Walk in depth: the Pennine Way

Britain’s first official long-distance path, the Pennine Way, was the dream of walkers’ campaigner and first full-time secretary of the Ramblers, Tom Stephenson. Andrew McCloy investigates…

The Pennine Way is one of those trails that seems almost as old as the windswept hills and moorland it traverses; an indelible part of our walking heritage. As you stride out on Roman roads and former packhorse routes, it’s easy to forget that the well-known 429km/268-mile trail along the spine of northern England is officially less than half a century old, and the long campaign to realise this pioneering walking route mirrors the Ramblers’ wider struggle for public access over the last 75 years.

There’s a certain mythology surrounding the Pennine Way, partly because it was the first official long-distance footpath in the UK, designated just two years after the ground-breaking National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act of 1949. It’s a trail almost everyone has heard of, but surprisingly few actually walk it in full. The highlights are numerous and familiar – Kinder Scout, Malham Cove, Pen-y-Ghent, High Cup Nick, Cross Fell, Hadrian’s Wall, the Cheviots – but in between are long stretches of high, and often bleak, open moorland which have earned the trail its reputation as a physical challenge.

But there’s so much more to the Pennine Way than a three-week upland slog. ‘None could walk the 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. ’ So wrote journalist Tom Stephenson in his now legendary article for the Daily Herald in 1935, setting out his vision for a ‘long green trail’ the length of the Pennines. He would spend the next three decades tirelessly campaigning to make his cherished dream a reality, 21 years of it as secretary of the Ramblers, fighting tooth-and-nail for access to his beloved uplands. Fitting, therefore, that I should step out on the first few miles of this epic path with Kate Ashbrook, one of today’s doughty access campaigners and twice national chairman of the Ramblers.

“National trails like the Pennine Way continue to inspire people, ” says Kate. “They’re part of an overall footpath network and a wider right of access which we must continue to fight for. ” It’s a sentiment that Tom Stephenson would no doubt have shared, since the hard-fought creation of a Pennine walking trail was symbolic of a more general fight to open up the private shooting moors and estates of northern England. In the 1930s, members of the newly formed Ramblers’ Association helped survey a likely route from Derbyshire to the Scottish border, revealing that 112km/70 miles of new public footpaths would be necessary if a continuous path were to be realised. Tom and his colleagues lobbied MPs and government ministers, even taking some of them out on high-profile walks along the proposed route, culminating in the 1949 legislation.

Walking through history
We left the busy Peak District village of Edale, the southern terminus of the Pennine Way, and climbed slowly up Jacob’s Ladder on to the high, dark plateau of Kinder Scout. Groups of cheerful young walkers passed us – a generation, we mused, for whom a walk on the Derbyshire moors is something simply taken for granted. “It was partly due to the campaigning efforts of the early Ramblers that through the 1949 Act we now have national parks, national trails and footpaths recorded on the definitive map, ” says Kate. How fitting, therefore, that almost two-thirds of the Pennine Way National Trail is within designated national parks – the Peak District, Yorkshire Dales and Northumberland. This sense of walking through history, chronicling the struggle for access to England’s northern hills, was reinforced further when we reached the windy escarpment near Kinder Low and gazed down towards the village of Hayfield. It was from there that some of the ramblers on the mass trespass in 1932 made their way up on to the moors, ahead of their fateful encounter with local gamekeepers and the establishment. Hallowed ground, indeed.

Gamekeepers clash with protesters at Kinder Scout in 1932

Beyond Kinder Scout, the trail continues its lonely moorland passage across Bleaklow and Black Hill, then eventually switches to the softer limestone scenery of the Yorkshire Dales. Here, on 24 April 1965, the Pennine Way was formally opened at a ceremony on Malham Moor attended by 2,000 people. For many trail walkers this is a popular stretch – you’ve found your rhythm, perhaps dealt with the first blister and discarded unwanted kit, and now you can start to appreciate the awesome Pennine landscape in earnest. From the rocky amphitheatre of Malham Cove to the shapely summit of Pen-y-Ghent, the walk is punctuated by a succession of stunning natural features as it wanders into the heart of the North Pennines: the wild flowers and waterfalls of Upper Teesdale, High Cup Nick’s plunging slopes and the immense and windy summit of Cross Fell – at 893m/2,947ft the high point of the entire walk. Further on is a short burst of Hadrian’s Wall, then a finale among the rolling Cheviot Hills, Tom Stephenson’s favourite section.

Enjoying the legacy
For now we were content just to amble on Kinder Scout’s breezy top, and it seemed a busy place. What Pennine Way walkers there were had probably passed through earlier. It was gratifying to see so many people enjoying the hills: vindication, if it were needed, of the Ramblers’ more recent efforts to ensure that the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000 had real teeth and delivered lasting benefits. Launched here in the Peak District National Park, the legislation ensured public access to large tracts of obstinately private moors the length of the Pennines. This included Boulsworth Hill, off the Pennine Way, west of Haworth (where Tom Stephenson had wanted the original Pennine Way to run, but which was opposed by the landowners) and Hartside and Geltsdale – a sizeable expanse of open moorland adjacent to the Pennine Way, near the small town of Alston in Cumbria.

“We’ve won a lot of access battles over the last 75 years, ” says Kate, “and the issues aren’t so black and white any more. The laws have changed so that landowners can’t simply say ‘no’ when people are walking on mapped access land. That’s a big turnaround. But there are still plenty of blocked and difficult paths when you leave the Pennine Way and other national trails, and we must campaign to get them in good order. Thanks to the hard work of the Ramblers, the walking public is much clearer about its rights. But here today, there are probably a lot of people out walking who are not members or even supporters of the Ramblers – to embrace them is part of our challenge.”

In some senses, the Pennine Way is in a similar predicament, with plenty of people setting foot on the trail as part of a day walk but very few actually attempting the full distance (fewer than 2,000 a year at the last count). Perhaps this is due to a greater choice of where to walk or changing leisure patterns. Or maybe it’s simply that this is a long, tough trail that for many will remain an unfulfilled dream rather than a reality. Either way, the Pennine Way’s image and identity remains as strong as its place in our access heritage. It seems that the Ramblers and the long green trail still have much in common.