Walking has always been associated with freedom and escape. Long-distance walking in particular is a chance to flee regular routine and throw off the shackles of everyday existence, at least for a week or two. As legendary fell-wanderer Alfred Wainwright put it, “The most subtle of the pleasures of a walking tour is the complete change of habit and thought, as well as surroundings. You shed the old life, and live another”.
Such was the thinking behind his own long walk – the Pennine Journey, which Wainwright devised back in 1938. He was then a fit 31-year-old already in love with the fells. But he was keen to see more of the country. So, in late September of that year, he took two weeks’ leave from his Blackburn desk job and “walked alone from Settle in Ribblesdale to the Roman Wall along the eastern flank of the Pennines, returning down the west side”. This giant loop traversed some of the most captivating terrain in northern England, exploring delightful river valleys, high fells and tracts of moorland. It visited historic sites – notably the forts and milecastles of mighty Hadrian’s Wall. It also gave him the chance to sample the delights of the little towns and villages of Yorkshire, Durham, Northumberland and Westmorland.
It’s fair to say he enjoyed himself, particularly the lonelier stretches. He said: “In the solitude of the wild Pennine hills, I found peace”. It was a brief yet welcome respite from the spectre of war that then loomed large over Britain. In 1938, the papers were full of ominous news of a forthcoming conflict. “The talk was of air raid shelters, fire drill, civil defence – and Hitler’s screaming threats gave a frightening emphasis to our own anxieties about the future. Everybody felt sick, upset, nervous. Nobody smiled any more”.
His walk was a chance to get away from it all. He duly set out from Settle just after noon on Sunday 25 September and literally headed for the hills. His memories of that two-week sojourn subsequently became a book, though the manuscript remained largely unseen for nearly half a century. It wasn’t published until 1986, by which time he had become not just a noted guidebook author, but also a bona fide TV celebrity. In the interim, his seven-volume Pictorial Guide to the Lakeland Fells had established his reputation, followed by best-selling companions to the Pennine Way and his own Coast-to-Coast Walk. But his readers were hungry for more, and this long-forgotten curiosity – ultimately published as A Pennine Journey: The Story of a Long Walk in 1938 – was just the thing to satisfy them.
It’s a charming and decidedly quirky travelogue, at odds with the popular perception of Wainwright. Today, we’re used to viewing AW through the prism of his later years: a national treasure, but also a bit of a curmudgeon. Surly, reclusive and somewhat eccentric, fellow guidebook writer Damian Hall caricatured him as “the crabby wanderer”. But the book’s narrator shatters this stereotype. The young Wainwright has an eye for the ladies as well as landscapes, and he’s even prone to the odd fantasy. Of course, the writing already possesses his distinctive voice. The style is wonderfully discursive, moving from exhilarating descriptions of picture-perfect vistas to internal musings on everything from the impenetrable dialects of Northumbria to the merits of HP sauce.
From the first step all the way to Hadrian’s Wall, AW is charged with almost boyish enthusiasm – it “drives him on and on, and the hardships and discomforts of his way are naught.” Admittedly, it’s a book of two halves, for the return to Settle leaves AW feeling faintly depressed. Outward bound, he is full of optimism and anticipation, but on the homeward leg, his progress slows as he starts to look back a little regretfully. Basically, he gets the end-of-holiday blues. But all in all, it remains a beguiling portrait of the author, as well as a wonderful advert for the walk itself.
I started just as he did, striding out from Settle – specifically, from the historic railway station, where there’s a commemorative blue plaque to Wainwright in the waiting room. His 210-mile journey took him 11 days – not bad going. The trail is a bit longer today, since many of the minor roads that AW took now thunder with traffic, so the modern route has been sensibly redirected onto quieter and more rewarding footpaths.
The day was chilly and damp, the sky a featureless expanse of grey. Not a particularly promising start. Luckily, the first stage eases you in gently, for it is only 7¼ miles to Horton-in-Ribblesdale, picking up stretches of the Pennine Bridleway and the Ribble Way en route. You soon leave the trappings of civilisation behind, as views of the moors and dales open out, the path meandering through limestone pastures and hillside copses, along farm tracks and skirting patchwork fields, with the River Ribble often little more than half a mile distant.
Horton is the traditional start and finish of the Yorkshire Three Peaks challenge – a 24-mile hike over Whernside, Ingleborough and Pen y Ghent. The Pennine Journey revisits the first two peaks on its return leg, and though Pen y Ghent isn’t actually on the route itself, many walkers choose to make the optional detour to climb it anyway. The second stage of the walk follows ancient drove roads onto moorland, passing hamlets and crossing Horse Head Pass – where AW witnessed a stunning sunset panorama that became one of his highlights of the trip. Entering Wharfedale, the trail then picks up the Dales Way all the way to Buckden, via delightful Hubberholme.
Highlights of day three include the pretty lake of Semer Water, though this was inevitably a disappointment to a lover of the Lake District. It was no Windermere, or so AW thought anyway, being notable only as “the one sheet of water the Yorkshire Dales can show”. He was slightly disparaging too about Wensleydale and Swaledale, both of which AW thought inferior to Wharfedale (though he’d changed his mind by 1968, when he came to write his Pennine Way Companion). Of course, one’s perceptions of a place are hugely coloured by the weather in which it is seen. All I can say is that on the day we walked through it, Swaledale was utterly majestic. The river sparkled an iridescent inky blue. We squeezed through gap stiles in ancient limestone walls that enclosed lush sloping meadows, each guarded by the stone-built cow houses that are an iconic feature of this Dales landscape. Locals say that Yorkshire is God’s own country. It was hard to argue.
On day four, the path initially follows the River Swale past the village of Muker (‘myoo-kuh’, not ‘mucker’, as a local informed me), passing the falls of Kisdon Force before striking out across bleak moorland to reach the Tan Hill Inn. At 1,732 feet, this is famously the highest pub in Britain. You can camp behind the pub for a tenner, so we duly handed over some cash to the friendly barman, sank three pints, ordered two giant Barnsley Chops for dinner and then decided it might be a good idea to pitch the tent before settling in for the night. Technically, to finish this stage we should have carried on across Sleightholme Moor to reach Bowes with its medieval castle – but the cosy charm of the Tan Hill was too alluring. Besides, Bowes was the next county over, and Durham could wait.
The next sections undoubtedly have their delights, following the River Tees before visiting cascading High Force, taxing Swinhope Head and the picturesque village of Blanchland. This was AW’s favourite village of the entire walk. “When you set foot in Blanchland, you step into the Middle Ages”, he wrote, conjuring up visions of chivalrous knights and buxom maidens. But even this medieval paradise was only a distraction, for Wainwright’s sights were firmly set on his end goal: Hadrian’s Wall. He perhaps did Durham a disservice. It probably didn’t help that he got a thorough soaking in Weardale. But then, he was preoccupied with reaching Northumberland and his ultimate objective.
Today, walkers must complete a further two stages to get there, stopping at Hexham. The next day – finally – sees arrival at the wall. Wainwright’s highlights were the two Roman forts of Cilurnum, now Chesters, and Borovicium, now Housesteads. But he was just as enamoured with the wall itself, and with its ditch, and with the Vallum – a huge secondary earthwork that lies to the south of Hadrian’s Wall. “I have never been so elated, nor yet so profoundly moved, as on this autumn day on the Northumbrian hilltops”, he confesses.
Indeed, he turns south reluctantly, and the book takes something of a despondent tone. “Much of my keenness had departed; my enthusiasm I had left at the Wall. The journey back was bound to be a spiritless affair compared with the continuous and growing expectancy which carried me so eagerly to the north”. But he admonishes himself, noting that he still had plenty of places to visit before the journey was over – including the wild hills that are the source of the Tyne; and Cross Fell, “monarch of the Pennines”, with its summit besieged by the mysterious Helm Wind (the only wind in Britain with its own name). Then there was Appleby and the Vale of Eden; Sedbergh, framed by mountains; “out-of-the-way romantic Dent”; and the lovely waterfalls of Ingleton. “I tried hard to conjure up a genuine enthusiasm for them”, he relates. But it still feels a bit forced.
Unlike AW we didn’t struggle for enthusiasm, though we only managed to see a few of these highlights during our abbreviated version of the full journey. The Eden Valley proved to be particularly special. We got lucky where Wainwright didn’t, for he experienced truly atrocious weather, getting buffeted by storms and drenched by fierce rain, hail and sleet.
In stark contrast, our days were illuminated by golden late autumn sunshine (sorry, AW). It seemed strange to think that at Soulby, a village just a few miles north of Kirkby Stephen, he very nearly packed the whole adventure in. He penned a dramatically worded telegram-like postcard to a colleague:
BITTERLY REGRET TO INFORM YOU EXPEDITION ABANDONED THIS MORNING ONLY FORTY MILES FROM BASE CAMP STOP AM RETURNING IMMEDIATELY BY TRAIN STOP THOROUGHLY DEMORALISED BY BAD WEATHER AND LACK OF VITAL RESOURCES STOP THIS IS RETREAT WITH HONOUR
Fortunately, he changed his mind and finished the walk, which meant he got to see Dent – a remarkable village “of cobbles, of jutting gables, overhanging roofs, quaint alleys, wooden galleries and outside staircases”. AW called it a fairy tale place, though he also likened it to a squalid slum from the darkest days of the French Revolution. It’s probably a good job that his book wasn’t published for some fifty years – if they’d had the opportunity to read it sooner, the locals would have chased him off with pitchforks. Still, he perked up when he discovered that his landlady for the night had thoughtfully put a hot water bottle in his bed.
From Dent, the Pennine Journey’s last hurrah is the summit of Whernside, the highest of the Yorkshire Three Peaks. Wainwright called it “a long high moor… with strange tarns resting on a shelf below the summit”. Happily, it ensures the book ends on a high note. AW’s spirits soar as he climbs, and at the top he gets a magnificent view of Dentdale bathed in bright sunshine, sleepy and tranquil as if laid out on a map. Appropriately enough, life imitated art, and we enjoyed an identical vista.
And as we slowly retreated from the summit, past the blue tarns, gazing out onto the same landscape that had captivated AW back in 1938, I was reminded of another of his little truths: “There is only one way to know a hill, and that is to put your feet on it and walk”. He wasn’t wrong – but I’d offer the same advice to all those considering tackling some or all of the Pennine Journey. Put your feet on it and walk; you won’t regret it.
