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

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It is very easy to chuckle at people who set out in the wrong footwear, or to disapprove of those who can’t use a compass properly and who get hopelessly lost on the moors, but at some point or other most of us have been out of our comfort zone in the great outdoors. Arguably, the only way to achieve and develop as an individual is to push yourself to the very edge and test the limit of your ability. For me, it’s summed up by a slogan that used to adorn the front cover of the Sheffield Clarion Ramblers magazine: ‘The man who never was lost, never went very far’.

Of the many Pennine Way guidebooks and articles I dipped into before I embarked on my own walk, one of the most thought-provoking was a short piece by Dr A Smith and Mr M Imrie in the 1985 Pennine Way Booking Bureau booklet, published by the Youth Hostels Association (YHA). The two men had successfully completed the Pennine Way in 1984, but both were interested in the effect that it had on their bodies and minds, even though one was already a marathon runner. The back story lay partly in the fact that YHA wardens along the Pennine Way were concerned about the number of walkers who didn’t complete the trail because they were fundamentally ill-equipped and ill-prepared. At the time, it was claimed that around a third of walkers attempting the Pennine Way, or at least a third of those staying in youth hostels, gave up, a figure that showed no sign of improving. (A report by the Pennine Way Management Project in 1991 went even further: ‘Unsubstantiated opinion suggests a drop-out rate of 70 per cent at the end of the second day, around Standedge to Mankinholes, this massive defeat being the result of exertions on the first two most strenuous and demanding days of the entire expedition.’)