LEGOG Day 49: Earby to Malham

Sunny and very hot with fresh north easterly

Distance covered today: 19.7km (12.2mi)

Last night's B&B: Grange Fell (£25)

Cumulative distance: 959.8km (596.5mi)/ % Complete: 50.2%

GPS satellite track of today's route: Day 49 (click!)

One of the criticisms of the Pennine Way is that it is not varied enough. That has not been my experience so far! Yesterday’s leg was as attractive as it was unexpected. After a lovely stretch of woodland along a disused railway line from Earby back to the Way at Thornton-in-Craven, I soon found myself on the Liverpool and Leeds Canal and then after a lunch in the lovely little town of Gargrave, I spent almost the entire afternoon walking alongside the delightful River Aire in, appropriately enough, Airedale.

The two extremes of the walk were just as interesting. Earby (pronounced Ear-bee!) and its associated town of Barnoldswick are industrial towns rooted in the mills of industrialising Britain, complete with ruined mill buildings and row after row of terraced houses. Employment is the big problem, though there is a major Rolls Royce facility that makes components for jet engines in the latter. Malham, on the other hand couldn’t be more different. It is the ultimate tourist village, a jumping off point for numerous walks into the Yorkshire Dales, full of B&Bs, pubs and thousands of weekenders. So full in fact that they have had to convert a field outside the village into a vast parking lot just to accommodate the cars of all the visitors. Us long-distance walkers tend to be just a teeny-weeny bit snooty about the day-trippers, as I found out in the pub last evening, where I bumped into and dined with Carmen and Gilles! 

After all, we have the scars to prove it!  It is very fortunate that today is a rest day, because my feet are, once again, killing me!  This time, it is the new boots. I thought I’d walked them in sufficiently before leaving home, but I hadn’t done successive days of walking. Perhaps also they shrunk a bit after the excessive wetting on the first day of the Pennines. Whatever the cause, I’m back to the way I felt soon after the start of the journey, way back in Cornwall, with my toes strapped up in acres of “Compeed” blister plasters and me hobbling along like an old man (alright then, an older man!). I bought myself a new pair of socks as a last desperate attempt to put a barrier between my poor sore toes and my boots, but without much hope. I’ll just have to grin and bear it, and like last time, it will sort itself out in time. Meanwhile, I’ll think about other things.

Like, for instance, this horrifying accident in Pembrokeshire where four people were killed in an explosion at the Chevron oil refinery. I find it interesting that the media are not more incensed about it than they are, especially after the BP catastrophes at their Texas City refinery (where 15 people died) and of course the Gulf spill. Perhaps the response will escalate as the cause becomes clearer. Apart from feeling real sympathy for the families involved, I also feel a twinge of sympathy for the Chevron management as they try to understand the causes of the accident, discipline anyone responsible and change systems to prevent recurrence.

Partly this is because I have form here. Once upon a time, I had just been promoted to the position of GM of my company’s operations in Portugal. I had been in the country barely two weeks, when there was a horrific accident at our LPG site near Lisbon. A pallet of LPG cylinders slid off a fork-lift truck onto a truck driver standing next to his truck, which was being loaded at the time. The driver was killed instantly. We immediately commissioned a detailed enquiry and for two weeks, all other business became just incidental. The study found that though the driver had been properly trained in the relevant procedures, and was supposed to vacate the area, he did not do so on this occasion. There was supposed to be a check on compliance, but the supervisor had been distracted by a phone-call. The fork-lift truck driver was also supposed to ensure that there was no-one around, but he couldn’t see the ill-fated driver from his position. In a nutshell, we found that the cause of the accident was a failure to follow procedures, but the root cause was that among the contractors who worked for our company as third parties, there was a certain cynicism about the strictness of our procedures which were felt to be unrealistic.

Anyway, I was summoned to the international head-quarters in The Netherlands, to report to the Chief Executive of the global company on the incident, as was standard procedure after any fatality. Sitting in the plane, I felt a slight sense of unreality. Of course, I took full responsibility for the incident, but I had only been in the country for two weeks and had not yet even had time to visit the LPG installation, let alone get involved in its safety processes. I didn’t know what to expect.

Before seeing the CEO, I had an interview with his henchman, one Phil Watts, who later became CEO himself and much later left in unedifying circumstances. Phil didn’t sit me down. He looked up from his papers and yelled at me. He called me a murderer! He asked me why I hadn’t already offered my resignation? I remember the rush of adrenalin. I remember the blood draining away from my head. I remember searching for words that wouldn’t come, and I remember him interrupting me in every sentence to say something wounding and abusive. I wasn’t expecting such a personal attack. I was outraged and furious, and I didn’t know whether to defend myself and open myself to further attacks, or just take it on the chin as the person responsible. I remember wanting to ask him as my direct line superior why he felt less responsible than I did, but I didn’t have the courage, or I didn’t think about it in time. He kicked me unceremoniously out of his office. I thought to myself, if it was like that with him, what on earth was the CEO going to say?

It was of course a case of “good cop, bad cop”. The CEO was the essence of polite concern. He was interested in me and congratulated me on getting the position at a comparatively young age. We spoke about the weight of responsibility and how best to communicate it. He also spoke at length about safety culture and I lifted an eyebrow when he became almost racist about the attitudes to safety of southern Europeans and the need to invest that much more in “hearts and minds”. We had a cup of tea. With no further ado, I was on the plane back to Lisbon.

I often think about the family of that dead contractor, and I think about him every time I hear about an industrial accident. Did my behaviour change as a result of Phil’s handling of the situation? Certainly, I knew that another accident would end my career, so I suppose it did change, a bit anyway. But I still haven’t fully resolved what I think about it, almost two decades later.

All accidents are preventable, but at what cost? And is risk-free life really an attractive option? Yet where my own family is concerned, any risk at all seems unacceptable.

The disused rail line to Thornton

A "double bridge" on the Liverpool and Leeds Canal, built to straighten the road to accommodate higer speed and heavier traffic

A lovely farmhouse near Thornton. One could live happily in a place like this. The view is magnificent

These gentlemen are ever curious, but they are much warier of me now with my new walking poles!

Sometimes the Pennine Way is even less visible than in this picture, especially over newly mown or ploughed fields. I have to be vigilant all the time!

The Way meets the River Aire. Magic!!

Day trippers at the pub in Malham. The streets were groaning with them!

For respite, I again took to the hills for some atmospheric photography in the sunset

Helped by this curious youngster!

The hills above Malham