• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 390 0

articles is crucial. Wainwright wanted to prove that you could stitch together your own long-distance path out of existing rights of way, and first published his account of doing just that in 1972. In his introduction to the book of his walk, he stated that he wanted to ‘encourage in others the ambition to devise with the aid of maps their own cross-country marathons and not be merely followers of other people’s routes’. Nearly 40 years on, the thousands tramping religiously in his wake, sticking with dog-like devotion to every twist, turn, stile and gate mentioned in his book, would, I suspect, bewilder him and make him despise humanity even more than he already did. For his path, only one of the infinite possible routes to take you from one side to the other, is now Britain’s most popular long-distance walk, and the second busiest in the world, with tens of thousands attempting it every year.

To the authorities, Wainwright’s CtC is an unending headache. Despite being the nation’s favourite, it is not a recognised LDP (Long Distance Path). Within the Lake District National Park, it is official policy not to signpost it at all, while elsewhere way-marking is sporadic and often unofficial, sometimes as vague as a painted arrow on a rock. Meanwhile, other minor footpaths and tourist-oriented circular walks, each with a fraction of the footfall of Wainwright’s behemoth, are relentlessly promoted and signed. It’s like sticking up a thousand signposts to guide motorists along every B-road and country lane in an area, while studiously ignoring the six-lane motorway that thunders through the middle of them. Even Ordnance Survey, slavish to every diktat of government, be it from Whitehall or the Town Hall, plaster the map with the likes of the Taff Trail and the Barnsley Boundary Walk, while pretending that Britain’s most popular path is not there.

As policy, it’s probably counter-productive too. The renegade nature of the route surely only boosts its numbers, for many walkers like to feel like outlaws, even when they are locked in a multi-coloured snake of fellow outlaws 200 miles long. As they stride by, the idea that they are cocking a snook at the authorities puts a definite spring in their step, makes them feel young and radical again. And by ignoring the jazzy leaflets in the hotels and the plaintive signs to try the thrills of the officially sanctioned West Ackerdale Way instead, they know that they have chosen the rebel path. It’s a tiny victory, and a little hollow when you’re fighting over the last teacake in a wayside café crowded with other CtC pilgrims, but it’ll have to do.

On the way up to the path’s launch pad at St Bees, I read various newspapers, all agog with excitement about the swearing in, the previous day, of Britain’s new Conservative Prime Minister and his Liberal Democrat Deputy. David Cameron is two months older than me, Nick Clegg three weeks younger. They were 43-year-olds taking on real responsibility, I couldn’t help but think, as the detritus of the West Coast Main Line rolled past the window in a vaguely dispiriting blur. By contrast, I was alone on a train, heading north with a rucksack heavy with Stuff, odd aspirations and a few kilos of mid-life crisis.

An hour between trains at Barrow-in-Furness didn’t put me in a better mood. I doubt that it ever would. Lunch options seemed to consist of a large, sweaty outpost of the Wetherspoon empire or the kind of café selling only sandwiches that taste of Tupperware and clingfilm. Diagonally opposite the station was a statue of a footballer in mid-kick. I tried to work out who it was just by looking at him, but no recognition stirred. According to the plaque, it’s Emlyn Hughes, Barrow’s favourite son and, to my generation, the chirpy, squeaky one opposite Big Bill Beaumont on A Question of Sport (‘Number six, please Dave!’). The announcement of his death (in 2004, aged 57, from a brain tumour) had been one of those moments that makes a whole generation suddenly feel considerably older and sadder. As was finding yourself the same age as the prime minister.