SOMETIMES alone, sometimes with friends, he walked hundreds of miles back and forth across the Pennines, checking and rechecking routes and landmarks.
For freelance writer and veteran walker Andrew Bibby, 51, it was no hardship, more a peripatetic labour of love, a happy conjunction of work and pleasure. The result? Thirty eight new walks to stretch the muscles and lift the spirits.
In the fir
st three volumes in the new Freedom to Roam series, Bibby shares his enthusiasm and expertise in equal measure. “What I try to do is help people enjoy new countryside we have not had the chance to walk before”, he says.
For example, thanks to new freedom of access laws, we can now walk up to Boulsworth Hill, the highest ground between Yorkshire, the Dales and the Peak District - with views to match - from the Ridge/Packhorse pub at Widdop.
Bibby admits to having a soft spot for the commanding heights of Boulsworth Hill. And not just for the stunning panorama it offers walkers on a fine day. Seventy years ago it also inspired a visionary journalist, Tom Stephenson.
His idea of a “Long Green Trail” which meandered through the Peak District and finished at Boulsworth Hill was the germ of an idea which, in 1965 became the Pennine Way, Britain’s first long-distance walking route.
Open access, thanks to the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000, has been a hard-fought campaign, ever since three Halifax worthies were summoned to court in 1895 to explain why they had chosen to trespass on Boulsworth.
Later, right-to-roamers like Benny Rothman - a leader of the 1932 Kinder Scout Trespass - went to prison for their belief that open countryside such as the wild and beautiful Pennine moors should be open to all. Now it is.
“I had always been a keen walker and fell runner”, Bibby explains, “but it’s grown since I settled in Calderdale. When I come back after being away I love to see the greens and browns, the watercolour shades of the moors”.
This deep affection informs the three books he has written. Each book, a robust, pocket-sized volume with laminated cover and sewn pages, is a little masterpiece, packed with maps, useful facts and fascinating features.
He knows the moors very well, yet wears his learning lightly. He delights in retelling curious bits of local history, such as the mysterious Stanbury Bog Explosion in 1824, so loud that it frightened the Rev Patrick Bronte in his Haworth Parsonage.
All his four children - Charlotte, Emily, Anne and Branwell - were on the moors at the time, a terrible storm was brewing and the children and servants were worryingly late coming home.
