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

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In a later conversation with Gerard de Waal, he went further: ‘That’s where the Pennine Way was born. I was just 13 years old when I climbed Pendle Hill. I can remember standing on the top and thinking how I wanted to climb each and every one of the hills I could see.’

Despite the long working hours, Tom regularly walked four miles to Clitheroe library to continue his reading; then, after scraping together 30 shillings, he bought an old bike so he could complete a 16-mile round cycle ride to Burnley for night classes. Eventually, after much hard studying, he won one of only two scholarship places to study geology at the Royal College of Science (now Imperial College) in London. What seemed a promising future was scuppered by the intervention of World War I. Tom, already an activist in the growing Labour movement, declared himself a pacifist and was initially given an exemption; but later he was arrested, court-martialled and sentenced to 12 months’ hard labour at Wormwood Scrubs, followed by a further term at Northallerton jail.