Book Extract: The Pennine Way: the Path, the People, the Journey

© Cicerone

Pennine Way cover shot  © Cicerone

In his new book The Pennine Way - the Path, the People, the Journey Andrew McCloy presents a portrait of Britain's oldest and best known long-distance footpath, tracing its remarkable history through the experiences of walkers past and present.

By walking the route himself, 268 miles from the Peak District to the Scottish borders, he discovers how it set a benchmark for personal challenge, and how reconnecting with wild places and the unhurried rhythm of the long walk continue to provide a much-needed antidote to our busy modern age.

The Dark Peak section of the Pennine Way was once infamously grim, eroded into a morass of sludge. This extract from chapter two examines the huge efforts being made to restore degraded peat bogs, and to rescue the trail from the mud so that it has once again become an enjoyable walking experience.

Attitudes have changed in the 50 years that walkers have been treading the Pennine Way, explains Andrew, and where the dreadful erosion was once accepted as part of the challenge, concern for the fragile upland environment nowadays makes trail management a more hands-on affair.


Repairing the green trail (Crowden-Hebden Bridge)

Longdendale wasn't exactly alluring, murky and uniformly grey with moisture heavy in the air. It was one of those mornings, I told myself, where you simply have to get up and get going without too much thought in between. I slithered up the damp hillside into the cloud above Laddow Rocks, the sodden undergrowth making short work of my dry trousers. I waded through a stream where the slab bridge had partly collapsed and tried to negotiate several patches of spongy ground and bog, before finally embarking on a paved section that marked the long, gradual ascent of Black Hill. My feet were sodden and squelching and all I could see was wet, lifeless moorland. It was not a great start to day two.

I plodded on for a bit and decided to call a halt and maybe cheer myself up with a chocolate bar that had been earmarked for a likely afternoon treat to head off flagging energy levels, but much to my surprise I realised I was nearly at the top of Black Hill. I stopped by the trig point and as I poured a cup of coffee from my flask the thinning clouds finally parted and a little watery sun shone through. This was better. I celebrated by eating some chocolate anyway; and my spirits were raised further by a short but good natured chat with a passing walker, a local man, who told me that in his opinion Black Hill was a fine place and unfairly treated by the walking guidebooks.

"Whenever I mentioned that I was going to walk the Pennine Way people tended to respond with terms like 'long', 'hilly', 'tough', 'rain' and 'bogs'. Others offered a shake of the head or a roll of the eyes and in their minds they probably added 'nutter'"

Mind you, by all accounts Black's Hill bad press was once well deserved. Writing in 1968, Alfred Wainwright described the summit as a "desolate and hopeless quagmire" where the peat was "naked and unashamed". The vegetation had been completely eroded so that the trig point was marooned in a soft bed of glutinous peat and only survived because it was built on a small island called Soldiers' Lump (named after the army engineers who originally surveyed the hill). To physically reach it entailed a dirty and potentially dangerous adventure, as Wainwright himself found out when he became completely stuck in the peat bog. He was rescued by the efforts of his walking friend and a passing national park warden who managed to pull him free.

Tom Stephenson inspecting experimental matting on the Pennine Way at Snake Pass, 1976  © Mike Williams
Tom Stephenson inspecting experimental matting on the Pennine Way at Snake Pass, 1976
© Mike Williams
Pennine Way map  © Cicerone
Pennine Way map
© Cicerone

Half a century later the summit of Black Hill is almost unrecognisable. The fact that I had reached the top sooner than anticipated and simply wet rather than covered in bog is testament to the fact that a slabbed path runs up to and beyond the trig point, which itself now sits on a neat cairn in the middle of a small paved area. More remarkable still is that in all directions there is vegetation: coarse grasses, heather, bilberry, cotton grass and rushes. There are wet patches, of course, as you would expect on any Pennine top, and its sense of bareness and bleakness will never to be everyone's taste, but this is a hill with a new lease of life. It's a far cry from that degraded, boot-sucking sea of exposed peat that once gave Black Hill the darkest of reputations; and it recalls not just the low point in the Pennine Way's fortunes, but the moment when the path's very existence came under threat.

By the mid 1980s it was clear that sections of the Pennine Way were in serious trouble, principally where the heavily-used path crossed fragile, peat-based moorland, and especially in the Peak District and South Pennines. After years of official inaction the case for some sort of intervention was now irrefutable.

In 1987 the Peak District National Park Authority and the Countryside Commission established a three-year management project to examine ways to repair the worst-eroded sections. They had found that since a survey in 1971 the width of the path had, in certain places, widened dramatically as successive walkers tried to avoid the exposed and glutinous peat, which of course only made the erosion worse. What was once a 6-foot wide path on Black Hill had increased to 71 feet across, while between Slippery Moss and Redmires to Blackstone Edge the bare path width had grown by a staggering 900%!

In the first phase of the project, led by Molly Porter, various techniques were trialled, some with more success than others, and since digging out the peat to the bedrock was not a realistic option most involved floating an artificial path on top of the soft surface. There were wooden duckboards, strips of black plastic matting anchored to the ground and elaborate raft paths that floated on geotextiles and even sheep's wool. Chestnut fence palings, wood chippings and brash were laid in long lines to try and provide a firm walkway across the peat. Most ended up succumbing to the harsh Pennine weather and actually became eyesores and tripping hazards, so were later removed, but it was valuable experience and lessons were learned. Some techniques were truly experimental, such as the construction of a short path on Snake summit consisting of expanded polystyrene blocks covered with loose stone. It was based on road construction methods over deep peat sites in southern Norway that effectively allowed the highway to float. Initially the results were very encouraging, but heavy downpours and poor drainage made the blocks too buoyant and caused them to split, so that the path began to wobble alarmingly, much to the consternation of passing walkers.

"By the mid 1980s it was clear that sections of the Pennine Way were in serious trouble, principally where the heavily-used path crossed fragile, peat-based moorland"

In 1991 Mike Rhodes was appointed Project Manager and, reflecting on some of the highs and lows in a report ten years later, he described the time when he was walking alone to his car on the Snake summit one winter's afternoon after a site visit. "It was going dark, it was misty and I was tired from the miles of dodging slurried peat bogs. Suddenly, without warning, I found myself up to my waist in cold liquid peat. I clung to a tussock, hauled myself out and sat there, soaking wet and stinking of rotting vegetation." Mike is now Access and Rights of Way Manager for the Peak District National Park Authority, but 30 years ago he told me that the conditions were so bad it was make or break for the Pennine Way. "In the mid 1980s it got to the stage where the impact of the Pennine Way on the Peak District moorland was so severe that it threatened the Pennine Way's actual existence. It was a choice of either making a major intervention and spending a significant amount of money to make the route sustainable - or close it. At one point the National Park Authority was even discouraging people from using the trail."

A Pennine Way walker stranded amid the peat hags of Kinder Scout in 1978  © Chris Sainty
A Pennine Way walker stranded amid the peat hags of Kinder Scout in 1978
© Chris Sainty

A maintenance team of four (later five) was established to carry out large scale repair and maintenance works. It was long, hard work in sometimes extreme conditions, often involving a walk of several miles across pathless bog just to get to the site. Martyn Sharp was one of the original members, then since 2003 he has been the Pennine Way Ranger for the Peak District stretch of the national trail. "The top of Black Hill was in a sorry state back then," he admitted. "You couldn't reach the summit without sinking in up to your knees or above. There was an attempt to redirect walkers away from the very top, around the edge, but in the end we had no choice but to lay stone slabs to the trig point."

The reaction to the team from passing walkers wasn't always appreciative either, as the project report from the time notes: "It seems that some of the Pennine Way walkers thought they were there for a working holiday, and some thought they were convicts."

It was now, after the failed experimental surfacing techniques, that the team began introducing traditional methods of repair using stone paving and, on some of the steeper slopes, stone pitching. It would prove to be the most durable and long-lasting solution, as well as arguably the most appropriate, but from the beginning the choice of remedial action was based on a careful assessment of the location and a desire to respect the essential wild character of the upland landscape.

The flagstones came from the floors of derelict mills in the West Pennines which were otherwise destined to be broken up as waste. Instead, they were lifted, packed in crates and flown by helicopter to the Pennine Way. The large rectangular slabs of Bacup sandstone were placed rough side (underside) upwards in order to give maximum grip to walkers' boots and laid directly onto the ground so that, in effect, they float on the soft peat as their size spreads the surface area loading. As far as possible they were laid in gentle curves that followed the natural undulations and contours and so avoided artificially straight lines. Since the stones were recycled and 150 years old they were already weathered and didn't have the look of newly quarried material. Some even still had the drilled holes that were once used as the footings of looms.

"We were aiming to recreate the traditional techniques of causey paving and stone pitching that have been used for centuries on the packhorse routes across the Pennines, but adapting them for a modern recreational route," explained Mike. "Look at places like Blackstone Edge on the Pennine Way, or Stanage Edge in the Peak District for examples of these old surfaced routes. We used natural local stone originally cut from the Pennine hills for use in the mills and factories. And now we were returning that stone to the same hills. The stones are natural products and part of the Pennine landscape." It's an interesting reversal of the process described by Ted Hughes in his poem Hill-Stone was Content, who wrote of the Pennine stone being cut, carted and "conscripted" into the mills, forgetting its "wild roots, its earth-song".

There's an uncanny but powerful sense of coming full circle. Stones that were originally quarried from the Pennine hills were used to build the mills that fed the Industrial Revolution; the workers looked to escape the weekday drudgery by rambling in the same hills; when they finally achieved decent access and people walked for leisure some of the moorland paths became eroded and needed repairing; the mills closed down and the redundant stone was returned to the hills to form durable and lasting pathways. How neat is that?

Much of Mike's work on the Pennine Way and for the national park has been about balancing the conservation and protection of the moors with enjoyable recreation. "One of the fundamental principles of footpath repair is that you make it a good path that people will walk on. And when I see people coming out to walk the Pennine Way without leaving an impact then I consider that my job will be done. I really do think we're beginning to get there now."

If you want to know what it was like then read Wainwright's description of Black Hill in the 1960s in full; or look at photos of walkers floundering on Kinder Scout in the 1970s and 80s. There are still visible scars on Featherbed Moss where successive Pennine Way walkers tried to dodge the worst of the bog (the average 'trample width' here was measured at over 170 feet); and even the first mile out of Edale across the grassy expanse of Grindsbrook Meadows on the original route was once eroded into so many parallel paths, thanks to the tread of walking boots, that Gordon Miller described it to me as the Pennine Way motorway - three lanes north, three lanes south. The transformation has been startling and walking the Pennine Way through the Peak District is now a much more pleasant experience, but Martyn Sharp is at pains to point out why the work was carried out in the first place.

"People have to understand that we didn't put the slabs down to make the Pennine Way easier to walk but to protect the rare habitats," he said. "We took some criticism over the slabs to start with, but the older paving stones have blended in and the vegetation has grown back around them really well." In fact, it's done so well that Martyn now has to strim vegetation encroaching the path at one point.

By 2011 the revegetated summit of Black Hill had been transformed  © Moors for the Future Partnership
By 2011 the revegetated summit of Black Hill had been transformed
© Moors for the Future Partnership

Black Hill seems like a place reborn. It's still a big, stern lump, but these days it's more green than black. "I have a special affinity for Black Hill," admitted Martyn. "It's not as busy as Kinder Scout but to me it's every bit as special. There are mountain hares and short eared owls up here now, it's a place that's alive once again." And he says the views can be every bit as commanding as elsewhere on the trail. "If you stand on the northern side of Black Hill, a little beyond the trig point, you can see Pendle Hill and even Pen-y-ghent on a clear day. It's an exhilarating place."

And as for that famous trig point, once the only piece of dry and recognisable land amid the summit bog, it also seems to have an admirer. "Every year a local man walks up the hill along the Pennine Way to repaint the trig point," says Martyn. "I try and get up to see him and I've even offered to supply the paint, but he politely refuses."

"Black Hill seems like a place reborn. It's still a big, stern lump, but these days it's more green than black"

From the summit of Black Hill the Pennine Way originally struck north westward across Dean Head Moss to reach the A635 Saddleworth-Holmfirth road, then continued across White Moss opposite. However, the ground here was notoriously wet and marshy and there were regular horror stories from Pennine Way walkers. In his 1975 guide to the long distance footpaths of northern England, Geoffrey Berry observed: "The peat here is softer, stickier and deeper than any we have experienced, and that alone, on its part, is no mean achievement." Wooden fence palings were laid across the worst bits in the 1980s, but these soon deteriorated and were eventually removed, so in 1990 an alternative route across Wessenden Head Moor and then along the Wessenden valley, a little to the east of the original, became the recommended route and is now the permanent path. I followed it to the A635, a high and open moorland road with good views, not particularly busy at that moment, so I dropped my pack, leant against the wall and rested.

For over 30 years this isolated lay-by has been the location of the legendary Snoopy's snack van, a mainly weekend phenomenon that appears to be celebrated largely on the strength of the generous size of its bacon butties and the huge, steaming mugs of tea served up to Pennine Way walkers, no doubt grateful for a hot drink and a chat. Whether they open the serving hatch or conduct business from the door at the end depends on the strength of the wind, I was told.

Looking back, Black Hill was now more or less clear of cloud, although a little to the east my eye was irresistibly drawn to the 750ft pencil thin mast of the Holme Moss transmitter. It was erected in 1951 and although pinned down with five sets of steel stays the 140-ton mast looked incredibly fragile. Beyond the mast a low, grey blanket still enveloped Bleaklow. I sighed deeply. I had got over the first hurdle, seen off the opening test on the Pennine Way. But was this the right way to look at it?

Long before I took that first step at Edale I decided I had to try and get to the bottom of the popular notion of the Pennine Way as simply a hard, uncompromising slog. The physical and mental challenge, the arduous miles of bog and bare moorland, the blisters and pain. Surely there was more to the Pennine Way than that? But the Pennine Way has always seemed to carry its reputation before it. When set alongside the many hundreds of other domestic walking trails, Mike Parker described the Pennine Way as the "undoubted alpha male of the pack, the toughest, hardest bastard there is". It seems to be the only British long distance path that everyone has heard of, even those for whom walking for fun is as alien a concept as deep sea diving or eating snails. In the preceding months, whenever I mentioned that I was going to walk the Pennine Way people tended to respond with terms like "long", "hilly", "tough," "rain" and "bogs". Others offered a shake of the head or a roll of the eyes and in their minds they probably added "nutter".

In a guidebook to backpacking published in 1980, David Wickers and Art Pedersen were pretty blunt about the Pennine Way, calling it "a 250 mile wet slog up the middle of England." They described how "the going is rough and can be a real body wrecker... there are exhausting hours to be spent bog hopping across the peaty plateaux, just like wading through a giant squelchy grow bag. And the weather can be truly violent, with low flying rain clouds, sleet that comes hard and horizontal, and pea souper mists that can brew up within minutes, even on the gentlest of summer days ... there are certainly moments when you have to convince yourself it is doing you good, and when the very idea of the Pennine Way being a public 'footpath' seems an utter euphemism." You get the impression they didn't like the Pennine Way very much.

Of course, walking along the top of the Pennines is always likely to have its challenging moments, whatever route you take and however you choose to walk it, and that's what distinguishes it from the Cotswold Way or Thames Path. The Pennines are a high, often remote chain of hills, the western facing slopes in particular prone to rain, and where there's peat underfoot the ground is always likely to cut up. Long distance walks are about experiencing the elements, moving slowly through different natural landscapes and being outdoors. And they're about testing your mettle. But how far does testing your mettle mean that a walking trail should be so exacting as to make endurance rather than enjoyment the watchword?

More than almost any other UK walking trail, the Pennine Way seems synonymous with sheer physical challenge. The South West Coast Path may be much longer (630 miles compared to the Pennine Way's 268 miles) and the overall height gain much greater (115,000ft against the Pennine Way's 37,000ft, give or take a bit), but you rarely go half a day without dropping down to a village, cafe or beach. When you set off for a day on the Pennine Way, on the other hand, in most cases you don't see a shop, pub or cafe until nightfall; and if you camp you might not see one at all.

As I walked north to Scotland I pondered the question of toughness and challenge and talked to others about it. Where precisely do you strike the balance between maintaining the trail's sheer physical (and mental) test and making it sufficiently accessible so that enough people feel both inspired and capable of attempting it? Reading accounts of early trail completions in the 1960s and '70s I was struck by the fact that most people seemed to accept that the boggy and sometimes treacherous conditions underfoot were simply part of walking along the top of the Pennines. It might not have been altogether pleasant at times, but coping with it was part of the adventure.

So was it right to tolerate the sort of erosion that I'd already heard about in the Peak District or could (and should) the path be better maintained but still remain a walking challenge? After all, a walking route so long, high, exposed and remote is surely challenging enough, regardless of the surface beneath your boots?

The Pennine Way's creator had a clear view on this. In an article in The Great Outdoors magazine in April 1993, journalist Roly Smith quoted from a conversation that he had had with Tom Stephenson in 1976. Did the scars on the landscape caused mainly by the feet of Pennine Way walkers upset the route's architect? "No, it doesn't offend me in the slightest," he replied. "The way I see it is that this route has given so much pleasure to so many thousands of people who perhaps otherwise might have not ventured on to the hills. That is what I wanted in the first place, and when I see young people enjoying themselves on the Pennine Way, it makes it seem worthwhile."

Others have pointed out that the relatively small cost of repairing a stretch of worn footpath, when compared to the cost of building just a few yards of new road, for instance, is a price worth paying, especially when you factor in all the physical and mental benefits associated with taking exercise in the outdoors. A well-used and eroded path is evidence that people are walking it and want to walk it, so the argument goes.

However, fifty years on and attitudes have shifted. It might still be just as important to encourage young people on to the hills, but it's no longer acceptable to sit by and allow such obvious environmental damage to take place. I suspect, too, that many outdoor users are increasingly aware of their own individual impact and uncomfortable with the notion that their own feet are damaging the very same wild and beautiful landscapes that they come to enjoy. And such damage, too. A full condition survey of the Pennine Way in 1989 showed that for the trail south of the M62 (including all of the Peak District) the average worn or trampled width was found to be 40 feet; but on the summit plateau of Kinder Scout the trample damage spread up to half a mile wide!

As I left the Peak District, on the newly-laid causey paths amid recovering moorland, I really couldn't see that there was any other option but to repair and renew, even up here where by rights it should be wild and untouched. Indeed, I even felt a faint sense of hope that amid so much wider ecological destruction that we have been wreaking on the planet for the last couple of centuries we still have it in our gift to step back and through purpose, ingenuity and hard work rectify the damage. Either way, the Pennine Way had been pulled back from the brink.

The Pennine Way: the Path, the People, the Journey by Andrew McCloy (pb. Cicerone)

Pennine Way cover shot  © Cicerone

This book presents a portrait of the Pennine Way, Britain's oldest and best known long-distance footpath, tracing its remarkable history through the experiences of walkers past and present. As Andrew McCloy walks the 268-mile route from the Derbyshire Peak District to the Scottish borders, he discovers how the Pennine Way set a benchmark for personal challenge and adventure and how reconnecting with wild places and the unhurried rhythm of the long walk continue to provide a much-needed antidote to our busy modern age.

The resilience of the long distance walker is mirrored in the path's fascinating history: the initial struggle for access, battles to tame the bogs, later challenges of path erosion and the fluctuating circumstances of the rural hostel. Above all else however this is a book about Pennine Way people – from crusading ramblers to resourceful B&B landladies, hard working rangers to fanatical trail walkers. Their conversations and memories are woven into the narrative to give an account of the changing fortunes of the path and its special significance.

Personal, thoughtful and often humorous, The Pennine Way - the Path, the People, the Journey is an exploration of our desire for challenge and adventure, the stimulation of wild places and how a long journey on foot through our own country still resonates today. It will appeal to people who have walked or are preparing to walk the Pennine Way, as well as to those with an interest in the history and legacy of this iconic path.

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