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

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As both the Pennine Way and I neared 50, I decided it was now or never. I hadn’t really thought of it in any ‘midlife’ challenge or crisis sort of way, but clearly others had. A few months before I set off, I attended a small celebratory event in Edale organised by the Peak District National Park Authority, marking the Pennine Way’s 50th birthday. Among the speakers was author and local resident Mark Wallington, whose light-hearted and enjoyable account of walking the Pennine Way with his dog was published in 1997. He outlined a theory as to why so many men of a certain middling age walk the Pennine Way (or at least try to), inviting the audience to imagine a typical young man’s bucket list cataloguing all the things he might want to achieve or experience in life. It could include buying an expensive sports car, going out with a supermodel, skydiving, playing guitar in a rock group, scoring a winning goal in an FA Cup Final, 24-hour parties, walking the Pennine Way, and so on. However, as that young man gets older, more and more items on the wish list are crossed off as unobtainable, until he realises that he’s reached the point where walking the Pennine Way is the only thing left that’s even remotely feasible. Along with the rest of the audience, I laughed, but not quite as loudly as everyone else.