of the royalties to Ivor Wood.

That was what the contract said. The thing that first worried John Cunliffe was that other writers were now turning out Pat stories and they seemed to be changing him. Cunliffe knew people who had adopted that as a family saying. It was only silly, he knew, but it was one of the little touches that made Pat a comfort to people.

And then one day, he walked into a book shop and found a whole book about Pat that set his teeth right on edge. It was so badly written. It made him feel quite awkward that people might think he had written it. And in one story, Pat did something particularly stupid. The radiator in his little red van boiled over, and he hopped straight out and pulled the radiator cap off.

Cunliffe was sure he would never have let Pat do anything so silly. He felt so upset that he wrote off a letter, asking how this could happen. Apart from anything else, Cunliffe was under the impression that he was supposed to be the only author of books about Pat. It turned out that this was not a book, because it was printed on card instead of paper. He still wrote new stories from time to time and had them published by Scholastic, who had taken over from Andre Deutsch and, once or twice, he even contributed to a merchandising book.

John Cunliffe watched in wonder as the great supremos gave Ivor Wood his Gold Cassette and told everyone how marvellous it was that Ivor had created Postman Pat.

It was a chilling moment. By now Pat was a millionaire and Woodland Animations had taken over from the BBC as the sole organisers of his merchandising. But it was Molly Clifton who gave me most help. She was a teacher at Castle Park School, where I was in my first teaching job, and she had many friends in farming. She spent a day, taking me around farms in the Kendal area, introducing me to the people, giving me a wonderful insight into their way of life.

I soon saw what wonderful people they were; friendly and hospitable; always ready to help, or to offer a cup of tea to the thirsty traveller. They were very much in my mind when I sat down to draw the map of Greendale, and to people it with farmers and their families, the post-mistress, Ted Glen, Granny Dryden, and all the others, and to write my stories about them.

This experience contributed a great deal to the TV series as well. Like Pat, I travelled around a rural area, and met a great many farmers and other rural dwellers, who were kind and generous in the way that the people of Greendale are. It was all there, in my memory. So Greendale is Northumberland as well as Cumbria; but Cumbria takes the lead, as that is where I set it, and where I wrote it.

There was another person in Kendal who was even more important in the birth of Postman Pat. She was the parent of one of the children in my class. I've forgotten her name. One day, she came into school, and said to me, "You write stories for children, don't you? She said they were looking for new writers, for a new TV series.