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

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The story of the Kinder Scout Mass Trespass has been told many times and there’s no need to repeat it in great detail here, except to underline how completely Kinder Scout was out of bounds to the general public. Access was restricted to a handful of relatively short and hard-won public rights of way, all of which kept off the really high ground. The actual trespass itself was relatively brief and by all accounts the group from Hayfield didn’t actually get to the very top of Kinder Scout, but it was nevertheless a highly symbolic act. They met up with a contingent who had come over from Sheffield, probably around 400 strong in total, and both groups soon returned their separate ways. In fact, many of the established ramblers’ federations didn’t support the trespass, amid claims that the organisers, the left-wing British Workers’ Sports Federation, were hijacking the campaign for their own political ends. One or two leading ramblers even felt that the wider battle for access would actually be put back by their actions. Despite this, the event made lurid newspaper headlines, not so much because of the trespass itself but due to the harsh reprisals that followed. Following arrests, five ramblers were found guilty on charges of occasioning bodily harm and incitement to cause a riotous assembly, and were sentenced to jail for terms ranging from two to six months. It added to the sense of injustice and galvanised public opinion further. A few weeks later, up to 10,000 ramblers took part in a rally in the Winnats Pass, in the Peak District near Castleton, to call for greater public access.