By Kim Chisnall

Ten people shot dead in a little over an hour in postcard perfect Cumbria. Derek Bird’s rampage happened at breakneck speed. A taxi driver for over 20 years, he used his knowledge of the winding roads to escape the 40 or so armed police officers who had all been ordered to shoot to kill.

We stayed right in the middle of Whitehaven – the town itself has a high street and not much else – the population of the wider area is about 35,000. It was here that Bird shot dead his twin brother, David, before embarking on what even police are describing as a rampage. I wanted to get a sense of the journey that Bird took in those hours of Wednesday morning, so we drove to nearby Egremont where Bird shot Ken Fishburn who was cycling across a bridge.

As I stood on the bridge and looked at the flowers and messages left by people in the village it still didn’t seem real. Fishburn, the locals say, was on his way to the local betting shop. I wonder how they know that. Perhaps it’s something he did every Wednesday. In small towns people know your habits.

It seemed everyone we met knew Derek Bird. The taxi driver who took us the short distance from the station worked with him and his mother went to school with him. “What did your mother think of him?” I asked. “Well she said he was a bit strange at school, but then who wasn’t?”

Just how connected Bird was to this community shocked me, I was expecting a loner, someone who sat at home on internet chat sites – not a man who’d lived and worked his entire life here and was known by his nickname – Birdy.

At the local rugby league club the manager told me that I should feel right at home here because Cumbria was little New Zealand. “Oh they love it here” he said, a bone carving necklace poking out from under his shirt collar.

I can see why, this area of rural England is about as close as you can get to New Zealand. There are no major cities in Cumbria just small towns connected together by winding roads. It’s coastal with rolling hills and at this time of year it’s very, very green.

The people are similar too; nothing is too much trouble and they have a matter of fact approach to life that reminds me of home.

But even they will struggle to ever make sense of what Bird did. As for his motive, the police warn we may never know. After all, the only person who can answer that question shot himself dead before anyone had the chance to ask him.