Time to walk: LEJOG Day 46: Diggle to Mankinholes

Weather: Partly cloudy with stiff, chilly westerly

Distance covered today: 20.8km (12.7mi)

Last night's B&B: Sunfield Accommodation (£35)

Cumulative distance: 897.8km (557.9mi)/ % Complete: 46.9%

GPS satellite track of today's route: Day 46 (click!)

Despite increasing obstacles, I’m still just about able to get onto the net. I’m in the local pub for a bite to eat, after struggling a little at the B&B. It is intensely frustrating when there is a strong wireless signal, but the owners have simply forgotten their logon code and have failed to write it down! In mitigation, they generally admit that computers are just a mystery to them, but when I interrogated them, they did admit that an increasing number of people want to get connected. It would be so easy to fix it, but they do not. Ah well! This evening, not much else worked in my room either, and when I arrived my landlady was expecting me to be camping, despite an originally clear request to her for B&B facilities. Her husband ignored me completely despite the fact I was standing almost next to him. I think I can deduce that their hearts are not in their work. And they can readily anticipate that there will be no return business from this customer!

Today’s walk was really a walk in two parts. The first bit involved a steady climb onto some lovely moorland from Standedge to Blackstone Edge. The way lay along a stony promontory of blackened rocks as the hills divide one of the most densely populated areas of Europe, though on top of the ridge, there was a real sense of wilderness. The views of the urban areas below constantly changed. At one point I could clearly see the tall buildings of Manchester far in the distance to the South West, but in most cases my maps were too local for me to identify the towns. It is remarkable that these moors have remained as remote as they are. Almost anywhere else, they would have been subject to gradual development. Every so often, the peace would be shattered by a howling motorway or other arterial road carrying unbelievable amounts of traffic from city to city, but otherwise the peace was pervasive, interrupted mostly by a vast number of skylarks. The second part of the walk was very different, with the path essentially flat and bordering a series of vast reservoirs supplying the towns and canals below.

I think I am still coming to terms with the Pennine Way. For a start, there are a lot more serious walkers here. Possibly for this reason, they are a lot less friendly to each other. I think I can say that my attitude to others hasn’t changed at all, but the response here is distinctly cooler. I accept that the volume of people walking must make a difference, but I can’t help feeling there is something else in the atmosphere as well. Maybe I am overreacting to the brusque northern manner and maybe it is just that I am alone again after a couple of delightful days in the company of special people. Certainly, here in the pub tonight, I am invisible, even to the people at the next table, in a way that didn’t happen further south. If it carries on like this, they’ll be shooting at me by the time I reach Scotland!

It is though still too early for me to comment on how I will feel about walking the lonely Pennine Way. I think I need a few more days of solitude and contemplation to reach the sort of equilibrium in which I start to ignore little irrelevances such as those I have been talking about so far. But I did have a moment of reverie today, following the walk with Richard and Ellie yesterday. I think I mentioned that Richard B served in the Armed Services for a period and subsequently in the Territorial Army. I have no doubt that he served with distinction, very much in contrast to my own undistinguished service as a conscript in the South African army many years ago.

It all started well enough. Soon after basic training I applied for and was selected for officer training. I worked hard at it, and after the Jesuits, I thought the Sergeant Majors were really a little soft. In fact I did extraordinarily well. We were marked on all aspects of the training, and eventually I received my commission with the second highest mark, behind a fellow whose name, John Bryant, I can for some strange reason, still remember. Bryant was brilliant at rugby and cricket which of course gave him an advantage in South Africa! As an officer, I was thoroughly enjoying myself. I was still too young to drive, but I had a driver and a Landrover to inspect the guard and on my nights off, I could visit the pubs of Cape Town.

I did though seriously blot my copybook shortly before we were released. It was 1967 and everyone in Europe and America was getting high in the “summer of love”. As usual, with my admiration of all things foreign, I was reading everything I could find on the subject. As conscripted officers, we were asked by the senior permanent force officers to prepare and deliver lectures on a variety of subjects to the troops. Most of my colleagues chose fairly safe subjects, but I decided that I would present a lecture on the virtues of marijuana. Of course I knew almost nothing about it and hadn’t at that stage even tried it myself, but I was full of all sorts of ideas about it, some reasonable, such as the case for legalisation, and some simply barmy, such as “the path to peace and love”. My statistics were gleaned from the pages of Newsweek and Time. My authority was my youth. I had no idea that many of my audience were regular smokers of “dagga” (marijuana in South Africa), and although I knew that dagga was illegal, I had no idea how big a problem it was seen to be by the army authorities. After all, the Vietnam War was reaching a climax and apparently half the American army was high on drugs. Of course the army was interested.

The result was complete chaos. My lecture was warmly received by the majority of troops in the audience, but when the Major in charge realised that I was not condemning the drug, but actually arguing for its legalisation and suggesting that society would be the better for it, all hell broke loose. At first he tried to argue against me, but I had all the facts, and it was clear I also had the audience! The meeting was broken up and everybody sent packing. I was sent to see the colonel. He tried to reason with me, but I had the bit between my teeth. Eventually, all that happened was that he decided that the series of lectures should be allowed to cease, after a decent interval, so the connection wouldn’t be too obvious.

It marked a distinct change of relationship between the army and me, but that is another story.

Looking at Richard yesterday, understanding his sense of duty and tradition, I just couldn’t imagine a similar thing happening in this country, under any circumstances.

The view from my bedroom window last evening, just before sunset

A straight bit of Pennine penance

Windfarms all over the horizon

Manchester, to the south west, at full zoom

Somehow today I went from Derbyshire to York to Lancashire to West Yorkshire. All in a day!

A graceful and slender little bridge built specifically to carry the Pennine Way over the howling, whining M62!

Apparently the area below is one of the most densely populated places in Europe. This old guy seems to have been complaining about it for milennia!

This is a mediaeval signpost, called the Aiggin Stone. It led to a Roman road, itself built on an ancient road and now improved by great granite slabs. I went the wrong way at the stone and missed the lot!