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Free to roam
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 first 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. Later, he preached on “the deep, distant explosion”.
The Pennine moors, apparently so bare and bleak, shimmer with faint echoes of such history and a web of ancient paths and odd stones and place names offer intriguing clues to much earlier human presences in these places.
Bibby is sensitive to such things: “Anyone who has seen, say, the Swastika Stone or the Badger Stone, or who has stood right at the highest part of the moor in the prehistoric Twelve Apostles stone circle will begin to understand that the moors have been home to humans for several millennia”.
There are unsolved mysteries too, he points out, like the prehistoric markings carved on stones of Rombalds Moor and “the msyterious little stone set in the moors near Warley, which carries the enigmatic message ‘A sinner saved by grace’.”
Originally from south London, Bibby has been in Calderdale for 15 years. “It is a wonderful, a good place to live, with a very strong community and Calderdale is excellent if you are working from home, as I do,” he enthuses.
It was his enthusiasm, particularly for the moors, which persuaded the Ramblers’ Association to team up with publishers Frances Lincoln for the Freedom To Roam series. Seven books have been published so far, with more to follow.
Frances Lincoln, which also publishes the famous Wainwright guides to the Lake District, hopes - with good reason - that the new guides will become as vital a piece of walkers’ equipment as compass or kagoul.
The books, with Ordnance Survey maps for each walk, are designed to last and, I suspect, destined to become widely sold and well-thumbed. Bibby makes clear he really wants us to celebrate our new freedoms.
The series, which he edits, “has one aim: to encourage you to explore and grow to love these new areas of the countryside which are now open to us. The right to roam freely - that’s surely something to celebrate”.
Freedom to Roam Guides: published by Frances Lincoln and the Ramblers’ Association at 7.99 each.
1: South Pennines and the Bronte Moors including Ilkley Moor, by Andrew Bibby.
2: Forest of Bowland with Pendle Hill and the West Pennine Moors, by Andrew Bibby.
3: The Pennine Divide: Walking the Moors between Greater Manchester and Yorkshire, by Andrew Bibby.
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