LEJOG Day 47: Mankinholes to Stanbury

Weather: Mostly cloudy with chilly westerly

Distance covered today: 20.9km (13.0mi)

Last night's B&B: Cross Farm (£30)

Cumulative distance: 918.7km (570.9mi)/ % Complete: 48.0%

GPS satellite track of today's route: Day 47 (click!)

This is what I was expecting! A raw day on the moors, a bitter wind from the west, a leaden sky, all rounded off after six and a half hours by passing the house where Emily Bronté based “Wuthering Heights”!  I wasn’t sure how I would react to wandering over those cold, desolate moors on my own. Now I’m beginning to learn, though it is still early days! I was mostly in a state of hugely awakened alertness. I seemed to be tuned to every sound, even more than the sights. All day, there was the sound of the wind in my ears, changing in frequency as the velocity varied, ranging from a sigh to a full-blooded whine. There was also a remarkable amount of birdsong. I could seldom see them, much less identify them, but it was the most pervasive living sound on the moors. This is not a place to break down physically. This is therefore a place to be very, very cautious. All that adrenalin makes a difference to perceptions. Tonight I will sleep well!

Hardly had I posted last night’s blog, in which I was complaining about the slightly anti-social behaviour of the locals, when I met a fellow I had seen earlier in the day and had helped direct to a camp-site. Dave and I had a beer together and compared notes. He had a Yorkshire accent and from his clothes and his general attitude, I guessed correctly that he had been in the Armed Services. Thinking of Richard B, I assumed that it was this that had led him to be walking the lonely paths of Britain in a highly disciplined manner. He told me that he had been walking with his daughter and her boyfriend, but they had given up, finding the going too tough. We chatted for a while and gradually some of his story filtered out. It turned out he was divorced and unemployed. We talked about how difficult the economic circumstances were, especially for someone such as him, with no skills or qualifications other than his army training. I suggested that he should do something to improve his skill base and after some hesitation, he told me that there was no point. He had been “inside” for two years and no-one would ever give him a job again. There was no point in trying.

I asked him what had happened, and after almost telling me, he suddenly clammed up and said that he never liked to talk about it, so I let it be. He did though go on to describe the experience. My good friend Jannie knows far more about this than I do, but I was intensely interested to hear him say just how difficult it had been for him to live through those two years. Basically he had had to fight physically for his survival.

He told me about the court case that led to his incarceration. In his view, the prosecution painted a picture of him that he just didn’t recognise. They ignored everything good that he had done. They made assumptions about his background that were just not true. They convinced the jury that he was a bad person, but he told me that he really believed he was not a bad person. He didn’t deny whatever it was he had done, but he felt they ignored his service to his country, his devotion to his daughter, everything that he was proud of. His defence team were worse than useless. They too hadn’t really listened to him. He was a legal aid case, and they were simply going through the motions to earn their robust rewards. He felt abused by the system which he said was fundamentally flawed.

I reflected afterwards that although I had no knowledge of his crime, or any other information about him, it did seem iniquitous that someone like him, with the tenacity and determination to serve his country in its armed forces, to have and deserve the love of a daughter and, not least, to walk the long distance walks of the country (!) should be unable ever to get a job, or a passport to some other country where he might be employable. The system actively prevents him from finding any way of paying whatever debt he owes to society. And then, of course, he goes on welfare for life, at the expense of the taxpayer, who has already paid for the whole of the court case and his incarceration, and will now have to support him for the rest of his life.

I fully recognise that I should hardly be using a single example, one in which I do not even have all the facts or an unbiased opinion, to condemn the whole system, but for some time I have worried about the legal system. I have read of so many similar experiences in the press. I think we deserve a better legal system, and the first step in that direction should be to break down the cartels of judges, barristers and lawyers who act in the first instance to preserve the status quo. Over the past century or so, many of the great monopolies of interest have been outlawed, especially in the business world. Even the professions are much more open to competition than they used to be, but the legal profession is still virtually a closed shop, hidebound by frankly curious traditions and significant self-interest. I am of course convinced that there are many hugely worthy individuals in the system, working extraordinarily hard and selflessly for the common good, but the system itself needs reform, perhaps as much as any of the other great institutions of state. Is it significant that the current government embarked on a plan to increase competition in the NHS, and hasn’t to my knowledge, even addressed the fundamental issues of the legal system? Many of the legislators are lawyers. They too have an interest.

As with so much else on this journey, it isn’t that I’ve been having many new thoughts about things, it is just that meeting a person like Dave, who tells his story without self-pity but with so little hope, the reality becomes so much more immediate and personal. Seeing the reality, as Jannie constantly tells me, is so much more convincing than reading about it.

Seeing the bleak beauty of the moorland today from the ruin that was the basis of Emily Bronté’s “Wuthering Heights” had a similar effect. Perhaps, though, she could better describe it.

A beautiful interlude on the Rochdale Canal in the Calderdale Valley

Looking down on the town of Hebden Bridge, one of the birth places of the industrial revolution

Yet another dillapidated mill building in Hebden Bridge, just rotting away

This used to be an outdoor long-drop loo!

My eternal spring may be beginning to run out of steam, but some spring flowers are still in evidence

And the lambs are becoming ever more independent, though they still race home to Mum as soon as they sense danger

Sometimes the path narrowed between stone walls through thick vegetation

What is this bird? It has a very distinctive call.

A reservoir in the moors

Yet another windfarm on the horizon

The granite flagged path across the moors

A huge, empty vista

Then suddenly, here is Top Withens, the house on which Emily Bronté based Wuthering Heights

The view from Wuthering Heights