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

19 страница из 86

Although the campaigners might not have seen eye to eye over the Kinder Scout event, with some at the time suggesting that the trespass itself would soon be forgotten, it was in fact one of a series of rallies and protests that were steadily growing in number and intensity as people objected to the denial of basic public access. As far back as 1826, a court case at Flixton, near Manchester, had been fought over the closure of local paths. It led to the formation of the Manchester Association for the Preservation of Ancient Public Footpaths, which later became the Peak & Northern Footpaths Society, whose familiar and reassuring dark-green signposts still guide ramblers across the Pennines to this day. (In fact, there are a number of these signposts on this opening stage of the Pennine Way, perhaps most helpfully a low post at a path junction on Mill Hill indicating the direction of the Pennine Way to the Snake Pass Inn and Bleaklow.) Seventy years later, in 1896 there was a celebrated trespass on Winter Hill, in the West Pennine Moors above Bolton, when local people protested against the landowner’s decision to close off a well-used public right of way.