INTRODUCTION
One cool, wet day in August
1960 I was alone and hanging by one hand from a hold on the top pitch of Broad
Stand on Scafell about thirty feet above a slope of shattered scree. To be in
such a situation concentrates the mind wonderfully. If I hadn’t observed the
cardinal rule of rock climbing, always to have three points of contact with the
rock before moving the fourth, I would not be writing this. I was wearing
Vibram rubber soled boots and climbing wet rock alone and I should have known
better. But hills and mountains have always called me strongly with a mystical
power that I can’t explain. Of course I’ve had my dreams of climbing the
Matterhorn, Nanga Parbat, Everest or Kanchenjunga, but (with two exceptions
recorded in the pages that follow) for various reasons I’ve never had an
opportunity to explore beyond the confines of these islands. Like many
children, I found great delight in climbing and I explored the boundaries of my
world from an early age. I can only suppose that my parents must have
remembered their own childhood desires and allowed me more freedom than I seem
to remember was given to my playmates. Or maybe the reason is simply that some
of us are born with a wandering gene.
At the start of the second world war, I was two years old
and an only child. Not that I was lonely, but my father would disappear from
the family home for weeks at a time and it was much later that I learned that
he’d enlisted with the Volunteer Defence Force, later to become the Home Guard,
and had to travel the length and breadth of the country for training purposes.
He would later travel the world as a British soldier and only return home (from
Singapore) in 1946.
During the war we shared the Anderson shelter in the back
yard of our terraced house with our next-door neighbours, but it was a cold,
damp and uninviting refuge and I only remember it being used once, even though
air raid warnings would sound occasionally - there was a Royal Ordnance factory
a quarter of a mile away, but nothing else locally to attract a German bomb
except the main West coast railway line. After my dad left home to join the
army, I was raised by mum who had to contend with the privations of wartime
rationing and restrictions. Luxuries were few and I only realised much later in
life how much my mother had sacrificed on my behalf and how much as a child I
took for granted. We were not a rich family in terms of wealth, but we had
riches beyond compare in love and understanding from friends, family and
neighbours.
Mum and Dad had taught me to read before I started
school, so apart from listening to the radio on which the programmes were
mostly happy, bright and cheerful, no doubt dictated by the government, I found
my escape from the strictures of daily life by reading anything I could lay my
hands on – especially adventure stories. Robin Hood was my first undoubted
favourite, to be followed by Robinson Crusoe. I soon discovered the writings of
H. Rider Haggard and Robert Louis Stevenson, especially ‘King Solomon’s Mines’,
‘Treasure Island’ and ‘Kidnapped’ and I was enchanted by tales of pirates and
their exploits. I joined the local library and soon exhausted everything that
interested me in the children’s section, only to be greatly affronted when the
librarian refused me permission to pass through a barrier to get at the adult
books.
But by then I had discovered names such as Scott of the
Antarctic, Grenfell of Labrador and Captain James Cook, not to mention Mallory
and Irvine who both sadly died on Everest. Such were the explorers and pioneers
that were the major influences on my young life, and while I could never hope
to emulate their adventures, I could at least live them in my dreams. I can’t
recall how old I was, but I do remember that when I received my first World
Atlas, I was disappointed to find that there were apparently no blanks on the
maps remaining to be explored. Of course, I was wrong, but my childhood dreams of
becoming a famous explorer had been shattered.
So this book is written for readers who have never lost
their childhood curiosity and would like to be reminded of how it feels to
discover and explore new worlds, either beyond the visible far horizons or the
hidden worlds that live as metaphors inside the mind. It is not a book about an
intrepid machete toting explorer slashing his way through jungles. It is not
about the highest peaks on the seven continents, nor does it describe a solo circumnavigation
of the world. It isn’t even about a collector of Scottish Munros, although some
of those delectable mountains will be encountered within its pages. Rather, it
is for everyone who loves the hills, the mountains, the wildernesses and cannot
live without the distant view. If it stimulates the reader to remember their
own adventures recalling again the force of the wind, the sting of the rain or
the warmth of the sun, then so much the better.
* * * * * * * * * *
There were few trees amongst the terraced streets where I
lived and those in the municipal park were out of bounds for aspiring climbers;
the park wardens were too vigilant. One of my Wigan junior classmates lived in
a house where the garden included a huge tree located in Sycamore Drive. This
was the first tree I remember climbing so it may have been a sycamore of
moderate size. It may not have been a great height, but it remains lodged in
the memory because I climbed until I feared the swaying of the thin leading
branch, responding to my tiny weight, might break. I tore off a scrap of bark
as proof of how far I’d climbed and for the first time in my short life I
exercised prudence and climbed down. But I had seen far beyond a row of garden
fences, experienced the thrill (and fear) of reaching my limits and had learnt,
without realising, that somewhere in the future I would travel further and
climb higher.
It was
not long before I did, for in 1947, following the death of Lord Crawford, his
grand house and estate, known locally as the Haigh Plantations, was bought for
the town by Wigan Council. My uncle, who was employed by the Council told me
that I could now explore this previously forbidden land without fear of being
apprehended by a minion of the law. It was within walking distance of my home,
so I was soon to be found there exploring alone on Saturday mornings, although
I remember distinctly my first tentative passage through the imposing gateway,
expecting at any moment to have my collar metaphorically fingered by a
policeman. This to me was William Brown country as described by Richmal
Crompton, whose books I was devouring as fast as I could get hold of them. On
one occasion I found the front entrance to the hall to be open and silently
crept inside. There was no one about so I climbed a grand staircase to a
gallery where a host of multicoloured keys and trowels was displayed inside a
glass cabinet. Somewhere at the far end of the building I could hear whistling,
presumably a workman going about his business. I found another door, opened it
as quietly as I could and behind it discovered a spiral staircase. For a moment
I was ‘Just William’ reborn and climbed the spiral to where it opened on to the
roof. That was far enough, for the longer I stayed the greater was the danger
of being caught.
With a rapidly
thumping heart I manged to escape undetected and made my way through a tangle
of overgrown rhododendrons to a wooden tower on the highest point of the
estate. I have since supposed that it was used by His Lordship to fly his flag
and so advertise to the local populace that he was in residence. Not
surprisingly, it was surrounded by a metal fence, but judging by its condition
someone had clearly been there before me. I squeezed through and climbed a
series of ladders from floor to floor inside until I emerged on to the roof
with an extensive view over the forest canopy to Rivington Pike in one
direction and the infamous ‘Three Sisters’ conical colliery waste tips beyond
Wigan in the other. The tower must have been demolished soon after my visit
because I never saw it again. I assume that the authorities must have been
considered it to be dangerous, especially to small adventurous children.
Lord
Crawford’s wooden flagstaff tower c.1948
I had
then no knowledge of hills, not even the hills of Britain, and certainly not
mountains but I began to seek out such high points as I could find. Two of
these were close to home and on opposite sides of the main North West railway
line close to my home in Wigan. For obvious reasons the higher one was known
locally as Scout’s Hill and the lower one as Cub’s Hill. Both consisted of
waste from what had once been coal pits, but they were then a magnet for every
local child and I soon found them. Maybe they were no higher than fifty feet or
so above the surrounding fields, but for a small child they were as desirable
as the Matterhorn must have been to Edward Whymper. In winter they took on
alpine proportions.
From
that time, wherever there was something to climb, be it a tree, a lamp post a
fence or a wall I would climb it. Few memories remain from those years but I
remember distinctly a church visit to the Edgworth National Children’s Home
(NCH) located in the village of Crowthorne on the very edge of the Pennine
moors above Bolton. The nearest height of any significance close to Wigan is
Rivington Pike at 1033 ft above sea level but being 10 miles away it was then
too far to travel for an impecunious child and it had to wait until I possessed
a bicycle. Before the day of the NCH visit I had discovered, on an Ordnance
Survey map, a spot height about a mile distant from the Home with the name Bull
Hill at 1372 ft above sea level. While the adults were given a conducted tour
of the Home, I led two of my young companions on an excursion to find this dot
on the map. But it was a day of continuous rain and once we had turned off a
reasonable cart track, we were soon squelching miserably through ankle deep
peat bogs wearing our everyday school shoes. We never reached the summit (if
there was one) and were no doubt I was severely reprimanded for such silly
behaviour.
* * * * * * * * * *
Perhaps I have an innate sense of
insecurity, for I always seem to need to know two things - my place in time and
my place in space. Without this information I often feel that I am both
literally and metaphorically lost. I am at a loss to explain this. Most people
seem to get by without any such worries. In an unfamiliar location they can
always find someone to guide them in the right direction. Maybe there ought to
be a phrase or word to describe my condition. Locotemporophobia perhaps.
Whatever the case, since my earliest memory, maps have fascinated me. The one
and only adornment to the wall of my childhood bedroom was a simple map showing
all the main line railway routes throughout Britain delineated in red. I bought
it from a second-hand book stall for a pittance with my meagre pocket money,
but it remained my pride and joy for many years until I left the parental home
for one of my own. That map was a far better investment than a bar of chocolate
At school, a magnificent globe of
the world was suspended from the ceiling of the geography room. That, together
with a Bartholemew's World Atlas and those marvellous creations of the Ordnance
Survey Office reinforced in me an interest in maps that has never diminished.
Possibly the fanciful depiction of Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island,
together with the fact that, from the whole of the British Isles, Mr.
Bartholemew had selected my local area to illustrate differences in rainfall,
lent an added magic to his atlas. I have never forgotten his colourful maps of
the continents, in particular that of South America on which the Amazon basin
featured strongly in dark green. He described it as being one of the ‘lungs of
the world’. The immensity of that area and the current rate of its on-going
destruction convinces me that for the past fifty years or so we have been
irresponsible curators of this beautiful planet. Climate changes and global
warming are phenomena that can no longer be denied. They must surely, in part,
be caused by the destruction of the forests of the Amazon basin.
But enough of politics. For me, at
school there was something about the cabalistic symbols of Ordnance Survey maps
that appealed more than a second language, although from the viewpoint of an
unbeliever, that was exactly what they were, and no doubt still are.
Interpreting contour lines allowed me to develop a three-dimensional picture of
a landscape that was invisible to the uninitiated. Roads that were usually
depicted then as red, brown or yellow lines, would lead me over hills into
undiscovered valleys so that in my mind's eye I could visualise every rise and
fall and hairpin bend. Railways either ran through cuttings or were raised high
on embankments, and shorelines were either sandy or rocky.
When I acquired a Raleigh Sports bicycle
and could explore beyond the walking limits of my two short legs, my joy was
almost complete. I added a mileometer to the front wheel that clicked
annoyingly, but reassuringly, as I covered thousands of miles travelling the
length and breadth of South Lancashire – and many miles beyond. Of course.
Rivington Pike was soon added to my pathetic little list of summits and although
I soon completed a circuit of Pendle Hill, a round trip of about 80 miles, the
hill itself would only succumb a few years later.
Such were my formative years when I would enjoy long days cycling
to Llangollen and the Horseshoe Pass (125 miles) or the Lake District (145
miles) but with too little time to complete the ascent of a mountain. But, although
the big hills continued to beckon, a couple more years would pass before I
ascended Snowdon, the first of many subsequent names that I considered to be
real mountains.
Aged
fifteen and with my school friend, John Shepherd, I crossed the Pennines to the
Yorkshire coast, cycling every day for a week between youth hostels – but no
summits were gained on that trip other than that of the road over Blackstone
Edge.
I guess it was no accident that
having such an affinity with maps, I would eventually (probably too old) take
up the pursuit of fell-running. In addition to being able to read a map with
the same pleasure that other people read a good book, in middle age, I needed
to become fit. ‘A healthy mind in a healthy body’ goes the mantra that
persuaded me to begin my (self-imposed) training using local maps on a scale
that allowed me to plot a variety of routes, stitching together footpaths that
included as much countryside as I could find with the inevitable necessity of
running on urban streets.
Finally, maps have always provided me
with more than basic information. They provide me now with a delicious nostalgia
that warms the heart and soothes the brain. They bring to mind those sweet days
of summer when sunshine clothed the mountain tops and the view stretched to
infinity. As an ex-fell runner, with the aid of a map, without leaving my
chair, I can still trace the course of a mountain stream and recall its every
twist and turn - the spot where an adder slept on a sun warmed rock, or the moment
when a sudden break in the mist revealed a view that took my breath away. In
the cold depths of winter, I can happily turn off the TV and warm myself by merely
opening a map. By this simple act I can reflect on the lung bursting pain of a
steep ascent or the sensation of sheer joy that I came to know when descending
a grassy path as if I had winged feet. Of such is the joy of maps.
A LANCASHIRE LANDSCAPE
My
home town of Wigan has a long and honourable history, having been granted a
charter to hold a market by Henry III dated 1247. The town expanded rapidly during
the industrial revolution because of its dependence on the 3 Cs – coal, cotton
and canals. It may pre-date the Romans as a settlement because the oldest part
of the town stands on raised ground where the foundations of a substantial
Roman bath house have been excavated within a loop of the River Douglas (loosely
translated as ‘black water’). During the 19th and early 20th centuries the
ubiquity of the coal pits that surrounded the town was enough to sully every
building in the town with a thin layer of coal dust. There were many hills of
waste left behind when the pits closed and from the front bedroom window of my
home I could see three conical mountains in the distance known as the “Three
Sisters”. They were razed to the ground many years ago and are commemorated
today in the name of the Three Sisters Country Park. The following poem
describes the town in which I grew up.
Do
you know the town where I used to live
where
Saturday men raced scrawny dogs.
Where
streets would ring to the sound of clogs,
and
a thousand chimneys choked me with fogs?
Do
you know the grey hill where I used to sit
watching
open wagons shunt coal from the pit?
Beyond
those sidings, I knew far away
more
hills of grey would be growing each day.
Do
you know the fields where I used to play
with
winding gear that was always near
and
the whistle that blew so that everyone knew
it
was the end of a shift? Unless it meant fear!
Do
you know the street where I used to walk
every
day to the shop for a loaf of bread,
where
a spectacled man looked kindly down
and
ruffled the hair on a small boy’s head?
Do
you know the park where I used to ride
on
a roundabout, scraping my shoes in the mud,
or
the path that led me into a wood
where
the scream of a partridge froze my blood?
Those
hills of my childhood are now all laid low
and
it’s hard to remember I once used to go
to
the hills with a bucket to pick nuggets of coal
when
mother was pregnant and dad on the dole.
They have taken and levelled my memories for
good
of
the miners who dug for the shiny black gold.
No
footprints are left where the old pithead stood
and
widows in mourning could not be consoled.
All
the wagons have left now that kept me from sleep,
though
I hear their clanking still loud in my dreams,
and
the hollowed out earth has its secrets to keep
in
the loveless cold arms of the empty dead seams.
Now
immaculate streets will forever deny
those
forgotten grey clinkers of cinders and waste,
for
the sweat ridden landscapes that once saw men die,
by
green fields and woodlands have all been replaced.
