Harry Styles fans were at risk in their village. Here’s what they did about it
Story by Maureen O’Hare, video by Nina Avramova, CNN
(CNN) — Before 2010, Holmes Chapel was but another quiet leafy village in northern England. There was the little train station with services to Manchester and Crewe, a handful of local shops and, a short walk out of town, the 180-year-old Twemlow Viaduct on the banks of the River Dane.
Then a teenager with dimples and curly hair, who worked part-time at the local bakery, went down to London to audition for “The X Factor” TV show. That teen was Harry Styles, who became part of bestselling boy band One Direction before scaling new heights with his solo career.
Holmes Chapel’s fame began when it appeared in the 2013 One Direction documentary “This Is Us” and, for Styles’ legions of dedicated fans around the world – known as “Harries” – his youthful haunts were anointed as new shrines on a pop pilgrimage.
The prime destination is the viaduct, where the pop star had his first kiss and, in the documentary, wrote his name on the wall in chalk. But, say locals, with an estimated 5,000 international fans visiting the 6,700-population village each year, road safety has become a concern.
Harry Styles rescued a baby mole
So, a year on from introducing a free map with safe walking routes around the village, the Holmes Chapel Partnership community group has this weekend launched Harry’s Home Village Tour.
It’s a leisurely 2.5-to-three-hour stroll around Harry hotspots – allowing plenty of time for selfies and social content – guided by trained experts in both local history and Harry lore, some of whom share stories of their brushes with the man himself.
“My favorite Harry Styles memory was when he helped me rescue a baby mole that my cats had brought into the house, and it had burrowed underneath the carpet,” recalls tour guide Jill Booth, 58, who, as a former neighbor with a son the same age, has known Styles since he was a young child.
There were 150 applicants for the tour guide roles, many from overseas, and the interview process involved an 80-question quiz on both the star and his home town, as well as a trial presentation at the viaduct.
Other guides, such as 21-year-old Isabella Boughey from nearby Stoke-on-Trent, are from the Harry fanbase. As a child, Boughey watched “The X Factor” with her mother and he’s held a special place in her heart ever since. “I just love how he embodies happiness and positivity,” she tells CNN Travel.
‘The best job in the world’
The tour starts at Holmes Chapel train station, where station master Graham Blake has for years been welcoming fans who’ve traveled from everywhere from Australia to Mexico and beyond.
Blake remembers Styles being at the station weekly as he traveled down to London as he got through the stages of “The X Factor” reality show. He was a “lovely lad,” he recalls. “He was always ahead with the fashion and everything. He’d wear these jeans with his Calvin Klein boxers and his little bobbly hat.”
He shows us the sixth edition of the train station’s visitor book, which is overflowing with heartfelt messages from fans. Harry Styles’ father Des stops by from time to time to pick up the completed books to pass onto his son.
Of his role as a mentor to Harry fans, he says, “It’s made my job the best job in the world now, because I get to meet people from all over the world who come in and have a chat.”
The ticket office is bedecked with Harry Styles-themed memorabilia, including a lifesize cutout, and another 2D Harry greets us at W. Mandeville bakery, where staff and customers alike aren’t fazed by the press scrum, plainly accustomed to the village’s new-found fame.
In shop windows there are Harry Styles coloring books; bars advertise “Watermelon Sugar” cocktails. It’’d be a tough town for any locals with Styles fatigue.
Navigating the English countryside
After picking up doughy treats in W. Mandeville, fans have been known to attempt to meander down to the Twemlow Viaduct along the busy A305 road, where cars travel at 50 miles per hour and there are no sidewalks.
The safer route, and the one Harry Styles and other local children would have taken, is an idyllic jaunt through green fields and along the river.
And on the way to the viaduct, visitors would also do well to have an understanding of the Countryside Code of England and Wales, with its guidance on navigating private land and local livestock.
It’s busy at the viaduct while we are there, our tour group clutching the slate hearts we’ve been given to write messages on, to discourage adding to the Harry-inspired graffiti that covers the brickwork. It doesn’t dissuade a herd of cattle from wandering among us, at risk of trampling the blanket upon which fans are sat making friendship bracelets.
Friends Phoebe Hodges and Mia Tesolin, both 18, have traveled from Canberra, Australia, to see Harry Styles’ hometown. “I like all the greenery and all the houses,” says Hodges. Tesolin agrees, “The scenery is definitely really beautiful.”
The tour has yet to be officially endorsed by Harry Styles himself, although Peter Whiers, chair of the Holmes Chapel Partnership, tells CNN that they’ve reached out to his management team via his mother. (CNN has also contacted his music label for comment.)
This isn’t the first time Whiers has been linked to Styles through road safety. “I probably oversaw his cycling skills when he was about 10,” he says, having been in charge of preparing children from his school for their cycling proficiency test, a national bike safety program.
‘Messages of love’
One location that the tour doesn’t take in is the newly reopened Fortune City Chinese restaurant, which – when we peer in through the darkened windows on a Friday afternoon – resembles any other small-town dining spot.
It is, however, where 18-year-old Harry Styles took his then girlfriend, 23-year-old Taylor Swift, for a date way back in 2012. A photo capturing the moment was shared on Twitter at the time, with Styles looking considerably more enthusiastic about the night out than Swift.
Whiers tells CNN that the fan base is predominantly girls and young women and that they’re “generally very respectful.”
“I think, when you look at the messages that they write in Graham’s book at the station and also the messages they leave on the wall, they’re all messages of love,” he says.
The Harry Styles song “Treat People with Kindness” has been picked up as a mantra by fans and our tour around Holmes Chapel has been notably wholesome.
The price of the tour, £20 ($25), feels steep, but the partnership only introduced it after first producing free walking maps. The tour maps come with discounts to local businesses and they’re hoping for a hot trade in tour t-shirts.
From Japan to Austria to the Balearics, there are small communities in revolt against their villages being taken over by tourists. When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. In Holmes Chapel, when life gave them watermelons, they made watermelon sugar.
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