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

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While recognising the achievement, Tom Stephenson was keen to ensure a sense of proportion for any such route along the Pennines. In his Daily Herald article, he painted a picture of how the Pennine Way might look: ‘This need be no Euclidean line, but a meandering way deviating as needs be to include the best of that long range of moor and fell; no concrete or asphalt track, but just a faint line on the Ordnance Maps which the feet of grateful pilgrims would, with the passing years, engrave on the face of the land.’

He outlined a likely course, which with the exception of Boulsworth Hill and Pendle Hill was uncannily like the final agreed route, and in a nod to the prevailing royal jubilee he suggested it could be called the Jubilee Way or Georgian Path. The name was clearly of less importance than the overriding desire to secure a public foothold in these forbidden lands. The idea of the Pennine Way had arrived.

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HEBDEN BRIDGE – MALHAM

Tom Stephenson’s big idea

The next morning I sat in the kitchen of a terraced house in Hebden Bridge. It belonged to a small woman in what I judged to be her late 60s or early 70s, who I had never met until the previous evening, nor was I ever likely to again once I had left. As I sat quietly, she busied herself preparing breakfast, humming gently as she stirred the scrambled egg and checked the toast. I looked round the neat but homely room, at the postcards on the fridge door and a vase of fresh flowers by the window. There was a small pile of ironing on a chair by the door and a few cookery books on a shelf. Outside, some children walked past noisily on their way to school. And as I sat there at the kitchen table, surrounded by all the trappings of everyday life, but an everyday life that belonged to a complete and utter stranger, it struck me that bed and breakfast is a most peculiar arrangement.