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

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There’s something genuinely fascinating about the Pennine Way. If a long-distance path could be said to work on different levels, then this is it. It was the first to be created in Britain and is arguably still the most famous. Damian Hall, author of the official National Trail Guide to the Pennine Way, introduces the path as ‘the original, the classic, the daddy; it’s the oldest, the roughest and toughest of them all.’ The long and valiant fight to secure public access to the hills is bound up in its history, while its fluctuating fortunes mirror those of the youth hostels movement, whose assorted buildings still dot the Pennine hills. Our relationship with wild places, the growth of modern recreational trailwalking, the impact of our feet on the ground and pioneering moorland restoration work, stand-out characters like the dogged Stephenson and idiosyncratic Wainwright – all of this is part of the Pennine Way’s rich and multilayered story.

And then there’s that thing deep inside that makes some of us want to walk 268 miles across high and lonely moorland in the first place: challenge, adventure, ambition, daring, purpose, single-mindedness, escapism, masochism, madness. The camaraderie of the trail and the solitude of the hills are both there, too, however incongruous that might seem. So why does this rugged, exhilarating and flawed upland footpath evoke such profound feelings? And would I be able to walk from one end to the other and work it all out?