Walking Home: A Poet's Journey

by Simon Armitage

  Where degradation and depletion of the surface has become more widespread, sheep have been fenced out, and I spot two rowan-tree striplings which have taken root under a south-facing bank, and the beginnings of a silver birch. For lunch, we drop behind an open trench and use the solid wall of peat behind us as backboard, feeling the heat stowed in its dense crust, watching a couple of big brown hares lolloping about on the far side of Issue Clough. I can see my house from here, but that isn’t such a surprise because I can see just about EVERYONE’S house from here, the much-quoted statistic being that the next highest point going east is the Ural Mountains in Russia. Whenever someone calls him, Martyn’s phone plays a ring-tone version of ‘Sold England’ by the Levellers, and I get a text from my wife to say she’s found Slug in our garden with a pair of scissors in his hand standing next to a privet bush in the shape of a chipmunk with a Mohican.

  Black Hill stands at 581 metres, with the nipple of Soldier’s Lump standing a little higher, constructed by the Ordnance Survey many moons ago to house a theodolite. There’s also a more familiar-looking white trig point on the summit which, because the hill is sinking under its own weight, has been hoisted up on a dry-stone plinth. Martyn helped build it, and threw a wine bottle into the cavity to celebrate its creation before sealing it up.

  ‘White or red?’

  ‘Red.’

  There are twenty, maybe even thirty elderly walkers milling around on the summit in the mist, drinking tea and comparing biscuits, so busy in their gossiping that they barely notice us as we steer south and begin our long, gradual descent. The area we pass through now is known as Red Ratcher, presumably because of the open wounds of blood-coloured streams which stripe the hillside, whose rusty-looking, oxidised waters pour across the path and stain the rocks. Martyn makes a note of a section of the route which could do with paving, but says it’s hard to entice gangs of flaggers out into the middle of the moors when for the same lolly they could be mending pavements in Doncaster. I know where I’d rather be. We watch a dog running wild on the other side of the valley, a springer spaniel, and Martyn says the local farmer will shoot it if he sees it.

  ‘Is he a shoot-first-ask-questions-later sort of person?’

  ‘Just a shoot-first person. No questions.’

  As if we have passed into bandit country, Martyn then tells me about having the bobcat stolen one night (the bobcat being a sort of quad bike-cum-moon buggy, very useful when working on these hills), and about sheep rustling, and about the Snake Pass as the major drug-running corridor between Sheffield and Manchester. To add to the atmosphere we step over the carcass of a disembowelled lamb, and a few yards later a dead pigeon, its breast exposed, minus its head and feet, probably taken out by a peregrine. When I was a child, the allotments and back gardens all along the lower slopes of the moor held many dozens of black-and-white-painted pigeon lofts, full of fidgeting and flapping birds, purring with noise whenever I walked past them, like mini generators or sub-stations. I never got into it myself but some of my school friends spent every spare minute with their fathers or grandfathers locked inside those huts, or I’d see them setting off in the car with a hamper full of live birds in the back, or standing outside the lofts with binoculars and stopwatches, scanning the skies. Tales circulated of birds changing hands for thousands of pounds, and pigeons that had made it back from as far away as the Balkans, or had been given up for dead only to come tumbling home several weeks later having walked the last few miles. In that world, raptors were the enemy, and peregrine falcons the Luftwaffe.

  But a dead pigeon near Black Chew Head could be thought of as a mere token or morbid emblem, because the skies overhead are clearly not safe, the Peak District being something of an aeroplane graveyard, with over sixty crash sites documented. In November 1948, an innocuous half-hour flight delivering payroll and mail from Lincolnshire to Warrington ended in catastrophe when a Boeing Superfortress with a crew of thirteen ploughed into Shelf Moor. The plane, ‘Overexposed’, which belonged to a photographic reconnaissance squadron and carried an image of a nude pin-up girl on its fuselage, is still scattered across the moor; torn and mangled engine parts lie slumped in the peat, and a lonely memorial stone nearby often stands decorated with paper poppies and draped in the Stars and Stripes. ‘You’ll be walking past it tomorrow,’ says Martyn, pointing towards Bleaklow to the south, before embroidering the historical facts with tales of a ghost plane which often flies through low cloud over these hills, and a headless pilot who staggers about in the mist and who has confronted several lone hikers over the years.

  ‘Aren’t you walking on your own tomorrow?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What’s the weather forecast?’

  ‘Fog.’

  *

  Laddow Rocks is an impressive and unmistakable gritstone outcrop above Crowden Great Brook, and the path runs along the precipitous edge of the crag and close to several overhanging boulders, too close for my liking. Then it’s all downhill to Crowden, with a party of Jewish schoolboys heading in the other direction, making no concession whatsoever in their choice of clothes to the great outdoors or the Great British weather. A seemingly endless line of them keeps filing past in sensible black shoes, white shirts and black waistcoats, their dark ringlets wet with sweat, cheeks red with the effort of climbing, their black velvet kippahs somehow staying in place on the crowns of their heads. Just when we think we’ve witnessed the last straggler or the out-of-condition teacher bringing up the rear, another pair appear, then another five or six, then more of them, like something from the Bible, all scrambling to the top of Laddow Rocks, all making for higher ground.

  What do they know that we don’t?

  *

  On their patio in Glossop, Lisa and Sean fatten me up with a Thai barbecue – ‘the last supper’ – then it’s off to the last reading, which has been switched at the eleventh hour from Glossop North End Football Club to the Oakwood pub in the town due to bar-staffing problems, apparently. I’m anticipating a difficult night, reciting poetry to the disinterested, the disparaging and the drunk, but I couldn’t be more wrong. The bouncers on the door are three ladies from a local bookshop, who lead me up the stairs to a private room with a stage and a glitter curtain at the far end. The room fills up, and up, and up, until ninety-one people are either leaning against the wall or sitting on the floor or perched on tables at the back, and for the next hour or so I stand in a spotlight with a pint of beer at one side and a pile of books at the other and I ENJOY MYSELF, even smile a couple of times. With every poem I can feel my spirits rising, a weight lifting, and the burden of public performance evaporating by the second. In fact I give it EVERYTHING, even if ‘everything’ isn’t much more than a very tired person standing with a book in front of his face, opening his mouth and making noises (some of which do in fact rhyme, though only occasionally and rarely at the end of the lines). As well as policing the door the bouncers/booksellers have been on sock duty for me, and hand over £215.58, plus sundry items including a teabag, a parking ticket, a pine cone, a dental appointment card (8 October, 3.15 p.m.), a playing card (Joker), and a mobile-phone number (‘Brenda. Call me’).

  Then I’m done.

  Crowden to Edale

  15 MILES

  OS Explorer OL1 West Sheet

  Monday 26 July

  Like the king of the world and the lord and master of all I survey, I am sitting on a flat rock eating a big lump of sugary cake and drinking black coffee from a flask, coffee infused with an intoxicating nip of single malt. It is a warm, clear afternoon with long views to the south and the east. Behind me is Kinder Scout and 250-odd miles of the Pennine Way; in front of me the steep gully and natural steps of Jacob’s Ladder descend from the moor towards a broadening, green valley in the Derbyshire Peak District. And beyond that lies the sleepy community of Edale, like some toy village on children’s TV, where animals drive cars and kindly old ladies ride penny-farthings and a relentlessly chirpy postman makes his rounds in a
bright red van with his cat on the passenger seat. Smoke rises from behind a barn. A train leaves the station. By glancing down at the map then scanning the cluster of buildings I can just about figure out which is the church, and the visitors’ centre, and the Old Nag’s Head Inn, starting point for the Pennine Way, or in my case, the finishing post. In that pub resides what I imagine to be a leather-bound, gold-embossed, parchment-paged ledger, locked in a glass case, containing all the names of those heroes who have taken part in this great adventure, to which I will soon be adding my own. This is the last vista, the last elevation, and these minutes should be a time of contemplative satisfaction before the final easy miles, the concluding steps, and the chequered flag.

  But I am not going to Edale. Over the past few days, and especially since the false dawn of arriving home in Marsden only to set off again, I’ve been wondering long and hard about how to end this journey, pondering the variables. Of course, on the face of it there are no variables, only one very obvious, inevitable and desirable course of action, which is to breast the tape, complete the task, and bask in the glory. But yesterday, walking between Standedge and Crowden, another outcome occurred to me, one that began as an insane and outrageous notion but grew in strength and conviction over the following miles, to the point where not only was it a viable alternative to the traditional ending, but in fact the only possibility. And here it is: I am not going to finish. My plan, instead, is one of deliberate refusal, a kind of self-sabotage which will take me to within a few strides of the finishing line only to see me turn around and head back into the hills. It’s a dramatic gesture, theatrical even, but one based on a few honest principles, the first being that I am not interested in conquest for its own sake. I have walked the Pennine Way to prove myself – artistically, economically, physically, whatever – and I don’t need a cup on the mantelpiece or a badge on my rucksack to put that success on display. This will be the triumph of personal accomplishment over public affirmation. I’m not about medals or trophies, or if I am, I need to rethink myself. Secondly, for as long as the walk remains unfinished I still have direction, and something to aim for, and somewhere to go. To start ticking off achievements as if they were rungs of attainment on the ladder of fulfilment would be to go against everything I have come to believe in as a person and a poet. Be careful what you wish for, especially if that thing is THE END. And thirdly, very possibly in contradiction with those high-minded values and studied philosophical positions just described, and whilst accepting that a long walk is not and never should be a competition and that victory is a shallow and embarrassing state of affairs, this is how I WIN. Because over the past three weeks the Pennine Way has done everything in its power to see me fail. It has laughed at me with the wind and pissed on me with the rain. It has lured me into thick fog, misdirected me through forests and woods, and abandoned me in the empty fells, leaving me to sigh and swear, and on at least one occasion, to weep. On flinty tracks it has beaten the soles of my feet and on softer ground tried to suck me into the earth. It has steered me close to resentful land-owners and placed undomesticated creatures beset with horns and teeth directly in my path. It has made the inclines seem steeper and the miles longer, and in more ways than one has toured me close to the edge and deep into the chasm. I have been embarrassed, spooked, exhausted, exposed, lonely, and I stink; in fact it has tried every trick in the book, but guess what – I’m still here.

  So although the knee-jerk reaction would be to see it through and deliver the death blow, I won’t give it the satisfaction of taking that final step, because the more dignified course of action is simply to turn around and walk away. This has been a big journey, but I’m even bigger, and anyone standing at the Old Nag’s Head with streamers and balloons or even just a pint of best will be in for a long wait. I imagine all my forebears, the ones with medals on their chests and trophies in the cupboard, not understanding at all, throwing up their arms in disgust, disowning me as I spin on my heel and start walking north, but I don’t care. There are a couple of escape routes around the village of Booth, I can hop over the wall and leg it across the fields onto the road, then thumb a lift back to Crowden where I left the car. Then I can slip away home, having had the prize offered to me on a plate and having happily turned it down.

  That, at least, was the plan. But the reality goes something like this. I wake up in my own bed and pull the curtains back. The bedroom window has a big view over Honley and Holmfirth to the west, then across the fields and plantations around Yateholme reservoir, climbing to Black Hill and Saddleworth Moor and the Dark Peak. Those distant features aren’t visible because a thick roll of cloud draws a line across the horizon at about four hundred metres, but it’s still early, just one of those summer morning mists, and the forecast predicts it will clear. I shower, eat, read the paper, listen to the radio. There’s no rush. I even drop my daughter off at school.

  ‘I thought you were doing the Pennine Way,’ says one of the mums.

  ‘I am,’ I say, gesturing towards my walking boots and my mud-stained trousers. On the other hand, I am several miles from the route and have just climbed out of a climate-controlled Volkswagen Passat, so I can see her point.

  I drive over Holme Moss. There are still faint words written on the road from where the Milk Race used to climb out of Yorkshire then drop down into Derbyshire on the other side of the hill, and the car park at the top is one of those places where people come to enjoy the view on a Sunday without getting out of their vehicle. A few hundred yards away across the moor the flat-roofed, single-storey radio station looks uninviting and suspicious, the kind of place where messages are decoded, where experiments go unrecorded and secrets are kept. I have it in my head that someone I know has the unenviable job of climbing the mast in the winter to defrost the satellite dishes and hack blocks of ice from the transmitter, but I might have dreamt it. It’s a bleak place, the touching point for three counties, with nowhere to escape the wind no matter which direction it blows from or how calm it seems in the valleys beneath. The snow poles on the even steeper valley on the west side of the hill tell their own story, as do the reinforced crash barriers above the drop, full of scrapes and dents and gaping holes. They also serve notice of another geography, one more dramatic and intense than the broad, elevated moorlands of West Yorkshire, higher and steeper, the last stumbling blocks and obstacles facing the hiker heading south, a final act of geological defiance before the Pennines dwindle into lowlands and plains. The Derbyshire Peaks, visible from Manchester on one side and Sheffield on the other, are a magnet for walkers, climbers, bird-spotters, mountain bikers, etc.; they are also, in my mind, synonymous with disappointment and despair.

  I pull up in the visitors’-centre car park on the south shore of Torside, one of a flight of five reservoirs which effectively dam the whole of Longdendale and the River Etherow. If anything the cloud seems to have descended, and after a few minutes of trying to tune the radio into a weather forecast and studying the map I realise that I can’t see the far side of the valley without flicking the windscreen wipers on and off. It’s about 9.30; I’ve usually been walking for a good hour at this time, and I’m uncomfortable, embarrassed even at the loss of routine and the fall in standards on this final day. I’m nervous as well, because this is a treacherous stretch of hills, notoriously difficult to navigate and horribly wet underfoot. I’ve set out to cross them once before and failed, and for the first time in several days of walking I’m on my own, and the mist has now turned to fog, through which rain is falling, that type of rain which without actually pelting down somehow manages to be very wet. A further complication today is that I’m supposed to be meeting a couple of rangers from the National Trust at the top of Kinder Downfall to record a poem about cotton grass, which as far as I understand will be broadcast by my disembodied voice from a camouflaged speaker somewhere on a desolate hillside when triggered by unsuspecting hikers or puzzled sheep. It’s one of my barters, in exchange for a returnable National Trust coat and
a similarly emblazoned polo shirt and fleece, also to be handed back. The rainproof hat, a sort of upturned plant pot which makes me look like someone who became detached from a Happy Mondays gig circa 1990 and still hasn’t found his way home, I can keep.

  I phone the rangers, who are already halfway up the other side of the hill, but they agree the weather ‘isn’t perfect’ and decide to drive over to meet me instead. We record the poem in the car, then do a second take outside for ‘atmosphere’, by which they mean rain, then they drive away. It’s now eleven thirty and I still haven’t walked a single step. I find myself thinking of the walk out of Hawes, at that stage in the journey when I was really into my stride, marching into Horton-in-Ribblesdale just after lunchtime with fourteen miles under my belt and having barely broken sweat, and now here I am just a week or so later, slacking off, letting the whole enterprise unravel. The mist and the rain hanging over the reservoir are one and the same substance, a swaying, dismal curtain, thinning occasionally, offering chinks of light, threatening even to open onto sunlight and brightness every now and again, but then closing and thickening, drawing a heavy veil over the valley and the view. Fear is what is stopping me. I don’t mind the wet and the cold, but I don’t want to get lost. The Cheviots were horrible, but at least I could see. Cross Fell was a nightmare, but I had company there, plus a dog, plus fell-runners waiting to reel me in. This time it’s just me. For a few tantalising minutes I think about doing a Donald Crowhurst: I could just mooch around in one of the valleys for five or six hours, make a few notes in my book, then drive over to Edale, or somewhere near Edale, and no one would be any the wiser. Or I could just pack up and try again tomorrow, or the day after, or in a couple of months when there’s a cast-iron guarantee of twelve hours of blue sky from dawn to dusk. No one said it had to be done on consecutive days, did they? Why the big fuss about doing it all in one go? Why don’t I just go home?