An old work chum and I went to one of my favourite parts of the world to walk a path I had walked many times before.
For me walking isn’t about discovering new places. That sometimes happens, and it’s always nice when I complete a hitherto untried walk without the stress of emerging from a thicket and onto a run-down housing estate, tearfully reading from a paragraph in my guidebook that insists I should now be able to see the ‘high rounded tops of the Dumpy hills reflected on the shimmering surface of Ecky reservoir.’ Instead I see three shirtless youths riding a clapped-out motorbike and a dirty toddler in the nearest garden about to lob a milk bottle at me.
Adventure is not what I am here for. Sad as it may seem to you lot, for me there is a kind of low-level joy about starting a walk that I know will end as planned, without a troubling deviation, in the correct town, and with my trousers blissfully unshredded by dogs and barbed-wire.
We began the walk in Mytholmroyd, a town that puffed out importantly into the Pennine hills on the wealth of cotton and wool, and then declined inexorably with the collapse of manufacturing and the devastating impact of the First World war. It is a harsh, forbidding environment in which to struggle against the winds of change. Poet Ted Hughes, who was born in the town, described Mytholmroyd as a place where “nothing quite escapes into happiness.” That sense of bleak endeavour is all around you in the town, in the blackness of its stone and the haunting pull of the open moors above.
I can’t think why anyone goes to the Yorkshire Dales when the South Pennines is infinitely more lovely, and blissfully free of the kind of traffic and tourist swell that frequently turns a day out in the Dales into a series of lengthy pauses between slowly winding traffic. The picturesque villages quickly exhaust their charm when, after two or three hours crawling laboriously up a narrow road behind a wobbly caravan, you are herded into a muddy field and charged an outrageous sum of money to shuffle through shopping streets lined with fussy little establishments selling tins of dainty biscuits and novelty key rings.
They have this thing about fudge too. Every shop seems to sell tins of fudge with Dales scenes printed on the lid. I don't know the connection to be honest. I've hiked all over the Dales but I've never yet surveyed the forbidding majesty of its high peaks or gazed out over its lush, undulating lowlands, turned to a friend and said, “I'm thinking fudge, what about you?”
The walk wound its way up and over the tops to Heptonstall. Arriving in Heptonstall by foot from the moors is an arresting experience. On quiet days, when people have taken their cars off to work, it is possible to come upon a sight which has little changed in over two hundred years.
Heptonstall is simply captivating in the way that many of the Yorkshire Dales villages should be captivating but rarely are. A track becomes a road that guides you down into the village between rows of exquisite cottages, to a tiny square overlooking the dramatic ruins of St Thomas a Becket church. There is no restricting fence around it, no entrance fee, no gift shop or predatory ice-cream sellers (although there is an excellent little visitor centre in the village, one of those wobbling scenery museums that so often prove to be a surprising delight), there is just the gothic ruins of a church, through which you are free to wander. You can even seek out the grave of Sylvia Plath, who committed suicide in February 1963, and of whom I shall say no more, because as Ted Hughes himself once said, “the time to write about Sylvia Plath is when you are dying.”
We retired to a local pub and drank much beer. I asked my friend if he had enjoyed the day. I was hoping for a resounding yes! perhaps even a strong hint that he would join me again next weekend.
“It was fine,” he said. “I thought it would be funnier, though. I was hoping to make it into the article as an amusing anecdote.” A devious light erupted in his eyes. “You could say you fell down a ditch and I came to your rescue. Put that in. Or say that a bull chased you and I scared it away. Put that in.”
“No.”
“Or, see those girls over there?” He flashed an alluring smile at the two women on the next table, both of whom visibly recoiled. There followed much urgent whispering before they got up quickly and left. My friend turned to me slowly, his eyes staring down the bridge of his nose. “Is there a big blob of beer foam on my nose?”
“Yep.”
“Don’t put that in.”
“Of course not.”
