For those seeking pastoral shelter from the storm of world events this spring, there is a special incentive to look north. Sixty years old this month, the Pennine Way is being celebrated in style, with guided walks and an exhibition at the Dales Countryside Museum in Wensleydale. In North Yorkshire, speeches and a singsong are planned to mark the April day, in 1965, when the village of Malham hosted the opening of Britain’s first national trail.
The recognition is richly deserved. Stretching 268 miles from Derbyshire to the Scottish Borders, the establishment of the Pennine Way represented an epic political achievement as well as a new leisure option. Though the inhabitants of northern mill towns and mining communities had a voracious appetite for open spaces and beauty, local landowners were for decades reluctant to give it to them. The postwar campaigning work of the Lancashire journalist Tom Stephenson and the Ramblers’ Association opened up swaths of private moorland previously fenced off behind “No Trespassing” signs.
The rest has been walking history. Tens of millions now visit the 15 national trails of England and Wales annually. Stephenson’s route across the northern uplands has an intimidating reputation for austere splendour amid biting winds. But less challenging experiences are also available. The Thames Path from the Cotswolds to London is a much milder, gentler affair, and constitutes the longest river walk in Europe.
The desire to immerse oneself in such natural glory is often combined with more personal motives for leaving everyday life behind. Next month, the film version of Raynor Winn’s 2018 bestseller, The Salt Path, will be released, starring Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs. In Winn’s memoir, she and her husband decide to set off on the 630-mile South Coast Path, which becomes a redemptive backdrop as hiking helps them to come to terms with sudden homelessness and serious illness. Other authors, such as Sharon Blackie, David Nicholls and Robert Macfarlane, have explored the spiritual dimensions to an activity that can concentrate the mind, removing the quotidian clutter which prevents it from thinking clearly.
In the 21st century, long-distance walking is perhaps best seen as a form of secular pilgrimage, in which homage to our natural landscape is literally paid on the hoof. As in Chaucer’s time, the path can sometimes be a self-imposed endurance test, but will usually feature a generous number of hostelries along the way. For millions, the familiar acorn symbol marking a national trail route amounts to an invitation to some free soul therapy.
Sixty years on, those northern pioneers would rightly take that as a win. Columnising for the Daily Herald in 1935, Stephenson envisioned the collective wellbeing his pet project could deliver: “None could walk that Pennine Way,” he wrote, “without being improved in mind and body, inspired and invigorated and filled with the desire to explore every corner of this lovely island.”
From Cornwall to the North Downs, and the ruins of Hadrian’s Wall, an army of backpackers will prove him right this Easter.
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