The Wild Rover: A Blistering Journey Along Britain’s Footpaths Read Online Free Page A
Author: Mike Parker
everything and a little light pruning, while the men and I gruffly headed into the spring sunshine to dig out a couple of stiles and replace them with gates.
The KFPG was set up in 1974 by one man, and he runs it still today. Meeting him, you’d think he was a fit 65-year-old, but in fact, he’s passed 80. His passion was undimmed, although the increasing amount of red tape and regulation from the council was doing its best to quash it for him. His group now look after around a hundred miles of Warwickshire paths, and it has provoked a huge upsurge in their usage. He was a quiet evangelist – the best kind – for the rights of way network, channelling his drive into something so positive and constructive.
Fun, too. I had a brilliant morning with them, digging away into the cold earth and sharing jokes at each other’s expense. Many of the most ribald comments between the men were about each other’s politics, for it was evident that the group was a very Kenilworth hybrid of old-school Tories doing their bit for tradition, idealistic Liberals and dyed-in-the-wool socialists, inching forward the proletarian revolution by giving them access to the land. Love and concern for our rights of way seem to go right across the political spectrum. In the pub afterwards, I was shocked to learn that one of my fellow co-diggers, who’d left us by then, was a BNP activist. My shock obviously showed, for one of the younger members said to me, ‘Yeah, I know. If anyone had told me I’d be spending my Sunday mornings working alongside a BNP member, I’d have refused to believe it. But you know, the greater good . . . well, it’s bigger than any of us, and that’s what I have to keep reminding myself.’ After the shock had subsided, I felt quietly awed by their easy-going tolerance, and that in itself is the best argument against the likes of the BNP.
The physical graft made for an exhilaratingly different kind of Sunday morning to my usual one, which generally consists of bacon, eggs, tea, fags, the papers and The Archers . I’d managed not to smoke for the previous couple of months: that, and the up-hill, down-dale exploration of the paths in my part of Wales, had helped me feel so much fitter. It was time to get out there and explore the country along its byways and bridleways, to sharpen my body and my mind on the nation’s contours, as seen from close-up and at walking pace. As I raised my pint to the effusive path-clearers of Kenilworth, I knew exactly where I had to go next.
Chapter 2
ON THE WARPATH (NORTH)
An unlikely crucible for revolution: the Bottoms path, Flixton, Greater Manchester
‘We’re just bolshie buggers. Especially when you see your boss swanning around on the moors, moors that you can’t even get on to, poncing around with his mates and a twelve-bore, shooting grouse.’ It’s 1931, and a determined Lancashire voice pierces through the excited chatter bouncing off the roof of Manchester’s Victoria station, as flat-capped hordes swarm forward on to the train that will take them out of the city, into the hills for an after-noon’s fresh air and freedom.
Actually, I lie. It’s 2010 in a suburban semi in Stockport, the offices of the Peak & Northern Footpaths Society (PNFS), Britain’s most venerable rights of way campaigning group, and the words are those of Clarke Rogerson, their chairman. He’s answering a simple question that has ricocheted around my head for weeks: just what is it with Lancastrians and their precious footpaths?
Almost every battle and campaign of any significance about access or rights of way has taken place in north-western England, with a few contemporaneous flare-ups across the Pennines in the smoke-and-eckythump bits of Yorkshire. The names of Kinder Scout, Winter Hill, Bleaklow and Winnats Pass roll around the mouth of a northern folk singer like a religious incantation. And in a way, that’s exactly what they have become: totemic names of battles hard
The KFPG was set up in 1974 by one man, and he runs it still today. Meeting him, you’d think he was a fit 65-year-old, but in fact, he’s passed 80. His passion was undimmed, although the increasing amount of red tape and regulation from the council was doing its best to quash it for him. His group now look after around a hundred miles of Warwickshire paths, and it has provoked a huge upsurge in their usage. He was a quiet evangelist – the best kind – for the rights of way network, channelling his drive into something so positive and constructive.
Fun, too. I had a brilliant morning with them, digging away into the cold earth and sharing jokes at each other’s expense. Many of the most ribald comments between the men were about each other’s politics, for it was evident that the group was a very Kenilworth hybrid of old-school Tories doing their bit for tradition, idealistic Liberals and dyed-in-the-wool socialists, inching forward the proletarian revolution by giving them access to the land. Love and concern for our rights of way seem to go right across the political spectrum. In the pub afterwards, I was shocked to learn that one of my fellow co-diggers, who’d left us by then, was a BNP activist. My shock obviously showed, for one of the younger members said to me, ‘Yeah, I know. If anyone had told me I’d be spending my Sunday mornings working alongside a BNP member, I’d have refused to believe it. But you know, the greater good . . . well, it’s bigger than any of us, and that’s what I have to keep reminding myself.’ After the shock had subsided, I felt quietly awed by their easy-going tolerance, and that in itself is the best argument against the likes of the BNP.
The physical graft made for an exhilaratingly different kind of Sunday morning to my usual one, which generally consists of bacon, eggs, tea, fags, the papers and The Archers . I’d managed not to smoke for the previous couple of months: that, and the up-hill, down-dale exploration of the paths in my part of Wales, had helped me feel so much fitter. It was time to get out there and explore the country along its byways and bridleways, to sharpen my body and my mind on the nation’s contours, as seen from close-up and at walking pace. As I raised my pint to the effusive path-clearers of Kenilworth, I knew exactly where I had to go next.
Chapter 2
ON THE WARPATH (NORTH)
An unlikely crucible for revolution: the Bottoms path, Flixton, Greater Manchester
‘We’re just bolshie buggers. Especially when you see your boss swanning around on the moors, moors that you can’t even get on to, poncing around with his mates and a twelve-bore, shooting grouse.’ It’s 1931, and a determined Lancashire voice pierces through the excited chatter bouncing off the roof of Manchester’s Victoria station, as flat-capped hordes swarm forward on to the train that will take them out of the city, into the hills for an after-noon’s fresh air and freedom.
Actually, I lie. It’s 2010 in a suburban semi in Stockport, the offices of the Peak & Northern Footpaths Society (PNFS), Britain’s most venerable rights of way campaigning group, and the words are those of Clarke Rogerson, their chairman. He’s answering a simple question that has ricocheted around my head for weeks: just what is it with Lancastrians and their precious footpaths?
Almost every battle and campaign of any significance about access or rights of way has taken place in north-western England, with a few contemporaneous flare-ups across the Pennines in the smoke-and-eckythump bits of Yorkshire. The names of Kinder Scout, Winter Hill, Bleaklow and Winnats Pass roll around the mouth of a northern folk singer like a religious incantation. And in a way, that’s exactly what they have become: totemic names of battles hard
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