7. Serious Walking

Pennine Way. Starts 10 miles behind, ends 250 miles in front.  Don't be fooled by the nice path

Most of you will know that we walk a lot, particularly on long-distance paths and there is one classic British walk I’ve often thought about and never quite got around to.  It’s the first National Trail, set up in 1965 and it runs from Edale in Derbyshire to Kirk Yetholm just across the border in Scotland.  It’s called The Pennine Way and we’re finally going to do it even though it’s often described as ‘a challenge’.   Not in one go though, it is after all over 250 miles running along what’s usually called ‘The Backbone of England’.   So it’s high, exposed, mostly moorland and with some long sections between roads, so a day’s walk length is more dictated by access and egress than choice.  It will be wet, there will be few trees for shelter and so we’ve chosen to walk northwards with the prevailing wind on our backs to allow for the days of inclement weather.  Although to take a more positive line, so that we don’t have the sun in our eyes the whole way.  We’ve decided to do the first 90 miles or so which will take us about six days from Edale to Horton-in-Ribblesdale from where we can catch a train back to our motorhome which will be in safe storage.  The logistics of doing this walk in our normal long-distance walk way of driving to the end of a day’s walk and getting a taxi back to the beginning really is too difficult because we would be switchbacking across the Pennines, so as a new first we’re bed and breakfasting each night.   Usually for our walks, lunch is a sandwich and some fruit but we thought we might try cereal bars and fruit for this one.  So on a recent walk we tried it and part way along we found a lovely little tea room for a cream tea.  So we now know that we can do a full day’s walk on the Pennine Way with only a cereal bar for sustenance as long as there’s also a café up on the heights somewhere serving a decent cream tea.

 

Chrome Hill in the White Peak

We’ll be covering more miles in each day than we usually do and this will be for six consecutive days, possibly in tough conditions so we have to ensure that we raise our walking condition to Pennine Way fit.  We must get some decent 

training walks in. 

just about the best Packhorse Bridge
 you'll ever see

So we find ourselves back in lovely Derbyshire where there are proper moors but a lot of the walking is over what I’d call moorland-lite.  It isn’t so wild and savage looking as what we’ll be walking through further north and much of it is farmed for more than just grouse shooting so it has lots of dry stone walls and the mark of man on it in a more obvious way.  It is grand, scenic country with great views and good walking.   We’ve started in the southern section, known as The White Peak, presumably because a lot of it is limestone.  The northern half which is proper moorland with lots of dark peaty soil is known as The Dark Peak. 

For a change, we’ve seen a lot more families with Indian sub-continent ancestry out in the country and on one walk were even engaged in a conversation with a Saudi Arabian family on holiday here who really wanted to talk and who told us they loved the countryside views.  This was near a five mile or so long rocky outcrop called The Roaches, tilted outcrops of rock angled sharply skywards

The Roaches

which was still closed to the public due to the recent big moorland fires.  In some places it was still burning fifteen feet or so below ground level.  The Staffordshire Wildlife Trust own or manage it and actually had staff out to stop people just ignoring the signs.  I imagine the danger is that an unburnt crust covering a fire could be breached by a walker who would then either suffocate or be roasted.  Not a happy end to a day’s walk.

The Roaches

Derbyshire has many old railway lines converted to walking and cycling paths.  One, the Leek and Manifold Valley Light Railway, a narrow gauge investment disaster, only lasted thirty years in operation but must have been quite a sight.  The Chief Engineer was the magnificently named Everard Calthorp, who had designed some Indian railway system and used the same type of locomotive as he had in India.  It’s said that it was more like an Indian than an English railway with chocolate and black coloured engines and primrose yellow carriages.  It closed in 1934 and the trackbed was presented to the County Council who as our walks book says had the remarkable foresight and imagination to convert it into a footpath.

We did march along some of the above trackbed on a day walk in the rain, lots of it.  It was raining before we started and raining after we finished.  In fact the

Chesterfield's famous twisted spire
 - I love it

only time on the entire walk when it wasn’t pouring down on us was when we got to walk through a two hundred yard long ex-railway tunnel.   We were past caring about the wet when half a mile from the finish we stopped and collected blackberries in our empty water bottle for the evening dessert of blackberry and apple crumble.  It may be just this season but Derbyshire blackberries are the biggest I’ve ever seen.

In my last blog I mentioned that the 1850 average adult lifespan in Sheffield was 27.  I don’t know what the country average was then but I think as late as the mid 20^th century in the UK, men’s lifespan was not much more than about 60.  Whenever we walk, we often stop at country churches for a look round and also because churches always have a bench or two to sit on for lunch.  Gravestones always get a good scan and there are always some real old uns

along the valley above Alsop-en-le-dale

from a century or more back.  However, inside the church at Alsop en le Dale there’s a memorial to Anthony Beresford who died in 1874 at a truly remarkable 102.   Victoria might not have had telegrams to play with but with what I imagine would be a tiny number of people becoming centenarians in those days she could have sent them hand-written letters.

Another thing about Derbyshire is that it’s the only place I know where Well-Dressing is a local custom and many villages still take part.  I don’t know when or why this all started and I’ve never seen a dressed well before.  Very simply put, a village well is decorated by having intricate designs of flower petals pushed onto wet clay to produce very detailed pictures.  Obviously it is pretty transient because the petals don’t last long but I Imagine water does get sprayed on them to make them last a bit longer.   The photographs show one at Bamford commemorating the Suffragette Movement and considering it is only flower petals it is impressive.

Having moved a few miles northwards we’re now in the Dark Peak and have had some wonderful clear sunny days striding out on lovely springy peat, which for Pennine Way bound us is mercifully still dry.  We’d had a walk above Hathersage along the top of a line of cliffs very popular with climbers and from the road below from about half a mile away they looked like so many multi-coloured insects on the rocks.  The views from the top were spectacular but a little hazy in the distance with an unseen Manchester thirty or forty miles to the west and an equally unseen Sheffield only ten miles or so to the east.  We really were in the green lungs of the old industrial north and not far from the famous 1930’s mass trespasses which opened up the hills to walkers instead of being closed off as the grouse moor owners wanted.  As we sat in our van with our boots off having a cuppa, an old man popped into view and started chatting.  He’d had camper vans, had been a climber and walker and travelled extensively worldwide.  He’d climbed up to the ridge to reminisce with the climbers and it turned out that he was ninety.  Then he rather apologetically mentioned that he’d written a book.  Now, I can tell which way the wind was blowing and disappeared round the other side of the van.  Seems these books were three pounds each and Heather had agreed to buy one.  I don’t know yet, I haven’t read it.