SOOTHING, nausea-quelling travel sweets. The perfect companions on short hops, protracted traffic jam filled trips and adventure odysseys. In fact, why leave home without the mini drops that pack a flavourful, often fruity punch the moment they touch the tongue? Some even come with provenance and pedigree.
A. L. Simpkin & Co began making glucose filled confections exactly a century ago and its products have since been taken on record-breaking and history-making journeys around the globe—as well as more mundane sorties, of course. The company supplied RAF personnel throughout the Second World War with its Vita-Glucose tablets (the precursor to today’s vast range of travel sweets). Then, in 1953, its wares, packaged in a small square box, as opposed to today’s trademark circular gold tin, found themselves heading up the world’s most famous mountain.
Simpkins dispatched a couple of tons to help energise the 15 mountaineers, 20 sherpas and 362 porters on that unforgettable British Mount Everest expedition and Edmund Hillary visited the Sheffield factory before setting off for Nepal. Whether or not those sugar tablets were tucked into the bottom of the New Zealander’s canvas kit bag as he edged his way up the South Summit and Hillary Step or whether he savoured the fruit flavour when he stood on top of the world for 18 minutes, admiring the view and taking pictures of Tenzing Norgay, is open to debate.
Joint managing director Adrian Simpkin, grandson of founder Albert Leslie Simpkin, elaborates: ‘I was told that they had taken [our products] with them all the way in their packs, but anything more than that is lost in the annals of time. I do know that, with my grandfather being from Yorkshire, he wasn’t too happy about all that stock going out!’
This story is from the January 06, 2021 edition of Country Life UK.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber ? Sign In
This story is from the January 06, 2021 edition of Country Life UK.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Sign In
Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.
