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.
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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.
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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.
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