8 On foot across the Pennines

The mill-hands’ love of hiking in the hills was an abiding tradition of northern life. For a few blissful hours they could escape from the clatter of the looms and swap their cramped surroundings for fresh upland air.

Now, at the dawning of the 21st century, the siren voice of the countryside is no less insistent. Stressed-out townies convince themselves that what they need is a bit of rural recreation. And then, as if to prove that the competitive flame can’t be doused quite so easily, they’ll cram so many activities into a weekend in the country that leisure begins to resemble work. Or they’ll join a throng of heads-down, no-nonsense walkers on some challenge walk or other, in the hope of knocking a few seconds off their personal best time.

It certainly doesn’t make much sense to Jim, a man for whom walking is a pleasure, not a penance. On his South Pennine saunters he regularly comes across anorak-clad plodders, whose joyless expressions indicate that walking has taken an unpleasantly monastic turn. They wear scratchy woollen socks - the kind you buy by the kilo. And they march stolidly, stoically, through wind and rain, as though a masked robber had broken into their homes, held their families to ransom with a pump-action rifle and said “You... yes, you with the straggly beard and the bandy legs... walk twenty miles through featureless peat hags... right now... or I’ll blow your wife and kids away”.

As one of life’s dawdlers Jim is bewildered by these bovine drudges. He doesn’t really understand the attractions of walking fast and, in the process, seeing little more than the toecaps of a pair of walking boots. If he needed to be somewhere in such a hurry, he would take the car. What’s the point of walking if it isn’t to slow down sufficiently to enjoy the sights, sounds and smells of the countryside? Walking fast is a contradiction in terms: utterly pointless, like meditating in a hurry. There’s a word for walking fast. It’s ‘running’.

Jim’s not so keen, either, on wandering the uplands in glum, nomadic hordes, like the lost tribes of Israel searching for the promised land. His views about walking in groups mirror his feelings about sex. Two participants are fine. Three or four can make an agreeable change from the norm. More than that is going to be rather better in theory than in practice. Going solo is, all things considered, probably the best option.

There’s a new breed of walker coming to Milltown: young couples in matching - and suspiciously clean - cagoules, boots and gaiters. It’s fashion on the fells for them; the hills are their catwalks. “All the gear and no idea”, as Jim puts it, rather sniffily. After a stiff climb up some half-forgotten packhorse trail, they can reward themselves with a sit-down, a sandwich and a panoramic view of Milltown - wedged into the valley bottom by the folds of the hills. And, if they have a pair of binoculars to hand, they can watch, in impotent rage, as an opportunist thief breaks into their car and liberates their CD player.

Along with their designer gear - in this year’s colours - they carry open books as they walk, and refer to them every few yards. They look like strolling Shakespearean players rehearsing a soliloquy. There seem to be no end to these walking books: featuring ready-made walks for the old, the young, the inexperienced and infirm; walks for those with a penchant for real ale, or cream teas, or industrial archaeology. But Jim reckons he’s found a gap in an overcrowded market for walking books. After many months of painstaking research, Jim has written a book of his own. The fruit of his labours - South Pennine Walks for Anarchists - has just been published, to a muted fanfare, by Milltown’s own Outlaw Press.

It has been, of necessity, a covert operation. Jim worked hand in glove with the paramilitary wing of the Independent Ramblers Association: a shadowy group of individuals who, weary of government intransigence over the Right to Roam debate, have decided to take the law into their own hands. These guys walk where they want, whenever they want: a thrillingly rebellious notion.

It was hard working with a bunch of militant ramblers. If Jim had known just how hard it was going to be, he would probably have shelved the whole book idea. Anarchists are full of good intentions. The contributors promised faithfully to hit the printing deadlines, but deadlines came and went unheeded. They pleaded illness, or apathy, or said they'd got a good job and weren't feeling anarchic any more. Or they’d just look Jim straight in the eye, stab his chest with a forefinger and say: "Look, I'm an anarchist, right? I don't give a flying fuck about you, or your crappy book. Now get out of my way before I crush you like a bug". Yes, anarchists are full of good intentions, but they can be full of bullshit too.

So what’s different about Jim’s book? Well, all the walks have one thing in common: they studiously avoid rights of way. These walks don’t appear on any Ordnance Survey map, no sir. The emphasis is firmly on fun and revolutionary ferment: putting two fingers up to the Country Code. As the handiwork of imperialist lackeys and capitalist lickspittles, these petty rules should be broken at every opportunity. Walkers, unite!

In more commonplace guidebooks there’s too much of the puritan walk ethic that keeps ramblers plodding onward long after the enjoyment has gone. Jim, on the other hand, encourages his readers to trample all over SSSIs (Sites of Specially Subversive Interest), pick rare flowers and sabotage grouse shoots. Without giving a bugger for the consequences, they can traverse the manicured lawns of aristocrats whose entitlement to keep whole swathes of our green and pleasant land to themselves stems from picking the right arse to lick after the Norman invasion, a thousand years ago.

Some walking books recommend good pubs to visit. Well, Jim’s book takes his readers into really naff pubs: the ones that serve fizzy keg beer, have ‘coal effect’ fires and turn ramblers away. No self-respecting anarchist would actually want to drink in such a place, of course. They tramp straight through the lounge bar, pausing just long enough to use the loo and pocket a souvenir ashtray. If any landlord objects to muddy bootprints on his carpet, walkers should show him Jim’s little red book, raise their fists in a concerted show of defiance and bellow “Man the barricades, comrades” at the startled drinkers at the bar.

To the usual, tedious catalogue of items that walkers should carry with them, Jim’s book sensibly adds rope, balaclava, camouflaged face-paint, hunting knife, surveillance equipment, industrial-strength wire-cutters and a handy length of cheese wire (in case they need to garrot a stroppy farmer). This stuff isn’t just for show. Readers may need to break into a nuclear installation some day, or abseil down the north face of the NatWest bank. And when that time comes, they’ll be glad of Jim’s suggestions.

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