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

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And as for that famous trig point, once the only piece of dry and recognisable land amid the summit bog, it also seems to have an admirer. ‘Every year a local man walks up the hill along the Pennine Way to repaint the trig point,’ says Martyn. ‘I try and get up to see him and I’ve even offered to supply the paint, but he politely refuses.’

From the summit of Black Hill, the Pennine Way originally struck north-westward across Dean Head Moss to reach the A635 Saddleworth–Holmfirth road, then continued across White Moss opposite. However, the ground here was notoriously wet and marshy and there were regular horror stories from Pennine Way walkers. In his 1975 guide to the long-distance footpaths of northern England, Geoffrey Berry observed: ‘The peat here is softer, stickier and deeper than any we have experienced, and that alone, on its part, is no mean achievement.’ Wooden fence palings were laid across the worst bits in the 1980s, but these soon deteriorated and were eventually removed, so in 1990 an alternative route across Wessenden Head Moor and then along the Wessenden valley, a little to the east of the original, became the recommended route and is now the permanent path. I followed it to the A635, a high and open moorland road with good views, not particularly busy at that moment, so I dropped my pack, leant against the wall and rested.