Our Shed brings together members from diverse backgrounds, each finding their way here for unique and meaningful reasons, united by a shared spirit of community and creativity.
Hi, I’m Bob Miles. I am currently Secretary, Trustee and a founder member of the Shed. All of my working life was spent with the GPO and British Telecom starting as an apprentice and later becoming a Field Maintenance Technical Officer working around the Hull area until early in 1980 when I moved to Leeds to start work as an instructor at the ‘Post Office Regional Engineering Training Centre’ at Otley. I spent 3 very happy years there teaching apprentices and adults. I left there on promotion and performed a number of roles including Customer Network Consultant, Project Manager, Systems Engineer, and finally Head of Bid Management in the National Sales organisation. At school my favourite subjects were always woodwork and engineering and that has stayed with me throughout my adult life. Early retirement in 2000 and a move to a new abode which needed a lot of work brought the opportunity to indulge my passion for DIY projects. I have a really well equipped home workshop where I have a wood turning lathe, bandsaw, pillar drill, router table and a host of other kit which enables me to make a variety of things, mostly out of wood. Much as I enjoy spending time in my workshop, what is lacking working on my own is the social interaction with others. Being part of the Shed fulfils that lack and gives me the opportunity to pass on some of the skills which I have acquired to others in the Shed whom I now count as my friends.
I’m Stuart Gregory, trustee and presently Chairman of this very creative Men’s Shed. I spent my early career in my home town of Sheffield as a building surveyor in the NHS, before moving to Cambridge for 6 years. Great job, great city but geography too flat for a keen fell walker. A job opportunity in Leeds saw me move back north to the hills and join Royal Mail to create a new surveying department. Over the next 20 years, I had various job titles, initially planning & contracting for all maintenance works but then becoming responsible for project management teams on major construction projects. I’ve always been interested in DIY and as a Yorkshireman ‘saving the brass’. Since taking early retirement in 2004 I have relocated twice which created many jobs to put that individual stamp on the ‘new’ house, however by 2018 I’d reached the end of my projects list and was looking for other options. WMS has allowed me to further develop my acquired skills on more professional & varied equipment as well as meet a group of like minded individuals who have also become good friends. 
I am Robert Burnett and have been a member of the Wharfedale Men’s Shed for two years. I am currently serving as Treasurer of the Group. I retired after a long career working mainly behind a desk in the Agriculture and Nature Conservation sectors. I arrived at the Shed, having recently moved to Otley, with fairly ropey woodworking skills but with an ambition to use my free time to learn new skills and get involved with the local community .. oh, and also build a sailing dinghy!
I haven’t managed the boat yet but have certainly got involved with the many projects the Shed take on for others and have also picked up new skills and friendships on the way.
I am yet another Bob and also ex GPO/ BT engineer!
I joined WMS in summer 2021, shortly after my wife died during the pandemic, leaving me at a very low ebb both mentally and physically. From my first visit to the shed the guys were welcoming and supportive giving me hope and some much needed cheer in my life. I still feel very much “work in progress” but through the shed I’m getting there, I’ve learnt new skills, been able to use my skills and pass some of them on to the members. We have a great rapport at the shed with always plenty of banter whilst helping one another with projects, I have particularly enjoyed involvement in community projects and the feeling of doing some good plus giving something back. My particular passion is recycling and upcycling and love that where ever possible we re-use wood that otherwise is destined for landfill, I have this past summer, with help from one of the Bob’s, built a porch on my house from scrap timber!
Recently I was invited to become a member of the WMS Committee and a Trustee which I willingly accepted as I feel that this will allow me to help shape the Shed as we move forward with the challenge of creating our new premises, with the opportunities this will create to offer support and friendship and a wider range of activities to more people.
I’m Lorenz, one happy member of WMS Shed. I’ve always been a fixer- upper, with a drawer full of batteries, wires, screws etc even before my teens. Since when various bikes, cars and motorbikes have been kept going (probably way past their ‘best before’ state). Marriage and work both over and done with by my 28th birthday so, on with happy retirement! Just sold my house of 48 years and moved in with the wonderful Les so ain’t life good to me! Cheers!
I am John. I joined WMS in 2021. At age 16 my school results fell off a cliff when I discovered beer, motorcycles and the fairer sex. I signed up for an engineering apprenticeship with P&O and then spent eleven years as an Engineer Officer at sea, breaking things and then fixing them. I met my future wife at college whilst taking my Chartered Engineer exams, and subsequently accepted a shore job with P&O in London as an Engineer Superintendent. This involved attending dry-dockings, fires, collisions, strandings etc. around the world, but I also found a niche developing IT systems in my department.
I was then head-hunted to manage an IT project in South East Asia. Two of us went out and five years later, four of us returned! I could not settle back into the daily commute to London, so I left P&O and started an IT Consultancy. In 2000 we moved the family to Leeds, buying a crumbling old house which I am still fixing up to this day, learning many new skills in the process. Tired of government red tape and working crazy hours, I shut the company down in 2015 and then worked in a variety of jobs including HGV Driving, and selling artificial grass, until my retirement in 2018. Joining the Men’s Shed has been great for me. It gives me the kind of camaraderie I have not known since my sea-going days, and having hated Mondays for most of my life, I now greatly look forward to them.
I’m Bryan Simpson and have lived in Otley all my life.
I started work as a motor mechanic, progressed to Body Shop Manager and ended my career as an Internal Motor Engineer for an Insurance company.
I was never very practical with DIY but I learnt a lot from my brother-in-law, who was a joiner. I went on to build two extensions of which I was very proud. I always did any odd jobs for myself and our three sons – our eldest in Australia always had a list for me when I landed in Sydney!
All that changed in 2020 when I had a severe stroke and I’m now unable to do much at all.
The WMS has been a lifeline for me and I really look forward to Mondays – chat, tea and biscuits with new friends – what more could you ask for.
I’m Stephen. I spent over 40 years working as a radiographer. I started my career in the National Health Service (NHS), served in the Army, and then returned to the NHS.
As I approached retirement, I remembered making, at school, several wooden things and felt it would be great to do woodwork as a hobby.Since joining the Wharfedale Men’s Shed (WMS), I have enjoyed, learning from enthusiastic experienced men new woodwork skills, using different handheld tools and equipment (including a lathe), listening to and chatting with men from different backgrounds, and being a beginner at sailing.Time in the Shed, allows me to socialise with friends while working together, or alone, to design and make wooden things. I am developing a love of woodturning and have made, for family and friends, candlesticks, honey dippers and traditional Scottish porridge stirrers (spurtles).
WMS is a great place, for my friends and me, to live life at least one day per week.
I’m Bob Johnson (aka Jim) I’m a new boy here!
At the time of joining WMS, Sep 2024, the membership already included 5 Roberts. I was happy to be known by my middle name to avoid adding further confusion.
My working life, since achieving a BSc in Physics in 1958, has been entirely in office work. This puts me in a minority of members who have had no woodworking experience, with the exception of DIY. Although this can involve a nervy time when being trained to use power machines such as a bandsaw, the understanding and camaraderie of fellow members provides reassurance and confidence. This is one of the important purposes of the WMS – being supportive of members irrespective of their background and/or medical status. In widowhood I have become rather reclusive.
In consultation on mental health problems my GP helped refer me to organisations which would provide activities and help to enjoy a wider social life. WMS was one of them, and so far the best of them for me. I have learned new skills and an improved social life. Also acquired is a pride of involvement in the provision of low-cost, well-made products to charities and other deserving cases.
I’m Bob. I was first made aware of Wharfedale Men’s Shed by a nurse from Macmillan Cancer Research, who had obviously done some research herself, following my diagnosis of prostate cancer. She gave me individual treatment during which she told me about the WMS group and where they meet in Otley.
I make walking sticks after I went to a one day course up in the Dales at Dent, but having moved into a first floor apartment, I have nowhere suitable to work. WMS provides that space (and company) and I have made quite a few sticks since joining the group, with a number for sale at the workshop. I am now known as ‘Sticky Bob’.
I’m Denis. I’m 83 and in the last few years I’ve lost my wife, my brother and 3 sisters. So a lonely orphan. I live in a modern apartment block but since the Covid 19 pandemic we’ve stopped calling on each other.
Now one of the residents of our block was attending WMS and encouraged me to go along. I did and in short it became the highlight of my week.
What’s it like? It’s hard to put into words those welcoming, embracing, joyous feelings. That I’m in the right place with the right people. I now have a bunch of new friends. How great is that! And what skills do I bring to our shed? Well certainly nothing practical. I had a solely academic career and with osteoarthritis in my hands am unable to do much practical work. I was assured this did not matter and this proved to be the case.
So what do I do? I listen, I laugh and I supervise. It must be very reassuring to be supervised by someone who has no idea of what’s involved. But mostly I watch. The ‘Repair Shop’ is one of my favourite TV shows and I have a similar experience watching the skilled men at Wharfedale Men’s Shed.
I’m Alan. I was born in a small village in Wiltshire, we were very rural, we kept animals in the garden, as did many of our neighbours. Primary school was an old stone building with coke fires and gas lamps, good school though.
I have always liked science so I studied chemistry and biochemistry. My first job was as an experimental assistant in a planetary sciences research group in Lancaster, so I have worked on moon rocks!
I moved to Leeds in 1978, to be assistant to the technical manager in an old Leeds family glass company. That was in the days of smaller companies, and it was quite a culture shock. Eventually after many takeovers we became part of the Pilkington multi-national. We specialised in security glass. I remember at that time we were struggling to develop a sledgehammer resistant glass. After the great train robbery I was trialling a chemical like Araldite to stick between two pieces of glass.
Because we were a small company I did everything vaguely ‘Technical’, from designing windows for wind and heat resistance to quality control and health and safety. I did a lot of customer- and site-visits, which got me out of the office to many unusual places, but varied from the interesting to the dire. I travelled a bit helping to write safety glass standards.
I had intended to stay only a short while, but thirty-four years later when I retired I was still there. My interests, now that I have time, are reading, films and walking.
WMS is a wonderful organisation. Usually in life you meet people with the same interests or backgrounds as yourself, but at Sheds you meet people from all over, and with lots of different stories to tell. If you have a question you will usually find someone with the answer at the Shed.
Hi I’m Michael. I’ve had a wide range of jobs in my working life, ranging from baking to industrial paint spraying, furniture assembling to finally a Postie. After 15 years at Royal Mail, my mental health deteriorated so badly resulting in me having to leave and attempting to take my own life. I was in intensive care for nearly 2 weeks in 2022.