15/03/2014 Look North (North East and Cumbria)

about half hour's time, could overtake them with a

Good afternoon. Road users hn Northumberland are being told the

backlog of pothole repairs should be completed in the next few months.

The number stood at more th`n 6 ,000 last year. That's now fallen to

12,000 and should be gone completely by June, after additional money was

found. Private investments for Wirral areas have been catching

machines `` prime investments. The portal is cleared out and a compound

is bred on to adhere the tarmac to the pothole. It is a successful

method. Each day that goes by, although we have not had a lot of

bad weather, new potholes are appearing, so they make cle`r the

12,000 by June but there will be another 100,000 all over

Northumberland in June. A six`year`old girl previously

diagnosed with an extremely rare form of cancer has been told the

disease has disappeared. Fr`ja Simpson had undergone 15 months of

chemotherapy. The youngster, from RAF Leeming in North Yorkshhre, is

only the third person in thd world to suffer from amplified

neuroblastoma. Now, just over 100 years ago, a

group of mill workers found themselves standing on top of a Lake

District mountain. They werd the first to take a holiday org`nised by

a man called TA Leonard, who encouraged ordinary people to

explore the countryside. Thhs week marks 150 years since he was born,

so ramblers have recreated that first walk. Andy Gill reports.

The route for today's walkers is the same that the mill workers took in

1891. Imagined this lot wearing something more tweedy and ldss

practical, something like this. This is the first group brought from the

clatter of a cotton mill to the calm of Cumbria, and this is the man TA

Leonard, who brought them. He thought they should spend their

leisure time in a more rare creative spirit and mind, so he started

taking groups of his church here to the Lake District and from then on,

the holiday movement mushroom. Leonard brought his first group

during the mill worker's tr`ditional wakes week. He and those pioneers

instinctively knew what we now know scientifically, but if you get out

and take regular exercise ott doors, you will get health

benefits. Some people think TA Leonard is as important a bhgger to

the way the British take thdir holidays as Thomas Cook or Billy

Butlin 's, having helped to set up the Ramblers Association and youth

hostel Association. Leonard died in 1948, but his ideas are still going

strong. Football now, and a full fixture

list this afternoon. Newcastle are at Fulham, and Sunderland host

Crystal Palace in the Premidr League. Middlesbrough are away at

Bournemouth in the Championship Carlisle are at home to Stevenage in

League One. Carlisle are at home to Stevenage in

League While in League Two, both Hartlepool and York have hole

matches against Bristol Rovdrs and Wycombe respectively. Gateshead are

at Salisbury in the Conference. And in Scotland, Berwick play Pdterhead.

Let's have the lunchtime we`ther forecast now. Here's Jennifdr

Bartram. A fairly cloudy afternoon in store for many of us. We may see

some brightness across the north`east, or have a touch of

drizzle in Cumbria and the Pennines, the breeze eating up from the West.

Temperatures could get up to 14 degrees in the sunshine. Ovdrnight

Bickleigh will they again. We could see the odd spot of rain but we

aren't expecting fog, temperatures dropping back to around sevdn

degrees. A mild start for Stnday, then it should be dry and breezy.

And that's all for now. I'll be back with our main news at 7:10pl here

Following on from what has been largely dry and settled week with

high pressure