The Pennine Way - A Walker's Guidebook

This guidebook divides the Pennine Way (a National Trail) into 16 stages, starting in the Peak District at Edale, and ending in Kirk Yetholm near Kelso. The Pennine Way can be tackled in its entirety over two to three weeks or enjoyed in several short bites. Each stage of the Pennine Way described in this guide ends in a place where accommodation is available.

Background

The Pennine Way begins, wholly appropriately, in the centre of England, historically the heartland of the country’s outdoor movement. Ringed by motorways and the industrial conurbations of Sheffield, Derby, The Potteries, Manchester and Huddersfield, the 542 square miles (140,000 hectares) of the Peak District National Park contains some of the wildest and loveliest countryside in Britain. Each year some 20 million day visitors flock here yet paradoxically the general public has not always been welcome.

Following World War I, and especially during the Depression years, these moors and dales represented a release from the grime and drudgery of city life. At weekends, thousands poured out by train to relish a few precious hours of freedom and fresh air in the hills. Wide horizons, the challenge of physical exertion, walking alone or in friendly company come rain or shine, all helped to counterbalance lives otherwise blighted by squalor and long working hours.

In 1926 John Derry, that standard-bearer of the early rambling move­ment, summed up the mood of the time in his guidebook Across the Derbyshire Moors: ‘And yet it does one good to get into this upland, age-long solitude, where the primeval world is felt to be a mighty fact, linked on to us.’

However, there were considerable obstacles facing walkers in those pre-National Park days. Land was mainly in private ownership (as it still is) and to protect their incomes obtained from grouse-shooting, landowners barred ramblers from vast tracts of Kinder Scout, Bleaklow and the eastern moors. ‘Trespassers will be prosecuted’ signs were erected and immediately dubbed ‘wooden liars’ because trespass, of course, is not a prosecutable offence. More seriously, armed gamekeepers were posted at strategic access points.

Understandably, resentment flared up when ramblers were thwarted while asserting their ‘right to roam’. Ugly scenes erupted and rewards were offered in local newspapers for anyone who could identify photographed trespassers. The more militant ramblers regularly risked spells in prison for their passionately held beliefs. But as John Derry observed: ‘Nothing keeps alive the spirit of revolt and iconoclasm so fiercely as a refusal to the general ­community of the use of their eyes over beautiful remote tracts of the earth, under the plea of private ownership.’

Fired by unemployment and growing political awareness among working class people during the 1920s and early 1930s, the access movement gained momentum. Protest rallies were held near Castleton expressing a common desire for free access to crags and moorland: it is a call whose message remains alive to this day.

Everything came to a head with the famous Mass Trespass of 24th April 1932. Their sights sets firmly on reaching the forbidden Kinder Scout plateau, some 400 ramblers set off from Hayfield. Because the event had been widely publicised, they were met at Sandy Heys just below the plateau edge by groups of keepers. With emotions running high, verbal exchanges escalated to physical scuffles, as a result of which six ramblers received gaol sentences of between two and six months for assault and riotous assembly.

Few access concessions were granted for a number of years but such sustained public defiance against the landowning aristocracy did eventually create a steady shift towards the view that the countryside should be there for everyone to enjoy. By 1949 this concept had become enshrined in the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act. Two years later, in April 1951, the Peak District was established as Britain’s first National Park and in 1965 the Pennine Way became Britain’s first official long-distance trail.

In fact the idea of a continuous footpath from Derbyshire’s Peak District to the Scottish Borders had first been mooted back in 1935 by Tom Stephenson in a newspaper article, but in those days there was no helpful legislation, no chance of concessions from the water authorities and grouse shooting fraternity. However, already the rambling clubs and the newly formed Youth Hostels Association had begun to open up the countryside to walkers over most of England and Wales (Kinder Scout and Bleaklow excepted!). Tom Stephenson’s proposal met with enthusiastic support and in February 1938 representatives of open-air organisations held a conference at Hope in Derbyshire and inaugurated the Pennine Way Association. What the conference agreed encapsulates the very essence of the Pennine Way:

‘The wide, health-giving moorlands and high places of solitude, the features of natural beauty and the places of historical interest along the Pennine Way give this route a special character and attractiveness which should be available for all time as a natural heritage of the youth of the country and of all who feel the call of the hills and lonely places.’

Having devised a route for the Pennine Way utilising existing footpaths, old miners’ and drovers’ tracks, Roman roads and green lanes, it was concluded that although about 180 miles (290km) of public rights-of-way could be used, some 70 miles (113km) of new paths were required.

The National Parks Commission adopted the proposed line of the Pennine Way with a few minor changes and in their second report stated that:

‘The Pennine Way will be a strenuous high-level route through predominantly wild country and is intended for walkers of some experience. It will involve a fair element of physical exertion and a willingness to endure rough going. While the greater part of the Way is across existing well-trodden tracks, the route in places crosses expanses of wild moorland devoid of prominent landmarks and consisting largely of peat, heather, bog and tussocks of rough grass. These sections of the route can be traversed only by strong walkers, and in bad weather they can be safely negotiated only by people who can steer a course by map and compass.’

From July 1951 onwards, local authorities worked on creating the necessary new rights-of-way and on 24th April 1965, at a mass gathering on Malham Moor, the then Minister of Land and Natural Resources, along with Tom Stephenson, Secretary of the Ramblers Association, declared the Pennine Way open and completed.