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

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Originally it seems that the plan was for the Pennine Way to cross the M62 slightly east of its present line, following the A672 as it passed underneath the motorway at junction 22; but – the story goes – Transport Minister Ernest Marples (a keen rambler, it was said) insisted that the Pennine Way should have its own footbridge. And not just any off-the-shelf urban design either, but a reinforced concrete three-hinged arch with a span of 220ft, complete with counter-curve and side cantilevers. In other words, the Pennine Way got the sort of elegant and bespoke bridge that the country’s foremost long-distance footpath deserved, which I find very satisfying.

The M62 bridge was completed early in 1971 and Pennine Way walkers were crossing it before the motorway tarmac had even been laid. The Manchester Guardian carried a splendid photo by Robert Smithies of almost 100 ramblers from the Peak & Northern Footpaths Society, who were the first to cross the new bridge on Easter Sunday. The photo was reproduced on the front cover of the Society’s annual report for 1971–72 and shows a line of waving figures stretching right across the new structure, with just bare earth and a couple of diggers below. (Incidentally, when Smithies died in 2006, his obituary in The Guardian described how he enjoyed recounting the background to one of his other Pennine Way pictures – a walker struggling through winter blizzards – which had his editor in raptures. ‘I just drove up the Snake Pass, between Sheffield and Manchester, parked up where the footpath crosses and turned the car heater on,’ he recalled. ‘Then I waited for the first silly sod to materialise out of the snow.’)