Walking Home
A Poet’s Journey
SIMON ARMITAGE
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Map of the Pennine Way from Kirk Yetholm to Edale
A Note to the American Reader
A Preamble
Home to Abbotsford
Kirk Yetholm to Uswayford
Uswayford to Byrness
Byrness to Bellingham
Bellingham to Once Brewed
Once Brewed to Greenhead
Greenhead to Knarsdale
Knarsdale to Garrigill
Garrigill to Dufton
Dufton to Langdon Beck
Langdon Beck to Baldersdale
Baldersdale to Keld
Keld to Hawes
Hawes to Horton-in-Ribblesdale
Horton-in-Ribblesdale to Malham
Malham to Ickornshaw
Ickornshaw to Hebden Bridge
Hebden Bridge to Marsden
Marsden to Crowden
Crowden to Edale
Rambling On
Credit Where Credit Is Due
Praise for Walking Home
Also by Simon Armitage
Copyright
Map of the Pennine Way from Kirk Yetholm to Edale
A Note to the American Reader
Poetry has always wandered. Many of our most revered poems are journeys – The Odyssey, The Canterbury Tales, Piers Plowman and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight to name just a few. And despite persisting images of the stop-at-home poet ensconced in the lonely garret, poets like Wordsworth and Coleridge ventured thousands of miles on foot in pursuit of ideas and inspiration. The Warsaw-born poet Osip Mandelstam, writing about the relationship between the human stride and poetic rhythm, wondered how many ox-hide sandals Dante had got through walking the goat paths of Italy as he composed his Divine Comedy, a work which in itself took him to hell and back.
I am also a traveller-poet, having gone as far as the Arctic Circle, the fjords of New Zealand’s South Island and the furthest tributaries of the Amazon River in search of poems, though more recently I have been exploring an area much closer to home. The Pennines, often referred to as “the backbone of England”, are a range of mountains running from the Scottish Borders to the English Midlands on pretty much a north-south axis. Towards the southern end they provide a natural divide between the counties of Lancashire to the west and Yorkshire to the east, counties which fought against each other during the War of the Roses and whose notorious rivalry continues to this day, though usually with less bloodshed. Further north, the Pennines separate the counties of Cumbria and Northumberland, with the Lake District lying to the west and the urbanised Tyne and Wear coastline to the east, before merging with the Cheviot Hills in southern Scotland. Hadrian’s Wall, the famous Roman fortification which once formed the physical boundary line between England and Scotland, bisects the range towards its northern reaches. In many ways the word “Pennine” is synonymous with the word “North”, conjuring up images of England’s industrial heartlands as well as bleak and remote upland tracts. But the “North” is something of a confusing term in British geography, perhaps in the same way that the American Midwest, to the foreigner, seems neither particularly “mid” nor especially “west”. Outsiders looking at a map of Britain tend to see a long-by-narrow landmass roughly six-hundred miles from top to bottom and a couple of hundred miles wide; from that point of view, suffice it to say that the Pennines are roughly in the middle.
The mountains of the Pennines are not particularly tall and by some definitions not even mountains, Cross Fell being the highest at just short of 3,000 feet, and are often referred to as fells, pikes, or simply hills. But towards their upper slopes they are sparsely populated, even uninhabitable, and in winter they often form an inhospitable landscape and occasionally an impenetrable barrier to traffic and travel. Their unique characteristic is that of moorland, and I say unique because for all my wanderings, I have never come across anywhere in the world which resembles the moors of my own country. These are wide and undulating expanses of high altitude, treeless hillsides, often boggy, usually with very poor or “peat” soil, incapable, on the face of it, of sustaining anything but the hardiest of grasses or the most adaptive of species. Sheep graze there and crows perch on the rocky outcrops, and yet like all supposed wildernesses, a closer study reveals a rare and threatened habitat, a sanctuary for all kinds of unusual life-forms and a vital organ in the country’s environmental anatomy, filtering its water and purifying its air. But desolate, nonetheless, and lonely and dangerous, which of course only adds to the moors’ intrigue, and the desire to visit them once in a while.
The Pennine Way was Britain’s first long-distance public path, conceived as far back as the 1930s but not officially opened until 1965. Rather than following a pre-described route or ancient trail, the walk is a conceptual one traversing the Pennine “watershed”, that somewhat mythical divide which allows us to imagine how a raindrop falling one inch to the right will make its way to the North Sea and out towards Europe, whereas a raindrop falling one inch to the left will flow towards the Atlantic and America. The Pennine Way’s US equivalent would be the Appalachian Trail, which to a certain extent served as a model. And although there are longer walks in the UK and certainly more popular ones, the Pennine Way is indisputably the most renowned, the toughest, and in terms of achievement, the most highly prized. Roughly 260 miles long (there are local routing variations and option detours), some hikers choose to pick off the journey section by section over a number of summers, others like myself tackle it in one go, and the average walking time is about three weeks.
Although essentially a leisure activity (as much as tramping through bogs and rain for days on end can be described as “leisure”), the Pennine Way also has a political relevance. Up until the early days of the twentieth century, access to much of Britain’s moorland was the privilege of the upper classes, a situation dating back to the practice of Enclosure, whereby what had once been common land was shared out amongst the powerful and elite. A revolt against such ownership, and growing political awareness among the working classes, lay behind a famous Mass Trespass on Derbyshire’s Kinder Scout in April 1932. The ensuing fracas with armed land-owners resulted in prison sentences for several would-be ramblers, but over time the balance of opinion began to shift, until the idea that the countryside was a place for all and not just for the few became enshrined in law. Depending on which way the walk is tackled, the intimidating and treacherous peak of Kinder Scout now forms either the first or the final summit of the Pennine Way, and offers a suitably dramatic reminder that our hunger for freedom and our craving for fear often go hand in hand, or in the case of this journey, stride for stride.
Simon Armitage
A Preamble
In the West Yorkshire village of Marsden where I was born and grew up, a peculiar phenomenon took place every year. Starting round about May, usually in the late evenings, foreign creatures in big leather boots and mud-splattered over-trousers began descending from the moor to the south. They carried on their backs the carapaces of huge rucksacks and, from a distance, silhouetted on the horizon, they looked like astronauts. Up close, they smelt of dubbin, Kendal Mint Cake and sweat. And having just completed the first and arguably most daunting section of the Pennine Way, they wore on their faces a variety of expressions.
When I was a child this regular arrival of hikers was a source of curiosity and entertainment. Sometimes they were looking for the now defunct Youth Hostel, a former Co-op with about a dozen beds and a pool table, which also operated as a hang-out for bored local teenagers. But more often they were looking for somewhere to pi
tch their tent. In the absence of any campsite, this was usually the football field, or somebody’s garden, or, on one occasion, the roundabout at the top of Fall Lane. A couple of lads from East Kilbride liked Marsden so much they dropped their plan to hike north and camped at the back of the allotments for the whole summer, occasionally opening the flaps to emit great wafts of pungent smoke, to put their empty cider bottles out and to allow some of the village girls in. One old boy who knocked at my parents’ house in desperate need of water still sends a Christmas card thirty years later.
The village welcomed these walkers; they were a good source of passing trade and to a certain extent put Marsden on the map. And without doubt, the walkers welcomed Marsden. Having set off from the starting post opposite the Old Nag’s Head Inn in Edale, they would have covered a distance of about twenty-seven miles. That’s a hard day’s walk even through pleasant meadows or along a gentle towpath, but the first leg of the Pennine Way is a grim yomp across the aptly named Dark Peak, incorporating, just to emphasise the point, the equally aptly named Bleaklow and Black Hill. As kids, we roamed around the moors looking for adventures. But we always knew that beyond the immediate horizon, even beyond Saddleworth Moor which Myra Hindley and Ian Brady had turned into a macabre children’s cemetery, there was a more foreboding and forbidden place. Looking up towards those moors from Manchester in the west or Sheffield in the south, it’s difficult to understand: they seem little more than swollen uplands, humped rather than jagged, broad rather than high. But people go there and don’t come back. Even on a clear day they form a bewildering and disorienting landscape, without feature or vista, like walking on a moon made largely of black mud. In the thick, clammy mist, which can descend in minutes, it is a nightmare. The Moorland Rescue team, friends of my dad, would sometimes come into the pub at night celebrating pulling a hiker out of a bog or finding some shivering wretch before nightfall. On other occasions a more sombre mood hung about them, and they sat quietly with their drinks and their thoughts. For those hikers arriving in Marsden after crossing the Dark Peak, the looks on their faces said it all. They had encountered something up there they hadn’t anticipated, and the evidence wasn’t just in their peat-clogged boots and their sodden coats. It was in their eyes. For many, the village of Marsden was not only the first stop along the Pennine Way, it was also the last.
*
The Pennine Way is about 256 miles long – no one seems to be able to put a precise figure on it – beginning in Edale in Derbyshire and ending in Kirk Yetholm, just the other side of the Scottish border. Britain’s first official long-distance trail, it was formally opened in 1965, though hiker and journalist Tom Stephenson initially proposed the walk in a Daily Herald article published in 1935. Born out of the ‘right to roam’ movement, public disquiet after the great depression and the subsequent mass trespass on Kinder Scout in 1932, it was, in its conception, as much a political statement as a leisure activity, and no doubt there are members of the landed gentry with double-barrelled surnames and similarly barrelled shotguns who would still like to ban the common people from wandering across certain tracts of open moorland, especially during the month of August. According to the literature, many thousands of people hike some stretch of the Way each year, but of those who attempt the whole thing, only a fraction succeed. While taking in some of the most beautiful scenery in the country, it also passes through some of the bleakest. High above the tree-line, beyond even the hardiest sheep, some of the longer, lonelier sections represent a substantial challenge not just to the body but to the spirit. Indeed, if much of the literature is to be believed, the Pennine Way is more of an endurance test or an assault course than a walk, and not something for a feeble-minded, faint-hearted tenderfoot.
*
In the summer of 2010 I decided to walk the Pennine Way. I wanted to write a book about the North, one that could observe and describe the land and its people, and one that could encompass elements of memoir as well as saying something about my life as a poet. I identified the Pennine Way as the perfect platform: a kind of gantry running down the backbone of the country offering countless possibilities for perspectives and encounters, with every leg of the journey a new territory and a new chapter. But I decided to approach it in two unconventional ways. Firstly, I decided to walk from north to south. This might not seem like such a revolutionary act; a walk is a walk – can it really matter which is the beginning and which is the end? And yet the majority of people who complete the Pennine Way start in Derbyshire and breast the finishing line in Scotland. The theory, it seems, is to keep the sun, wind and rain at your back rather than walking for three weeks with the unpredictable and unhelpful meteorological elements of the British summer full in the face. Accordingly, all of the guide books are written in that direction. But as a poet, I’m naturally contrary. If most writers are writing prose, then mostly I’m writing something else. Poetry, by definition, is an alternative, and an obstinate one at that. It often refuses to reach the right-hand margin or even the bottom of the page. Prose fills a space, like a liquid poured in from the top, but poetry occupies it, arrays itself in formation, sets up camp and refuses to budge. It is a dissenting and wilful art form, and most of its practitioners are signed-up members of the awkward squad. So against all the prevailing advice, against the prevailing weather, and against much of the prevailing signage, I undertook to walk the Pennine Way in the ‘wrong’ direction. Walking south also made sense because it meant I’d be walking home. From what I’d read about the Way, almost every section of it offered multiple opportunities and numerous excuses to give up rather than carry on. I was going to need a consistent reason to keep going, and the humiliation of failing to arrive in the village where I was born seemed like the perfect incentive.
Secondly, and even more optimistically, I announced publicly that I would attempt the walk as a kind of modern-day troubadour, giving poetry readings at every stop, bartering and trading my way down country, offering only poetry as payment. Early in the year, I put the following page on my website.
The Pennine Way – Can You Help?
Hello. In July 2010 I’m walking the Pennine Way. It’s usually walked from south to north but I’m attempting it the other way round, because that way it will be downhill all the way, right? I’m doing the walk as a poet. Wherever I stop for the night I’m going to give a reading, for which there will be no charge, but at the end of the evening I’ll pass a hat around and people can give me what they think I’m worth. I want to see if I can pay my way from start to finish on the proceeds of my poetry alone. So, it’s basically 256 miles of begging.
If you live on or near one of the recognised stopping points on the Pennine Way and would be willing to host or organise a reading for me, be it in a room in a pub, a village hall, a church, a library, a school, a barn, or even in your living room, do get in touch. If you can throw in B&B and a packed lunch, sherpa my gear along to the next stop, point me in the right direction the next day or even want to walk that leg of the journey with me, so much the better. I’m pretty well house-trained and know at least three moderately funny anecdotes.
Here’s the schedule, outlining where I’ll be and when, blisters permitting:
Thursday 8th July: Kirk Yetholm to Uswayford
Friday 9th July: Uswayford to Byrness
Saturday 10th July: Byrness to Bellingham
Sunday 11th July: Bellingham to Once Brewed (No reading – World Cup Final!)
Monday 12th July: Once Brewed to Greenhead
Tuesday 13th July: Greenhead to Knarsdale
Wednesday 14th July: Knarsdale to Garrigill
Thursday 15th July: Garrigill to Dufton
Friday 16th July: Dufton to Langdon Beck
Saturday 17th July: Langdon Beck to Baldersdale
Sunday 18th July: Baldersdale to Keld
Monday 19th July: Keld to Hawes
Tuesday 20th July: Hawes to Horton-in-Ribblesdale (Reading in Grasmere)
Wednesday 21st July: Horton-in
-Ribblesdale to Malham
Thursday 22nd July: Malham to Ickornshaw
Friday 23rd July: Ickornshaw to Hebden Bridge
Saturday 24th July: Hebden Bridge to Marsden
Sunday 25th July: Marsden to Crowden
Monday 26th July: Crowden to Edale
And even if you can’t offer a reading, if you see a weather-beaten poet coming over the horizon early next summer, do say hello. Many thanks.
SA
A fortnight before I set off I traced out the route and the reading venues with a pink highlighter pen, and couldn’t find enough room in the house to lay out the nine required Ordnance Survey maps end to end. As a geography graduate who once dreamed of becoming a cartographer, I pride myself on a certain amount of navigational ability. But seeing the walk sprawled out in front of me, like some great long stair-carpet, the enormity and ridiculousness of the task started to dawn on me. Or to hit me, rather, as a series of bullet points, fired from close range.
• It’s a long way.
• It’s not a straight line.
• Some of the maps have very little in the middle of them apart from spot-heights and the names of hills.
• The only maps I’ve looked at for the last ten years are A–Z street maps, and not many of them either since the advent of the SatNav. Will I be able to cope without an electronically voiced Sally or Bruce telling me to go straight ahead at the roundabout?
• These maps are not handy and useful like road atlases, but wide, spineless and unwieldy sheets. It’s hard enough trying to open them, let alone fold them back up again. What will that be like in the wind?
• Or the rain?
• For three weeks I will be reading these maps upside down.
I had, in fact, walked one section of the Pennine Way before. Or attempted it. In 1987, three of us took a train to Edale, being quietly confident of arriving back in Marsden for opening time. We were young, fit, and in good spirits as we walked west along the sunken lane from Grindsbrook Booth, crossed the old packhorse bridge and climbed the steep, rocky path known as Jacob’s Ladder. It was a clear day. Or at least for an hour or so it was. Then it got dark, and cold, and the wind picked up. We were probably only two or three miles onto the moor, but we’d already entered that perplexing and mystifying lunar landscape, and we had gone astray. The night before, a man in the pub had assured us that it was impossible to get lost on the Pennine Way because ‘it’s basically like the M1 up there’. That man, it transpired, hadn’t actually been on the Pennine Way and hadn’t been on the M1 either. We stumbled around for a while, hoping to pick up the path, which had been right there beneath our feet only a minute ago then had vanished. We sat down on a stone to take an early lunch, but we’d eaten our sandwiches on the train. It started to get brighter, but that’s because it was hailing, zillions of white, small-bore ice-balls stinging our faces and hands, making the ground and the air all the same colour. The map came out of the rucksack, got wet, and in the ensuing argument over who should take charge, was ripped into several soggy pieces. One of us thought we should find a stream and follow it downhill. Someone else said that was a bad idea and would lead us head first over a rock face or waterfall. Another suggestion was to stay put until we were rescued, which was voted on and passed, but after a minute or so of sitting in the silence and the chilly air and the frosty atmosphere, that began to feel like a very dispiriting option, and anyway, not one of us had thought to tell anyone where we were going. Finally we decided that the only thing to do, other than die, was to keep following the same compass direction until we came to a road. Manchester was on one side and Sheffield was on the other, it was just a case of holding our nerve and keeping to the same course. When we eventually stumbled off the hillside onto some minor road above Hayfield, we were only a few miles from our starting point, and Marsden felt a long way off, over impossible and impassable terrain.
Walking Home: A Poet's Journey Page 1