Missing actor Julian Sands was due to return to his West Yorkshire childhood home for his regular ‘Monday Club’ family meet up in Skipton on January 30, his brother has revealed.
Nick Sands, one of five Sands brothers who usually attended the gatherings, told local paper The Telegraph and Argus that the star of A Room With a View and Warlock would still return to his home town three times a year, despite his Hollywood fame, typically getting off the train at Skipton and walking to Gargrave either via local landmark Sharp Haw or along the towpath of the Leeds and Liverpool Canal if the weather was poor.
Sands was the third of the five Sands brothers, and Nick told the paper that he had firm roots in his Yorkshire childhood home, despite being educated in Hampshire after winning a scholarship to private boarding School Lord Wandsworth College and then London School of Speech and Drama. More recently, the Hollywood star has lived in California.
Nick, a financial advisor who still lives locally in Gargrave, added that last year Julian had walked the entire 268-miles of the Pennine Way, walking about 30 miles a day and sleeping overnight in a tent despite being 64 years of age, and said that trekking in the hills was among his favourite pastimes. He had progressed over the years from hiking in the Yorkshire Dales to climbing iconic mountains like the Matterhorn and the Eiger.
Julian disappeared on 13 January while hiking in the Baldy Bowl area of the San Gabriel Mountains, north of his Los Angeles home. Californian officials have been unable to locate the actor, saying deadly storms have hampered their search.
Older brother Nick continued: “On Monday, he had planned to join his brothers for our Monday Club for a beer in Skipton. He will be missed, and I guess we will raise a glass to him.”
His brother added that, in his own heart, he had accepted his brother is dead, although Julian’s wife and three children still hold out hope of the actor being found.
“I know in my heart that he has gone,” Nick told the T&A. “However sibling rivalry being what it is, it would be just like him to walk out of there and prove me wrong.”
