WHAT’S a four-hour round journey when it comes to finally taking ownership of your personal “Holy Grail” – even if it does mean having to bring your own seven tonne crane!

That’s the philosophy of Roy Bottamley who thought nothing of travelling to Bolton from his home in Scunthorpe to collect treasured equipment and machinery once owned by his life-long hero, Fred Dibnah.

“I happily admit that I feel like an excited schoolboy,” said Mr Bottamley when he arrived at the Fred Dibnah Heritage Centre yesterday.

The owner of a small engineering company in Lincolnshire, Mr Bottamley bid £1,500 for a winch, radial drill, grinder and slotting machine once owned by Bolton’s legendary steeplejack at an auction earlier this month.

“Fred did everything I dreamt of doing as a child. He had this wonderful workshop filled with steam-driven machines. I can’t think of anything more idyllic!” said a clearly star-struck Mr Bottamley in between manoeuvring his ex-Army loading crane through the yard of Fred’s former home on Radcliffe Road.

“He’s been my hero since childhood and I can remember rushing my Sunday bath so I didn’t miss his TV programme,” he laughed.

Unfortunately, his wife Lynn, a florist, does not share his enthusiasm.

“She just sees a lump of iron in the back yard, she can’t understand the attraction. I, on the other hand, believe everything has an element of beauty to it, you’ve just got to look carefully.”

Mr Bottamley, aged 50, said he had no plans to wrap the machines and equipment in cotton wool and store them away.

“I’ll be using them. I’ve been looking for flat-belt drive equipment like this for some time and the fact that it was Fred’s, and he used it, makes it extra valuable to me.”

Mr Bottamley was not the only one collecting the fruit of his successful auction bids.

It is thanks to James Palmer that Fred’s iconic winding wheel and wooden headgear is remaining in Lancashire.

Mr Palmer, aged 30, is a volunteer at Lancashire Mining Museum in Tyldesley, and when he heard about the auction he knew the museum had to have Fred’s pride and joy.

But the wheel and headgear had already been bought by Andy Curle and was destined for his mill in Cumbria.

Fortunately, Mr Curle is a fellow enthusiast of all things industrial and recognised and understood the shared and genuine passion of Mr Palmer and his fellow museum volunteers.

“I thought about it for a bit and reasoned that more people would get to see it in the museum, so I let them buy it off me,” said Mr Curle. “It was the right thing to do.”

It will take a week to dismantle the wheel and headgear before it can be transported to the museum. Then it will take many months of devoted care and attention before it can finally take its place atop the museum’s Number Two shaft.

“The headgear was built by Fred himself,” explained Mr Palmer. “He followed a design drawn up by local mining historian, Alan Davies, which was a copy of an original 1879 headgear at Blackrod Brow Colliery.

Generations of Mr Palmer’s family worked down the mines and it’s a source of regret to him that he was unable to follow the family tradition.

“I’d love to have been a miner but I was born at the wrong time. I’ve ended up being a security safe engineer instead.”

He regards the headgear and wheel as a memorial to all those who have died in the pit – including a relative of his own who perished in the Westhoughton Pretoria Pit disaster of 1910.

Like Mr Bottamley, Mr Palmer has been a Fred fan since childhood.

“Everybody loved him,” he said. “Sadly, I never got to meet him but my uncle was once lucky enough to go to the top of a chimney with him.”

Witnessing the proceedings was the still and solitary figure of Alf Molyneux, a long-time friend of Fred’s.

“He would have hated what’s happening,” Mr Molyneux remarked sadly as the dismantling continued. “It’s the last time all the equipment and machinery will be together.”

An ex-miner, Mr Molyneux became a great pal of Fred’s after a chance meeting in a pub.

“I actually helped him sink the shaft when he decided to try mining coal from his own back yard.”

As the sun came out, Mr Molyneux, aged 77, was able to make at least one positive reflection.

“I’m glad it’s all going to good homes and to people who appreciate just how special it is. There’s some consolation in the fact that it will be looked after and that it will be seen by the wider public.”