My walk of life: I got my money’s worth

Richard Hutchins joined the newly created Ramblers as a student in 1935, at a cost of five shillings. Now, 75 years later, the lifelong member looks back at how that shaped his career, his family, and the legacy he leaves behind in a special walk podcast…

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Click on the play button to listen to Julia’s interview with Richard

I’ve always enjoyed walking, and my interest in access rights began when I was a boy. In 1932, when I was 17, I remember hearing with great excitement about the events on Kinder Scout, which paved the way for the right to roam. Several hundred people trespassed on the mountain, walking to Ashop Head at such a pace that the police were only able to catch the stragglers. I joined the Ramblers shortly after it was created in 1935, while studying law at the London School of Economics.

I sent a donation of five shillings (worth about £13 now – quite a hefty sum at the time, especially for a student). I got my money’s worth, though. Nearly every weekend I went out walking in the countryside. Southern Railways ran special ramblers’ trains and you would go out to one station and come back from another. My law studies included access to the mountains, now known as the right to roam. This became a great interest, which led me to join the Commons, Open Spaces and Footpaths Preservation Society, whose secretary was Sir Lawrence Chubb, a leading figure in access to mountains and surveying rights of way.

The Ramblers offered a map-lending service and in 1936 I borrowed maps to walk from London to Fishguard, to get the ferry to Ireland to visit my family for the summer holidays. I took the tube to Uxbridge and walked a distance of 218km/135 miles, staying at youth hostels along the way. I was determined to make it all the way to Fishguard and turned down kind offers of lifts from passing motorists, but by the time I reached Llangasty the blisters on my feet had become unbearable. So I took a bus for the last leg. Apart from the sore feet, it was glorious. I went by field paths, which were well used then, so I never had to get out secateurs to clear the way.

In 1939, I joined the army and went to Sandhurst as a private cadet. I served until April 1946, retiring as a lieutenant colonel. I led walking and cycling tours in most of the places I was stationed. I remember one outing in Sierra Leone where we walked up the highest mountain in the colony and placed a big V-for-victory sign on the top so that passing aircraft could see it. When the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act was passed in 1949, I wrote a book about it, and it was through this that I met my wife, Isabel. I wrote to the Ministry of Town and Country Planning to ask if one of the civil servants who had worked on the Act during its passage through Parliament, and knew it well, could comment on my draft manuscript. They offered a Miss Isabel Kuhlicke, who, I soon discovered, shared my love of walking and appreciation of maps.

Richard (standing) leading a trek in the 1950s

I organised a lot of walking tours at that time, with parties of friends, using youth hostels, tents and my Dormobile van, called Dora. I invited Miss Kuhlicke (as I called her then) to join a party on the Pembrokeshire coastal path and found that she was very good company and excellent at reading maps. We married in 1955 and set up home in the Peak District. It was a lovely place to bring up children, with plenty of walking nearby. As a solicitor in town and country planning, I was in charge of the survey of footpaths for Derbyshire County Council, recording nearly 3,000 miles/4,800km of paths and claiming all canal towpaths as public footpaths. I also organised the access agreements for about 70 square miles of the Peak District. Through my work with the national park, I established the High Peak trail and the Tissington trail. Knowing about the Manifold Valley Light Railway’s old track being made into a footpath in the 1930s, I negotiated to buy the old railway between Buxton and Ashbourne – 18km/11 miles of track, stations and car parks – for £3,000.

It was a great honour to be invited back to open the route in June 1971 – there’s still a plaque there marking the occasion. In later years I became the chief executive of an educational charity in Bedford. Through this I set up the Blue Peris mountain centre in Snowdonia, now one of the top places for mountain leaders’ courses. I’m 95 now and I have many great memories of walking to look back on. I’m really pleased to have passed my love of the outdoors on to my children and grandchildren. Last Christmas I gave my youngest granddaughter, Lizzy, membership of the Ramblers. She is
19 and at university, just as I was when I joined 75 years ago.

Interview by Julia Buckley

YOUR WALK OF LIFE
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