Читать книгу The Pennine Way - the Path, the People, the Journey онлайн

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Writer and long-distance walker John Hillaby, who came through here on the Pennine Way in the 1960s, famously referred to the eroded top of Kinder Scout as an example of ‘land at the end of its tether’. In his book Journey Through Britain, he described how all life had been drained out or burnt off, and how any green covering had all but disappeared so that just the exposed banks of dark-brown peat remained. ‘Manure is the analogy that comes most readily to mind,’ he observed. ‘The top of Kinder Scout looks as if it’s entirely covered in the droppings of dinosaurs.’

Although some professed to enjoy the so-called sport of ‘bog trotting’, the worsening conditions on the summit meant that the Jacob’s Ladder path around Kinder’s western edge, first identified as a wet-weather alternative, eventually became the officially recommended route. At the time, and when the new National Trail Guide that appeared in 1990 showed only the Jacob’s Ladder route, there were protests from the Ramblers’ Association and the Pennine Way Council, who claimed that the Countryside Commission was not following correct procedures for varying the route of a national trail and that both routes should still be shown. However, back in 1951, the year the Pennine Way was designated and over a decade before it was formally opened, the Sheffield and Peak District branch of the Council for the Preservation of Rural England held a Local Pennine Way Conference at Edale, where some speakers registered their unease that a waymarked path could be routed across the middle of Kinder Scout in the first place. Might it not compromise the mountain’s wild spirit, some asked, or lead novice ramblers into difficulties?