Changing Attitudes

I've been rereading the book Shanks's Pony: A Study Of Walking written by Morris Marples and published in 1959. In chapter 3 he talks of a German pastor named Carl Philipp Moritz who visited England in 1782 and spent 6 weeks tramping from London to Derbyshire and back. Compared with the benign attitude towards walkers in his homeland, Moritz was surprised at the pedestrian's reception over here: A traveller on foot in this country seems to be considered as a sort of wild man or an out-of-the-way being who is stared at, pitied, suspected, and shunned by every body that meets him... In England any person undertaking so long a journey on foot is sure to be looked upon and considered as either a beggar, or a vagabond, or some necessitous wretch, which is a character not much more popular than that of a rogue... To what various, singular, and unaccountable fatalities and adventures are not foot-travellers exposed, in this land of carriages and horses? Although there are some mad, eccentric, and, no doubt, occasionally even roguish hikers still out there on the highways and byways, things have surely changed in the main. Indeed, many people positively welcome the trail-walking stranger, not least because his/her expensive waterproofs, carbon fibre trekking poles and state-of-the-art GPS equipment betray a healthy bank balance just waiting to be spent on local goods and services. On the Pennine Way, which I walked recently, I encountered an inordinate degree of friendliness and hospitality in most of the places I passed through (even though I did it as cheaply as possible and with old gear!)

Another Post

I walked the Pennine Way in late April and early May and loved every single mile. Springtime is a good time to do it - it was so enjoyable this year when there was lots of sunshine and very little rain. Birdlife was abundant - plenty of curlews, skylarks, golden plovers, peewits, meadow pipits, wheatears and stonechats on the moorlands; and dippers, common sandpipers, and grey wagtails in the river valleys. I saw a peregrine being harried by a raven near the Hen Hole cliffs in the Cheviots, and a ring ouzel at Widdy Bank Farm in Upper Teesdale. I came across very few other end-to-enders. Most people seemed to be walking the Way in 2 or 3 day chunks. One couple I met had been knocking off bits of it for years with their two dogs. They were having a great time. We should be very proud of this grand long distance footpath, Britain's first official National Trail, which runs for 260 miles from Edale in Derbyshire to Kirk Yetholm just over the Scottish border. It was the brainchild of journalist and rambler, Tom Stephenson, who'd been inspired by the USA's Appalachian Trail. Opened in a ceremony on Malham Moor in April 1965, it was much more of a challenge for those early walkers than it is now - before the worst boggy sections had been overlaid with flagstones (slabs or "setts" taken from the redundant Northern cotton mills and imaginatively recycled). Highlights for me were Swaledale, Teesdale, Hadrian's Wall and the Cheviots. Not to mention the super-friendly Harlequin Pub/Restaurant in Cowling. But it's all terrific. There's very little road walking, and it's very civilised to be able to drop into a country inn most evenings. Though it's surprising and exciting how far away from civilisation one can get - especially on the Yorkshire moors and in the Cheviots - while walking up England's backbone. Some think of the Pennine Way as Britain's longest pub crawl. Others may remember it as a very long conversation with sheep. Of course it's both these things and much, much more. It's whatever you want to make of it. It's a wonderful walk and one of our national assets - right up there along with microbreweries and morris dancing.

Post-Pennine Way Blues

Earlier this year I completed the Pennine Way in 17 days (the photo is of the church at Hawes). I had a wonderful time. I walked solo and stayed mainly in B & Bs and the odd country inn and youth hostel. (What on earth is happening to the youth hostel movement these days? Many hostels have closed or are about to close or have been turned into hotels.) The whole route was a joy and the pub bar craic in the evenings was superb. Returning home I experienced severe post-Pennine Way blues. Walking each day along a beautiful and moderately challenging linear route had become a way of life difficult to give up. But I'll have to live in my imagination for a while - so I'm poring over 3 books which have recently arrived from Amazon: The GR10 Trail: Coast To Coast Through The French Pyrenees by Paul Lucia, published by Cicerone; The Way Of St James: Le Puy To The Pyrenees by Alison Raju, also published by Cicerone; and A Pilgrim's Guide To The Camino De Santiago: A Practical And Mystical Manual For The Modern Day Pilgrim by John Brierley, published by the Findhorn Press. How to find the time to walk all these paths..? Just dreaming at the moment... but I'll do them one day - and The Cape Wrath Trail and The South West Coastal Path and The Corsican High Level Route and... and...

Out With The Old

As Tony Blair makes way for Gordon Brown today, it got me thinking how many of our MPs are genuine hill-goers and wilderness walkers. I couldn't think of many. But three names came to mind: first, the late John Smith, leader of the Labour Party from July 1992 to May 1994, who took up Munro-bagging after a coronary in October 1988. By the time of his fatal second heart attack he'd climbed 108 Munros. Then there's the late Robin Cook, who never really fit into the Blair spinning machine and resigned from the Cabinet over the Iraq war debacle - and who also died of a heart attack, descending from Ben Stack in Sutherland in August 2005. Finally there's the most dedicated hill walker of them all - Chris Smith, now Lord Smith of Finsbury, former Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport and current President of the Ramblers' Association, who was the first MP to climb all the Munros. He's also completed the Pennine Way and walked abroad extensively. Apparently his favourite walk is the circuit of Beinn Alligin. Somehow this all seems a bit more authentic than fox-hunting-friendly David Cameron's self-conscious posturing and image-making when you see him cycling home to his so-called "eco-friendly" house. Perhaps he should escape the suffocating corridors of Westminster for a while and spend a long weekend back in Scotland with tent and backpack - and experience the true meaning of wilderness (instead of the wilderness that is the Conservative Party?) and the importance of preserving it. And, for the sake of balance, Gordon Brown too, for that matter...

Listmania

I love the satisfying glow on reaching the top of a hill or mountain: that feeling of healthy, physical exertion, not to mention the stunning views from the summit (the photo shows the top of Cairn Gorm at 4085 ft). But most hill walkers would put me to shame as I've climbed only a small proportion of British hills. And those I have climbed I've done in a random way. Not that there's anything wrong with that. However, recently I've been studying the various hill lists and tables, and I've formulated a lifetime master plan to tick off a lot more. Certainly the Wainwrights, hopefully the Marilyns... Although I love Scotland, it's quite far to get to from where I live so I've bagged only a handful of Munros to date. It would be good to spend whole weeks up there at some point in the future - camping by remote lochs (wonderful!) - when the demands of job and family recede... Anyway, here's a summary of the hill lists available, which may be useful, as the subject can be quite complicated (bear in mind these lists are not cast in stone but are constantly changing as hills are added or deleted depending on the latest techniques in altitude measurement etc). Munros: Scottish mountains over 3000 ft (284 Munros plus 227 subsidiary "tops" - all in the Highlands); Corbetts: 219 Scottish peaks between 2500 ft and 3000 ft with a relative height of at least 500 ft (ie they must have a "drop" of at least 500 ft on all sides); Grahams: 224 Scottish hills between 2000 ft and 2500 ft with a relative height of at least 500 ft; Donalds: 89 hills in the Scottish Lowlands over 2000 ft (many of these are Corbetts or Grahams) with a relative height of at least 100 ft (however some of these have a relative height of at least 50 ft if considered to be of sufficient topographical interest!); Murdos: 444 Scottish summits over 3000 ft with a relative height of at least 100 ft (an attempt to apply strict objective criteria to the Munros); Nuttalls: 252 English hills and 188 Welsh hills over 2000 ft with a relative height of at least 50 ft (as documented in the beautifully written and illustrated two volume The Mountains of England & Wales by John and Anne Nuttall http://www.nuttalls.com/); Hewitts: 178 English, 137 Welsh and 211 Irish hills over 2000 ft with a relative height of at least 100 ft; Wainwrights: 214 hills (fells) in the English Lake District National Park (as lovingly described and illustrated in Alfred Wainwright's classic seven volume A Pictorial Guide to the Lakeland Fells) - there are a further 102 hills included in his supplementary guide The Outlying Fells of Lakeland http://www.wainwright.org.uk/; Birketts: 541 fell tops over 1000 ft in the English Lake District National Park (as listed in Bill Birkett's Complete Lakeland Fells, later condensed into the more compact A Lakeland Fells Almanac); Marilyns: 1554 hills in the British Isles that have a relative height of at least 500 ft regardless of distance, absolute height or other merit; Deweys: 441 hills in England, Wales and the Isle of Man between 500 metres and 2000 ft with a relative height of at least 100 ft. Now, if that's not confusing..!

Industrial Heritage

This was a 7 mile walk I did a week ago, starting and finishing at the Lea Bridge car park by the river Derwent just east of Cromford in Derbyshire (OS Outdoor Leisure Map 24, Grid Reference 315561). The whole area is fascinating for those interested in canals, railways and industrial archaeology. Just a short walk from the car park is High Peak Junction, where the Cromford and High Peak Railway meets the Cromford Canal. This railway (now a leisure trail) is an engineering masterpiece. It was originally planned as a canal linking the Cromford Canal with the Peak Forest Canal at Whaley Bridge 33 miles away. But due to severe engineering difficulties and problems with water supply over the high-level limestone route, it eventually opened in 1830 as a railway. Engineered by Josiah Jessop (son of the canal engineer, William Jessop, who constructed the Cromford Canal - and also the Grand Union Canal which connected Birmingham with London), it's perhaps not surprising - considering canals were in the Jessops' blood - that the stations were called wharves, and that steam-powered beam engines hauled wagons (filled with minerals, grain or coal) up gradients, these inclines being the rail equivalent of a flight of locks. My walk took me up the first incline to Sheep Pasture, where the sun came out, and the view north towards Cromford and Matlock was very pretty indeed. The centrepoint of this view is the little symmetrical hill of High Tor, positioned on the eastern side of the river Derwent just beyond Matlock Bath. This made me nostalgic as it was this tiny, insignificant peak that sparked my imagination many years ago, and impelled me to go walking seriously for the first time. I've climbed much higher hills since then, but this one holds a special place in the memory. Then a flat section led to Black Rocks where some young climbers were roped-up and practising. The final incline eased me up to Middleton Top, where there's a very fine beam engine preserved in the Engine House (see photo), and where there's also a Visitor and Cycle Hire Centre. It seemed like a good time for a break and some lunch. But I didn't stop long as the clouds were closing in. Heading over Middleton Moor and down into the rather unexceptional village of Middleton, I found a path which skirted the rim of the noisy, working Middleton Quarry and then descended via an old green way to Cromford, where Richard Arkwright famously built his water-powered cotton mill in 1771. The rain began to fall steadily as I passed that excellent second-hand bookshop, Scarthin Books; so I put on my waterproofs and strode quickly towards Cromford Wharf, from where I took the canal towpath back to the car. This was an enjoyable half-hour stroll with wild flowers bordering the path and sheep sheltering under trees from the rain...

Genius Loci

Yes, they took a walk - a tactic I have always employed myself when our loud and stressful, humdrum world of mobile phones, motorways and materialism threatens to overwhelm. And as the years have gone by I've become more and more obsessed and passionate about getting out into the Great Outdoors and walking through unspoilt, unpolluted landscapes, seeking out the wild and secret places. You can only do this properly on foot. The slow pace of walking allows you to become absorbed into the landscape. And you need not travel far to find these special spots - most people live within relatively easy reach of some relaxing and numinous place where a trace of beauty can be glimpsed, a morsel of freedom tasted - whether it's a remote Scottish mountain or a humble urban park. I used to think this simple and harmless activity was sheer escapism. Now I believe absolutely that it's a necessity (at least for me), a bringer of sanity in the insane capitalist culture we inhabit. No escape from reality - indeed, quite the reverse, a flight into reality, a gateway into the older, timeless reality of the natural world...

First Post, First Step

Keats did it, Coleridge did it, Shelley did it and Hazlitt did it. Thomas De Quincey did it eating opium and Robert Louis Stevenson did it with a donkey. George Borrow did it in Hungary and Romania and Spain and Wales. Bill Bryson did it in the Appalachians and Patrick Leigh Fermor did it on the banks of the Rhine and the Danube. Wainwright did it in the North Country, Edward Thomas did it in the South Country and Wordsworth did it all over the place - A favourite pleasure hath it been with me - sometimes with his sister Dorothy. Hilaire Belloc did it on the way to Rome and Shirley MacLaine did it destined for Santiago de Compostela. John Hillaby did it on country paths and byways and Ian Botham did it for charity on tarmac roads. Spud Talbot-Ponsonby did it beside the coast and Hamish Brown did it over the high hills of Scotland. What did they all do? They went for a walk...