Stottie Walks

In April 2013 I walked from Edale to Kirk Yetholm. I greeted everyone with a smile, whether they were walkers, farmers, bar tenders or B&B hosts. In return I received hospitality, friendship and help, with never a hint of a cross word.

Everything happened as planned. The daily challenges were within my capacity. Had the strong wind been in my face instead of on my left shoulder, I’d have found life harder. On moors, mosses and mountains I escaped from human noise. I felt absorbed by the vast emptiness of wild places and revelled in that sensation.

It was different in 1963 with John and Neil. Back then I put on an ebullient front that belied my inner uncertainty. The experience and maturity of my colleagues ameliorated my brashness. The excitement and optimism with which I embarked on that first trip was tested in the black, wet groughs of Kinder Scout, forcing me to draw on all my stubbornness to keep going. I suspect Neil and John had similar feelings, but because I was youngest I intended to show from the start that I was worthy of my place.

We knew there would be no accommodation or provisions directly on the first 35 miles of our route, and we chose to overcome that challenge by racing from Edale to Holmfirth YH (now closed) and thence to Mankinholes YH. Today there’s a hostel at Crowden, with a camping ground and shop nearby. Those welcome additions are exceptional: many village stores have closed. Malham, Horton in Ribblesdale, Dufton, Garrigill and Greenhead have all lost their shops, which makes life hard for those who want to keep costs down by camping and cooking meals.

Buoyed up by the knowledge that others had succeeded, we got on with the job: bugger the bogs, plough on, and learn from experience which vegetation will support your weight and which will send you thigh-deep into liquefied peat. Most walkers today acknowledge that the paved sections offer a much easier way, whilst traditionalists and recidivists can draw comfort from the fact that there remain places in the middle of Kinder Scout where they may still enjoy inadvertently plunging into a morass, as in the good old days.

On my 2013 walk I tried to imagine how people might have reacted when the Pennine Way was proposed. The history has been written by others, and the fine detail of who said what doesn’t matter to me, so I pondered on what life was like for ordinary people in 1935. Smoke from coal fires blackened the land. Most housing fell far short of standards we take for granted. For some people, shared lavatories and communal water taps were a reality of life. The desire to escape the city at weekends for fresh air, space and fitness was growing. The footpath preservation societies formed in the nineteenth century were reinforced by walking groups based in the northern cities, notably Manchester and Sheffield. The youth hostel movement, born in Germany, had reached England by 1930.

Significant events of 1935 included the invention of radar, the introduction of the 30mph speed limit, King George V’s silver jubilee, and the ominous adoption of the swastika as Germany’s national flag. Against that background, Tom Stephenson proposed his Pennine Way. Here’s the closing paragraph of his newspaper article.

“Let us have this through route to health and happiness for this and succeeding generations who may thus make acquaintance with some of the finest scenery in the land. Whatever the cost, it would be a worthy and enduring testimony, bringing health and pleasure beyond computation, for none could walk that Pennine Way without being improved in mind and body, inspired and invigorated and filled with the desire to explore every corner of this lovely island.”

The economy was still struggling out of the depression that we used to call The Slump. In 1936 the Jarrow Marchers took their petition on foot to London. They gained fame and sympathy, but nothing material. They were accorded a civic reception when they returned home, but they found their unemployment benefit had been reduced because they had made themselves unavailable for work. Such is the price of protest.

In 1963 we were much better off, despite the threat of nuclear destruction. A common preoccupation amongst teenage boys was whether they would get laid before “The Bomb” dropped. But 1963 was an astonishing year for news. Henry Cooper came close to beating Cassius Clay; the Profumo affair scandalised and titillated the nation; Harold Wilson and Alec Douglas-Home became leaders of the Labour and Conservative parties respectively, while Khrushchev was deposed in the USSR; the Great Train Robbery hit the headlines as Dr Beeching began running branch lines into the buffers; a nuclear test ban treaty was agreed between the USA and the USSR, and the Hot Line was established between Washington and Moscow; The Beatles recorded their first album; Martin Luther King delivered his “I have a dream” speech; JFK was assassinated. And we did the Pennine Way.

We approached our task as if it were a succession of weekend YH trips. We blundered on the first day and failed to plan for food on the last day, but at other times it worked remarkably well. It remains a big event in my life.
Sometimes it takes a while for the significance of an achievement to sink in. People have congratulated me on having walked the Pennine Way fifty years after I first did it. They seem more impressed than I am. The thing is, I haven’t done what I did fifty years ago, because it really is a lot easier now. I’ve been lucky with my health, and I’ve kept on walking. All I had to do was get out of bed on sixteen successive days and make sure I walked to my next bed. I knew my way along much of the route without referring to the map, and there were no surprises.

I like the Pennine Way landscape. It’s austere, bleak in places, and remarkably empty of humans despite its veneer being the consequence of untold centuries of human activity. To understand a landscape you must feel it under your feet, cross it, roam in it, smell it and maybe taste it, see and hear it, sample its food and drink, talk with its people. That’s what I know now that I didn’t know in 1963. That’s why I might yet be back….

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