You implying it's Bingley's home town? I assure you it isn't. Although where he does come from could very well turn out to be boring ...
Here's a placename story. Now you guys all know that I'd never pull anyone's leg over anything at all, and that's a fact.
But when I was leading trail rides for a friend's riding stables up the Shotover River (named after Shotover in Scotland), I got to put my own stamp on at least one place name with a limited, nay, select group of people.
The Shotover was a gold river, the richest in New Zealand and only beaten, I understand, by the Klondike. One bend in the river, not far from the state highway and on the trail we rode, was called Cyanide Point. The trail is about 300ft above the river on some fairly steep bluffs, and it's pretty much a direttissimo into the river if you fall. It was named after some old cyanide tanks that had belonged to a quartz-rock gold mine and it says so right on the pamphlet that we handed to the riders before they left. But someone would always ask. Always. And I'd always say "Well, it's a long way down. One drop and you're dead."
The funny thing is that a lot of the riders had read their pamphlets before they left. But I was never "corrected". Tittered at from time to time, but not called a liar ...
- Pfranz
