Pennine Way
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Pennine Way is a National Trail in England. The trail runs 268 miles (463 km) from Edale, in the northern Derbyshire Peak District, north through the Yorkshire Dales and the Northumberland National Park, to end at Kirk Yetholm, just inside the Scottish border.
The path was the idea of the journalist and rambler Tom Stephenson, inspired by similar trails in the United States, particularly the Appalachian Trail. Stephenson proposed the concept in an article for the Daily Herald in 1935, and later lobbied Parliament for the creation of an official trail. The final section of the path was declared open in a ceremony held on Malham Moor on the 24th April 1965. The path runs along the Pennine hills, sometimes described as the "backbone of England". Although not the United Kingdom's longest trail,[1] it is according to the Ramblers' Association "one of Britain's best known and toughest".[2]
The Pennine Way has long been popular with walkers, and in 1990 the Countryside Commission reported that 12,000 long-distance walkers and 250,000 day-walkers were using all or part of the trail per year.[3] They furthermore estimated that walkers contributed £2 million (1990) to the local economy along the route, directly maintaining 156 jobs. The popularity of the walk has caused substantial erosion to the terrain in places, and steps have been taken to recover its condition, including diverting sections of the route onto firmer ground, and laying flagstones or duckboards in softer areas. These actions have been generally effective in reducing the extent of broken ground, though their intrusion into the natural landscape has not always been free from criticism.
A number of Youth Hostels are provided along the route to break up the trek, in addition to many private establishments offering accommodation. It is easy for the walker to undertake just a short section of the trail, with 535 access points (or one every half-mile) at which the Pennine Way intersects with other public rights of way.
As the majority of the Pennine Way is routed via public footpaths, access to those sections is denied to travellers on horseback or bicycle. In order to grant them a similar route, a Pennine Bridleway is also now under development (as of autumn 2005, two principal sections are open); the route is generally parallel to the Pennine Way, but starts slightly further south in Derbyshire.
[edit] Route
According to the National Trails agency,[4] a walker covering the entire length of the trail is obliged to navigate 287 gates, 249 timber stiles, 183 stone stiles and 204 bridges. 319 km of the route is on public footpaths, 112 km on public bridleways and 32 km on public highway. The walker is aided by the provision of 458 waymarks.
The route of the Pennine Way passes close to or through the following places:
- Edale
- Kinder Scout
- Bleaklow
- Black Hill
- Saddleworth Moor
- Standedge
- Littleborough
- Stoodley Pike
- Todmorden (for the Caldervale line)
- Hebden Bridge (for the Caldervale line)
- Wadsworth Moor
- Keighley Moor
- Elslack Moor
- Lothersdale
- Settle
- Malham
- Fountains Fell
- Pen-y-ghent
- Horton in Ribblesdale (on the Settle-Carlisle Railway)
- Dodd Fell Hill
- Hawes (for the Wensleydale Railway)
- Great Shunner Fell
- Kisdon
- Kisdon Force
- Keld
- Tan Hill
- Crosses the A66
- Middleton-in-Teesdale and the Tees valley
- High Cup
- Great Dun Fell
- Cross Fell
- Alston
- Haltwhistle
- Hadrian's Wall (near the B6318)
- Shitlington Crags
- Windy Gyle
- The Cheviot
- Kirk Yetholm
[edit] Further reading
The Pennine Way has attracted a number of writers over the years, including Stephenson himself, who wrote the first official guidebook. A popular guide was authored and illustrated by the writer Alfred Wainwright, whose offer to buy a pint of beer for anyone who finished the Pennine Way is estimated to have cost him up to £15,000 until his death in 1991.[5]
- Wainwright, Alfred. Pennine Way Companion. Frances Lincoln Publishers. ISBN 0-7112-2235-5.
- Hopkins, Tony. Pennine Way (2 volumes). Aurum Press. ISBN 1-85410-851-4, ISBN 1-85410-962-6.
- Stephenson, Tom. The Pennine Way. HM Stationery Office. ISBN 0-11-700903-2.
For a more light hearted and realistic look at the walk, Barry Piltons book gives his personal account of completing the Pennine Way, with a foreword by Mike Harding the then President of the Ramblers Association.
- Pilton, Barry (1988). One Man and his Bog. Corgi Books. ISBN 0-552-12796-5.
[edit] See also
[edit] Footnotes
- ^ This distinction belongs to the 1014 km-long South West Coast Path
- ^ Ramblers' Association. Pennine Way National Trail. Retrieved on 2006-03-26.
- ^ Countryside Commission (1992). Pennine Way survey 1990: use and economic impact. ISBN 0-86170-323-5.
- ^ National Trails. Pennine Way interesting facts. Retrieved on 2006-03-27.
- ^ Askwith, Richard. "Alfred Wainwright: Grumpy, reclusive and eccentric", The Independent, 02 July 2005.
