Three Penrith Open Reach engineers, with a total of 127 years’ service between them, have celebrated their retirement.
Colleagues and friends from all over Cumbria and Lancaster met at Penrith Conservative Club on Saturday to mark the joint retirement celebrations for Geoff Varty, Billy Burrell and Laurie Bell.
First to join the company was Geoff, now aged 67, of Watson Terrace, who started in 1970 as a trainee technician apprentice with what was then the General Post Office. He rose to the position of precision test officer and put in 50 years’ service before retiring on 1st September, 2020.
Next in was Billy Burrell, aged 66 of Bampton Grange, who followed his father Ronnie Burrell into the telecommunications company. Starting in March, 1975 in the MT garage, he later transferred into the engineering team in 1985. Billy retired on 29th October from his role as a fibre optic engineer.
Also retiring as a fibre optic engineer is 65-year-old Laurie, of Willow Close, Penrith, who joined the business in 1989, based in Friargate. During his 31 years’ service, he worked as an engineer within British Telecom’s base at Gilwilly, before returning to the Open Reach Friargate base.
With over a century of service between them, there have been few major incidents in the district in which the trio have not been involved, helping to clear up and restore connectivity to isolated communities.
This included the 2015 collapse of Pooley Bridge due to flooding, the collapse of Langwathby bridge and also Workington bridge.
In all cases, various often amusing, techniques had to be called on to get the cables across the water including, with varying success, hammer throwing, fishing rods, a bow and arrow and even dog toys!
Both Geoff and Billy were part of national strike action in 1987 — prior to Laurie’s arrival; and all three worked through the 2001 foot and mouth tragedy and the COVID pandemic as frontline key workers.
Other changes the group have seen within the industry include the levels of staffing. At it’s height the company had between 30 and 40 engineers based at their depot in Penrith and this has dramatically dropped to now having around only 10 Open Reach engineers covering the area, with most based from home.
While staffing has dropped, the geographical area has massively increased. For many years the three would cover the Eden area including Penrith, Kirkby Stephen, over to Shap and stopping short of Carlisle at Plumpton.
This was widened to cover Cumbria and North Lancashire and eventually saw them cover coast-to-coast.
Arguably the biggest change they have seen was the country’s change over from analogue to digital telephone systems. Indeed Geoff still recalls going to a farmhouse in the Eden area that had an even older system with it only being connected to the manual telephone exchange of yesteryear.
All three agree that one of the best things about their careers has been the camaraderie among the work force but none will miss being on call throughout the night.
As they celebrate beginning their retirement, Laurie has taken up walking football while Geoff is spending more time on his hobby of woodturning and Billy playing his guitar.
