Just half a mile from Londonderry and Moscow

Prompted by our front page story last week on the twinning of Londonderry, he contacted the paper to regale us with a story of how, while with the TA in England they had been travelling from Liverpool to Scarborough, when they came to a crossroads which had him in a quandary: In one direction was a signpost saying Londonderry half a mile away, and in the other direction was Moscow, also half a mile away.

“It was just outside Scarborough when we came across the crossroads. Both are little villages in Yorkshire. This was many years ago when I was in the TA, and we used to get the ferry to Liverpool and drive up through England,” said Colin.

He continued: “When we got to this crossroads we all used to take pictures. It said Moscow half a mile to the left and Londonderry half a mile to the right,” he said, enjoying the memory.

“We all used to laugh about it, about how, if you were in Londonderry you were only a mile from Moscow,” he siad.

Sadly, none of the photographs that Colin and his fellow soldiers took back in their TA days have survived the test of time, but using an online search engine, we have been able to find the village of Londonderry.

Interestingly, it has been marked on the map as ‘Londonderry/Derry’.