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

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What was especially noticeable was the lack of people. A solitary runner, a post van and a couple of tractors were the sum total of life for the best part of two hours that morning, as I made my way by path and lane via Graining Water and the trio of Walshaw Dean Reservoirs. I paused on the far side of the middle one to read some large and evidently VERY IMPORTANT public notices. Huge boards, in vivid colours, shouted warnings at me that cold water kills, bathing was prohibited and there was a danger of falling along the bywater channel. I didn’t even know what a bywater channel was, but walking along it sounded risky. In fact, I found out that it was simply an artificial trench running alongside the main reservoir to carry away excess water, and I found this out because the Pennine Way now ran beside it.

Beyond the reservoirs, the path took to slabs as it gradually made its way up to the top of the hill. However, unlike some of the newer paved routes that I’d been treading over the last couple of days, this one was laid as long ago as 1989 by Calderdale Countryside Service and it was interesting to see how well it had bedded down, with vegetation fringing the stones all the way along. New moorland vistas now opened up ahead, with Haworth and Keighley over to the right. But the main attraction was much closer to home. The trail descended to a ruined building, variously called Top Withins, Top Withens or simply Withins. The main part of what was evidently once a small, simple dwelling was roofless and sat in isolation next to a couple of trees towards the top of the moors. In any other situation this would be just another neglected and unremarkable old building, slowly decaying year by year; except here small knots of people all over the hillside were making a beeline for it, following waymarked paths from Haworth that even included signposts in Japanese.