My Earliest Walking Experiences

When I look back on my walking history I am astounded to realise how much walking I did when I was a child. I never walked up any mountains but I went on many easy walks, especially when on holiday, with my father, but rarely with my mother. Our family walks were typically through woodland along waymarked paths with very little ascent involved. But I think the thing that really introduced me to walking was a youth group called Ambassadors at my church. They used to organise regular trips for the youngsters and on each of those trips walks in the countryside would be included in the itinerary, especially on a trip later in the year which involved a weekend in a youth hostel. Two days would be spent walking in the Peak District with a stay at one of the youth hostels in the area and I think it was these outings more than anything else that fired my enthusiasm for walking. I remember walks along Dovedale, the Manifold Valley, Lathkill Dale and Miller’s Dale, and these valleys will forever evoke memories of Ambassadors (such as happened last October when I visited Miller’s Dale again).

My most memorable family walks are after I joined Ambassadors and I am sure that I started pushing for walks because of my enthusiasm for walking gained in Ambassadors. After leaving Ambassadors, and besides family holidays which I also eventually stopped going on, I don’t remember any more walks until I went to University. However I did not at that time take up walking seriously, and never joined a Walking Club at the Uni, which is a pity as if I had I would have probably started taking hill walking seriously a lot earlier than I did. The first walk I did while at Uni was in the February of my first year when I took a train to Edale in the nearby Peak District and, buying a pamphlet with details of eight walks around Edale, I started working my way through it. On that first visit to Edale I did the number one and two walks, which totalled just five miles and climbed up to Hollins Cross, which is less than 400 metres high. I wrote in my diary: “Despite being on my own I thoroughly enjoyed myself. It was wonderful.”

I think this comment was important because on subsequent visits to Edale I always took my father (being a sad git I didn’t have any Uni friends I could take!). The following month I went with my father to Edale but the weather was not kind and I got my first lesson on the savageries of mountain weather. Early on in the walk we had climbed up the side of Kinder Scout on the course of the Pennine Way and climbing no higher than 350m it started raining heavily (and hailing). We were both sliding all over the place (wearing just trainers) as we were totally out of our depth. My diary describes it as “very windy, very wet and very cold. It was hell.” By the time we got back down to the bottom of the valley the rain had stopped but we were so pissed off and wet we just walked along the road back to the station. I remember being amazed by how vicious the weather had been even though on the walk back along the road the weather seemed fine.

The following May we tried the walk again, this time in much better weather and it produced the comment: “It was very nice indeed. I did enjoy it.” Unfortunately that was all I said about it, but looking at the route in the pamphlet (I’ve still got it) it would have reached its highest point at Hollins Cross, just as on my first visit to Edale. It would be incorrect to think of Hollins Cross as a summit though as in fact it is the pass between Mam Tor and Lose Hill. I have done many walks since around Edale but the area still brings back many memories of those early walks while I was at University. It remains a great pity to me now that I didn’t take a greater interest in walking at the time, instead I had other things on my mind, but they will not be revealed on this blog …