Danny, your reminiscences of Linton and the Aldwark Bridge made me recall my own time at Linton as a JP student pilot.
My experience began on a Sunday in November 1979. Carting all my worldly goods from OCTU at Henlow involved the trusty A1 with a turn off onto the A59 towards York. This was supposed to bring one into Linton via Little Ouseburn and in via the back door so to speak.
The freshly printed Joining Instructions gave some assistance and helpfully said when to arrive but being November it was dark by 4.50 pm when I arrived. Unbeknown to me some of the "characters" on the graduating course ahead, knowing that a new course would be arriving, thought it would be a bit of a hoot to re-arrange the nice red and white signposts to Linton. The all important one to me on the B6256 at Little Ouseburn was 90 degrees out!
This led to an interesting navex nearly to Boroughbridge before the error became even too obvious for me and a 180 was called for. A routing through Great Ouseburn eventually led to the old Bailey Bridge at Aldwark. The toll was 2p! So eventually I arrived at around 6 pm to meet the fellow members of 43 Course and glad that I was not the only one caught out!! In 2013 the toll was was 40p, up by 2000% in 34 years!! (ISTR Petrol then was around £1.10 a gallon or 25p/litre .)
As an aside we hold 5-yearly, well-attended, BFT course re-unions and the next one is on the 31st October in York......possibly a unique thing for a BFT course but we had such an excellent course spirit and it stuck.
MB