The Wild Rover: A Blistering Journey Along Britain’s Footpaths (11 page)

I knew that I had to walk at least one of the National Trails for this book, but the more I read of the Pennine Way, the surer I felt that it wasn’t going to be this one. Although the grand-daddy of British LDPs, it has been comprehensively eclipsed by other routes, most notably Wainwright’s Coast to Coast walk, and it’s now estimated that fewer than 2,000 people complete it every year. More than that, though, the route itself didn’t much appeal to me, for it is always portrayed as relentlessly dour and dirty, mile upon mile upon bloody mile of bog, moor and driving rain. I could imagine all too easily the kind of misanthropes that such bleakness would appeal to. And always has: in the 1971 Countryside Commission report on the route, when hundreds of walkers were counted and surveyed, reasons given for doing the Pennine Way included that it is ‘the furthest thing from so-called civilisation’, ‘remote from crowds, motor vehicles and the destructive influences of modern life’ and ‘to get away from the prying eyes of bureaucracy’. Wouldn’t you love a night in a remote moorland pub with that lot?

For a couple of highly entertaining days, I became slightly obsessed with reading the dozens of online diaries by folk who had managed the Pennine Way. They all shared a relentlessly upbeat tone, speckled with more revealing (and always funnier) moments of either coruscating agony or withering bathos. Folk put their every odd thought and muscular twinge into these diaries. One man detailed his pre-trail training regime, which involved taking daily walks with a cheap rucksack that he’d filled full of 23lb of potatoes. The rucksack makes his back ache and then break out in spots, but it only gets worse: ‘The training received a setback when I realised that the family had robbed some of the potatoes from my pack and the 23 lbs I thought I was carrying was in fact only 17 lbs. A further setback came when I realised that the potatoes were sweating and sprouting, so I had to find an alternative and turned to newspapers, bringing the pack back up to 23 lbs.’ You see? It’s better than
Emmerdale
. Things started to improve for our intrepid hero, but then pack-related disaster strikes again: ‘Another setback to the training occurred when I took out the newspapers from the rucksack in order to sew on some new closure straps. The newspapers were taken off for recycling and I had to look for something else to carry. I tried a 12 pack of Tetley’s bitter, but it was rather uncomfortable and not very well balanced, and ran the risk of becoming depleted in training! I therefore reverted to carrying some A level physics books which somebody was throwing out – just the thing for a bit of light reading en route!’

And off he goes, doubtless to the considerable relief of his family. Meticulously cataloguing the real ales on offer in every pub, he gradually heads north, but is not happy on reaching the youth hostel at Haworth, which is ‘in a fine old mansion with much more room than most. However, my dormitory was filled with a coachload of German teenage boys and the floor was littered with empty beer cans (despite this not being allowed by the YHA).’ Youths in a youth hostel; whatever next? To escape, he heads to a nearby pub ‘where I met a Cornish chap from the same dormitory and was bored to tears by his rambling tales, so only stayed for a pint and escaped for an early night.’ The paths, the hostels, the portions of apple crumble and the pints of Theakston’s all tumble by, until the heart-stopping climax is reached at Kirk Yetholm: ‘I finished with a meal at the Border Hotel of steak and kidney pie and chips for £3.50 and 5 pints of the local bitter.’

Such painstaking accounts are not even just products of the incontinence of the blogging age, for if you poke around in the dusty corners of most local reference libraries, you’ll find much the same sort of stuff in print form. Neatly typed, with grainy pictures, an unflagging monotone and a haphazard approach to punctuation (few commas, lots of exclamation marks), they are the proud, self-published records of men – always men – taking themselves right to the edge and facing their inner demons, before overcoming them with a dry pair of socks or a decent pint of Pilkington’s Old Scrote. One such marvel that I unearthed in a Lancashire library is the 1985 logbook of a man who did the Pennine Way, while his wife and her cousin drove each day’s leg of the route in a temperamental ‘Volkswagen caravanette’. This doubled up as their nightly accommodation, the ladies sharing the bed while Rambling Man kips in a bunk he has rigged up in the front. He’s not at all keen on paying good money to park up in caravan sites, when there are so many lay-bys to be had for free. The ladies are ‘none too pleased at the lack of toilet facilities on these moorland night stops’, he reports. ‘Still – the cows and sheep manage – so what’s the difference?’

At Malham, the gang stumble across a big ramblers’ rally to mark the 20th anniversary of the Pennine Way’s opening. Seemingly imagining himself as a reporter on the regional teatime news, he tells us: ‘Today, Mr Tom Stephenson, now 92 years of age, is guest of honour at Malham House where select guests are meeting for dinner, amongst them are Barbara Castle (Politician) and Mike Harding (Joker), but I am not invited!’ Further north, he gets lost one day in the mist, and although he reaches that evening’s appointed destination anyway, the fact that he went ‘wrong’ worries him all the way to Scotland. His poor wife is forced on the next bank holiday weekend to drive him back to the same place, just so that he can re-walk the ‘correct’ bit of route. That she didn’t take advantage of the situation and bury him on a lonely peat moor is a mystery.

Both of these scribes from the Pennine frontline have dabbled with the other National Trails, as well as numerous other long-distance paths. For our online correspondent, this was the first of his three trips along the Pennine Way, each recorded in microscopic detail. He also repeats Wainwright’s Coast to Coast and the Cambrian Way, from the top to the bottom of Wales. The reason for reprising his steps, he says, is that he has ‘exhausted the walks around Britain that particularly interest me and are of a suitable length’. Aside from the fact that none of his trips take him any further north than the Lowlands of Scotland, I find the idea quite astounding that you’ve walked everywhere you could possibly wish to have walked. What of the hundreds of thousands of miles of other rights of way? The 1,200 or so named long-distance paths? It’s a hoary cliché, but the variety of landscapes in Britain and Ireland is way out of proportion to the size of our islands. There is surely enough to keep anyone busy and fascinated for life – except, it seems, for Mr Sack O’Spuds.

Five other National Trails were created at the same time as the Pennine Way, though they took even longer to become reality. The Cleveland Way, a horseshoe around the North York Moors National Park, opened in 1969, the Pembrokeshire Coast Path a year later, and a year after that the Offa’s Dyke Path through the Marcher borderlands of England and Wales. By far the longest was the 630-mile South West Coast Path, a series of old coastguard tracks that hug the cliffs and shore from Minehead in Somerset, all the way around Devon and Cornwall and to Poole in Dorset; the last section of this monster was finally opened in 1978. And in 1972, the South Downs Way opened, unique amongst the early National Trails in that it is a bridle-way throughout, thus open to horse-riders as well as walkers. Cyclists too, of course, a constituency that didn’t feature much in the early days, but since the arrival of the mountain bike have loomed ever larger, faster and bolshier along its hundred-mile route, much to the chagrin of the ramblers.

Nine more National Trails have been added since then, as well as something over a thousand other named long-distance routes and who knows how many unofficial ones, all the slow-release legacy of the 1949 Act. Not until Tony Blair’s government was elected in 1997 did the Cabinet again contain so many enthusiastic walkers, a fact undoubtedly linked to the next big leap forward in access legislation, the 2000 Countryside and Rights of Way (CROW) Act for England and Wales, and the 2003 Land Reform (Scotland) Act. Labour’s hill-walking leader John Smith, the first to promise a ‘right to roam’, had died just three years earlier, something that focused minds and intent enormously; in some ways, the legislation is his legacy. They might have failed us on so much, but it has been almost entirely thanks to the Labour Party that we have the freedom to walk as much as we do. It almost makes me wish that I’d voted for them. Almost.

In the footsteps of the ancestors on the Ridgeway, in the Vale of White Horse, Oxfordshire

The choice of which National Trail to tackle pretty much decided itself. The chippy pride of the northern rambling tradition had been a joyous eye-opener, but I fancied seeing how the booted brigade slotted in somewhere softer and more southerly. I also wanted to go as far back in time as possible, to walk a route that way pre-dated the Gore-Tex age. The Ridgeway had long fascinated me, the idea of a prehistoric M1 through some of the most intensely cultivated and inhabited parts of the country. I’d walked a couple of small stretches years earlier, and remembered them with huge affection; since then, the idea of doing the whole route had lodged firmly in my mind. Amongst pagan mates, walking the Ridgeway was a must, a rite of passage and pilgrimage to burrow you deep into the ancient rhythm of the land. Not many of them had actually done it, but they could all talk for Albion about it. It was time to stop talking, and start walking.

There was the added bonus that it looked really quite easy, especially after the peat hags and knife-sharp winds of the north, and even more so when compared with some of the other National Trails. Up against the Pennine Way or the South West Coast Path, the 90-mile Ridgeway is a Sunday stroll of a path, ideal for someone still struggling to kick the fags and get into shape. The trail’s highpoint is less than 900 feet, a figure I’ll regularly top at home in Wales, and its route through the generous belly of southern England surely meant that I’d never be too far from a microbrewery and a Thai restaurant.

Vague timelines are something of an occupational hazard whenever we wind the clock back beyond the Romans, but there’s no doubting that the Ridgeway, or parts of it at least, have been used for as long as people have roamed across our landscape. Nearly all of the route lies 300–800 feet above sea level, higher than the swampy forests that once occupied most of the lower ground. The swift-draining chalk would have provided the ideal texture underfoot, its baked-white surface visible for miles in all weathers and times of day or night. Over five or six millennia, usage of the track waxed and waned, for trade, transhumance, droving and driving. No driving any more, though: a byway open to all traffic (a B.O.A.T.) it may be for large sections of its route, but after fierce and bitter battles, the Ridgeway has now been declared officially motor-free, and concrete blocks have been placed along its length to enforce this. It survived 6,000 years open to all for every purpose, but only when it became a route solely for our leisure have we had to block and police it.

The official National Trail is only around a quarter of a longer prehistoric route stretching from the Wash to the south coast. The 1940s committee charged with establishing our first long-distance paths suggested that a Ridgeway trail should go from the Chilterns to Seaton, in east Devon. The irrepressible Tom Stephenson spent long, happy hours with his pencils and his Ordnance Surveys and came up with an idea to extend this proposed path northwards to Cambridge. But it was the section from the Chilterns to Avebury that was the first to be designated as the Ridgeway, and although it was suggested in the 1940s, it wasn’t until July 1972 that the Environment Secretary gave his assent. Unlike the Pennine Way, whose route had taken 14 years of difficult negotiation to sort out, the Ridgeway took just 14 months, the opening ceremony taking place on Coombe Hill, above Wendover, on 29 September 1973. It was much shorter, of course, and needed very few new paths, but there was also a far greater acceptance of public access along its route than in the Pennines. Furthermore, the opening of the first few National Trails had been hugely popular; momentum was on its side. Since then, paths extending it at both ends have been created, and it is possible – though not for me this time, thank you – to follow what has become known as the Greater Ridgeway, 363 miles from Lyme Regis to Hunstanton.

The lesser Ridgeway path is neatly divided into two halves, with the River Thames between Streatley and Goring as its midpoint. The eastern half, from Ivinghoe Beacon, near Tring, trills up and down the northern edge of the Chiltern escarpment, often parallel to or following the prehistoric track known as the Icknield Way. West from the Thames, the route to Avebury has always been known as the Ridgeway: it is a distinct, wide track that scorches its ghostly way across the upland plains of Berkshire, Oxfordshire and Wiltshire.

Since the official path’s inception in 1973, all the guidebooks have recommended that you walk it from west to east, Avebury to Tring. The only reason given is that this will prevent you having to stride into the teeth of the prevailing westerly winds, but it was hard to imagine that that was likely to be a massive consideration on the outskirts of Aylesbury. Not once did it occur to me that I should follow the route this way: walking our oldest track is a pilgrimage, and who the hell ever went on a pilgrimage to Tring? Looking at the maps too, it was obvious that the eastern half of the Ridgeway through the Chilterns was far comfier than the windswept heights of the west. It seemed more logical, and a far more rewarding experience, to edge myself out of civilisation little by little, not start with a crash amidst the crop circles and henges of Wiltshire before heading like a spellbound commuter further and further into the orange-skied
banlieue
of London. And then there was the simple equation that it made most sense, logistically and cosmically, to go east to west, from the rising of the sun to its setting. Ivinghoe to Avebury it was.

So close is the Ridgeway to London that you can more or less take the Tube to it. Chesham, the last outpost of the Metropolitan Line, lies less than ten miles south of Ivinghoe Beacon, but no buses connect the two, and it would take for ever, and cost a small fortune, getting out from London early enough to tube it to Chesham and then taxi it from there. Until 1961, Metroland had pushed deep into the Chilterns, with Tube trains going as far as Aylesbury, Princes Risborough and rustic Quainton Road. Buses would connect from Aylesbury, but the shortest and easiest route was a train from Euston to Tring, and then a cab to the Beacon and the beginning of the adventure, my first attempt at completing a long-distance path since 1982.

‘You walking the Ridgeway then?’ said the Turkish cab driver as I swung my rucksack on to the cream leatherette back seat of his Merc. Resisting sarcasm (who else is going to be wearing a ruck-sack, leaping into a cab at 8 a.m. in Tring station, and demanding to be taken to Ivinghoe Beacon?), I admitted that, yes, I was. ‘How long you taking to do it, then?’ asked the driver, staring at me in the rear-view mirror. ‘Eight days,’ I replied. ‘Pfffft,’ he retorted, letting his eyes roll theatrically in the rear-view mirror. ‘Some people do it in five. Where you staying tonight?’ ‘Wendover,’ I replied. Another eye roll. ‘Most people make it to Princes Risborough on the first night.’ Just over an hour and a half later, I saw him again, as the path had its first humiliation in store by leading me straight back to Tring station. He waved, looked at his watch and shouted, ‘Hey! Two hours! That’s too long, my friend.’ He was licensed, I noticed, by the Dacorum Council: the local authority hereabouts, and clearly not, as its soundalike namesake might suggest, the national arbiter of politeness.

That first day, on an admittedly easy little woodland canter into Wendover, I learned two new things. First, some people in the Chilterns so hate the metric system, and I would surmise virtually everything else European (save perhaps for the wine), that they are quite prepared systematically to scratch the paint out of the grooved figures showing distances in kilometres on almost every Ridgeway wooden fingerpost (both miles and kilometres were given). Take that, Johnny Eurocrat! Second, I learned that trying to walk any distance while desperately needing a crap is no fun whatsoever, and will mean that you are rendered utterly incapable of enjoying the lovely views, the budding leaves or the birdsong. At least, there were no sewage-filled farm yards to go through, reminding me of what I was needing most. Throughout the whole first day, the path brushed past only one farm that smelled even slightly agricultural. The rest just reeked of money.

Within an hour of clearing Tring station for the second time, I’d succumbed to the pull of The Trail. It is amazing how quickly you tumble into this, the feeling that your feet are grooved into the earth, that only the next mile, the next village, the next junction matters. All else quietly melts away. After an hour or so of swishing through beech woods, suddenly coming across a road or a car park was a shock, the cars looking even more brutal than before. There was always time to prepare, though: an imminent road crossing or beauty-spot car park invariably announced itself, as the take-away wrappers, empty cans of Stella and Tesco bags grew in number until it swung into view.

Being so used to the lackadaisical signposting of footpaths in Wales, the ruthless efficiency of the Ridgeway’s waymarking staggered me. Aside from the scratched-out kilometre figures, nothing was left to chance – you could easily walk the entire trail without any kind of map, and you can imagine how hard that is for me to say. Any junction, be it of paths, or of paths and roads, was signed, the black-armed wooden Ridgeway signs efficiently directing you from one encounter to the next, augmented by finger posts and even the odd daubed tree adorned with the trail’s acorn symbol and a reassuring arrow to keep you going in the right direction. Every kind of path was also colour-coded on the signs and laminated maps that appeared every few miles, for even the Ridgeway itself is a succession of different kinds of path welded together into one. The colour scheme quickly gets absorbed into the brain:

white
for permissive paths, not actual rights of way. This didn’t apply to any of the Ridgeway trail itself, just some of the side routes branching off.

yellow
for a footpath, the bedrock of the trail. Two feet good, four feet (or two wheels) bad.

blue
for a bridleway, a track usable by horses and push-bikes too. Bikes far outnumber horses these days, and I can well imagine that there are frantic meetings in council offices up and down the land as to what new name they can come up with for a bridleway to indicate this.

maroon
for a restricted byway, a new category introduced by the 2000 Countryside and Rights of Way Act and enthusiastically taken up on the Ridgeway. This enabled local authorities to keep a route’s age-old byway status, while banning the quad-bikers and off-roaders who were enraging the ramblers and horsey types.

a
fiery orange
for a B.O.A.T. (Byway open to all traffic), sub-divided yet again into B.O.A.T.s seasonally closed to motor traffic and those open all year.

So swiftly absorbed are these different categories, so often do you see visual reminders of what category you are currently walking and what category are the many side routes, and so much time do you have to ponder these as you go, that they soon burrow deep down into your thinking and break out in one of the many symptoms of Trail Fascism, an affliction it is almost impossible to resist. Yet resist it you really should, because it is an ugly side-effect of a good walk, and likely indeed to ruin it if you let it.

On the Ridgeway, this particular symptom broke out in me most virulently on the four-mile section known as Grim’s Ditch that takes you off the Chilterns and down to the River Thames near Wallingford. On a narrowish strip marked firmly in yellow as a footpath only, I suddenly saw two cyclists snaking their way through the woods towards me. Righteous ramblers’ fury bubbled up inside me and threatened to blow like the Icelandic volcano that had cleared the skies of aircraft so thoroughly for the duration of my walk. Should I stand, Amazon-like, in the middle of the path and force them off their bikes? Or let them pass, but with a stern ‘You really shouldn’t be cycling here, you know’ as they sped by? Or, trickling down the scale of bravery, would a filthy look and a low mutter perhaps suffice? Fortunately, the sun came out at precisely that moment and I suddenly realised that we were just three people harmlessly enjoying ourselves on a spring day in a lovely old English wood, and perhaps it was entirely possible that we could all continue that way, with no need for pomposity or tantrums. I stepped aside, admired the bluebells, and wished them a cheerful good morning as they cycled carefully by. They thanked me and went on their way. It was all very easy.

Not so for some ramblers. So intoxicated are they by the rightness of their pastime, and so sure are they that the world would be a wonderful place
if only everyone acted exactly as they do
, that ticking off cyclists and horse-riders, or loudly demanding their rights of way becomes a major component in the makeup of their fondest-remembered walks. And having scrutinised the OS map at five-minute intervals throughout, they know with cold certainty precisely where the footpath becomes a bridle-way becomes a byway, that they are Right and you are Wrong. Nothing gets the thin blood of this sort of rambler coursing so vigorously as that; it is the nearest to an al fresco orgasm he will have had since that view of Helvellyn one late summer day 30 years ago, the one that caused him such swooning delight he ended up masturbating guiltily into the heather. Just don’t ask him what he thinks of off-roaders.