Month: July 2022

Too many ways?

On By SteveIn Walks and walkersLeave a comment
Section of the Portway below Robin Hood’s Stride, aka the Limestone Way

It took 30 years for the first national long-distance trail, the Pennine Way, to be opened. In 1935 an article by Tom Stephenson suggested the creation of the route, inspired by American models such as the Appalachian Trail, but it was not opened until 1965, after years of haggling with landowners such as the water companies. Today its 260-odd miles from Edale to just over the Scottish border are still a formidable challenge, but it has been joined by the development of many more such paths.

The Ecclesbourne Valley Express

The various long-distance paths in Derbyshire have been developed for different reasons. For instance, the relatively new Ecclesbourne Valley Way (11 miles) provides users of the Ecclesbourne Valley Railway with the chance to walk all or part of the route from Duffield to Wirksworth. The Limestone Way (46 miles from Castleton to Rocester) was set up by the local council to promote tourism in the area. The 55-mile Derwent Valley Heritage Way, from Ladybower to the Trent, was created for similar reasons, and to tie in with the World Heritage Site status of the valley. A glance at the Ordnance Survey map will reveal more (green diamonds on the 1:25,000 map), such as the Midshires Way, Peak Pilgrimage or the Cuckoo Way.

On the Portway at Alport Height

Most of the recently created routes link up existing rights of way and waymark the entire track. As such they provide walkers with an alternative to circular walks, although clearly sections can be followed separately. However, only the Derbyshire Portway (55 miles from Sneinton, Nottingham to the Snake Pass) can claim to follow the approximate route of an ancient trackway. The problem with some of these recent routes is a lack of maintenance. It is surprising how quickly signposts disappear, waymarks are hidden by foliage, and even field boundaries are removed. Attempting to walk the Midshires Way recently we found that in the centre of one large field near Palerow Lane the route makes a 90 degree turn, which we missed as there was no marking at all, yet I imagine that few walkers want to be glued to a walking app. Providing proper waymarking, stiles and undergrowth clearance on these routes would be a trivial expense, and would certainly encourage more people to take to the hills.

Riding with Cobbett – 2

On By SteveIn People, Road users1 Comment
Statue of Cobbett at Farnham

In the early modern period, gentlemen – and the more daring ladies – preferred to travel on horseback. William Cobbett, touring England in 1822 for his masterpiece ‘Rural Rides’, explains this preference:

My object was … to see the country… and to do this you must either go on foot or on horseback. With a gig you cannot get about amongst bye-lanes and across fields, through bridle-ways and hunting-gates …

From his saddle Cobbett meets a rich variety of fellow travellers, who he reacts to with typical vigour:

On the road-side we saw two lazy-looking fellow, in long greatcoats and bundles in their hands, going into a cottage. ‘What do you deal in?’ said I to one of them, who had not yet entered the house. ‘In the medical way,’ said he. And, I find that vagabonds of this description are seen all over the country …

Near Uxbridge he mentions his amusement at seeing ‘in all various modes of conveyance, the cockneys going to Ealing Fair’, which sounds like a print by Hogarth come to life. Cobbett strongly sympathises with the situation of the rural labourers, as when he crosses the River Wey:

Here we found a parcel of labourers at parish work. Amongst them was an old play-mate of mine. The account they gave of their situation was very dismal. The harvest was over early … now they are employed by the parish … to break stones into very small pieces to make nice smooth roads lest the jolting, in going along them, should create bile in the stomach of the overfed tax-eaters.

Late nineteenth-century gypsy encampment

Cobbett is more positive when he meets a group of gypsies, whom he finds physically impressive:

At Cheriton I found a grand camp of gipsys, just upon to move to Alresford. I had met some of the scouts first, and afterwards the advanced guard, and here the main body was getting in motion. One of the scouts that I met was a young woman, who, I am sure, was six feet high …. The tall girl that I met at Titchbourn, who had a huckster basket on her arm, had most beautiful features. I pulled up my horse, and said, ‘Can you tell me my fortune, my dear?’

Still open for business – the Holly Bush at Headley today

One of Cobbett’s best qualities is the ability to laugh at himself. On one day’s ride he got thoroughly lost, as he refused to use the turnpike road, and spent hours being misled on bridle-ways by a guide, all in the pouring rain. He writes:

At the Holly Bush at Headley there was a room full of fellows in white smock frocks, drinking and smoking and talking, and I, who was then dry and warm, moralised within myself on their folly in spending their time in such a way. But when I got down from Hindhead to the public house at Road Lane, with my skin soaking and my teeth chattering, I thought just such another group, whom I saw through the window sitting round a good fire with pipes in their mouths, the wisest assembly I had ever set my eyes on.

The mystery of the milestone

On By SteveIn Places, Roadside featuresLeave a comment

Milestone near Tissington

Walking near Tissington the other day I stopped for a drink of water, and propped my walking pole on what I took for an old gatepost, embedded in the rather ragged hedge. Then I realised it wasn’t a gatepost, but was inscribed on the side facing the lane. The inscription was finely carved, in serif lettering, but was difficult to read, being partly covered in moss. I finally decided it reads, in part:

From

London

(illegible)

Miles

(Illegible)

Guide stoop above Winster

Clearly this was not a guide stoop, which, as the example above shows, were inscribed on all four sides with the distance to the nearest market towns. The Tissington stone seems to only show the distance to London – not the most useful information for the traveller here. Moreover, it is located on a lane running east to the ford and nearby Bradbourne Mill, which seems an unlikely route to London: the obvious way to the capital was via Ashbourne and Derby.

Distance marker, corner of town hall, Wirksworth

Another, much later example of a marker showing the distance from London is found in Wirksworth, by the town hall. This version also gives the mileage to key towns on local turnpike routes. Again few travellers would have needed to know how far they were from London, but the marker does link the local community to the prestige and glamour of the capital. Could this be the motive for the Tissington stone – to associate this remote village with the majesty of London?

Any better ideas welcome!

Riding with Cobbett -1

On By SteveIn PeopleLeave a comment
William Cobbett

William Cobbett (1762-1835) was a radical farmer, journalist and campaigner who travelled extensively in England in the 1820s and 1830s, inspecting the state of farming and farm workers. His reports, collected as Rural Rides, also give us a picture of life on the roads in those decades before the railways radically changed patterns of travel. Cobbett went mainly on horseback, but also sometimes by post chaise, which was a light, four-wheel vehicle which usually only had seats for two.

A type of post chaise – in some cases the driver sat on the chaise

Even a relatively sophisticated vehicle like this was still liable to accidents:

‘This hill is called Burlip Hill, it is as much as a mile down it, and the descent so steep as to require the wheels of the chaise to be locked; and, even with that precaution, I did not think it over and above safe to sit in the chaise … so, I got out and walked down’.

Like many other travellers Cobbett frequently complained about the price of refreshments at the inns:

‘Four shillings for teas,’ and ‘eighteen pence for cold meat,’ ‘two shillings of moulds and fire,’ in this common coach-room, and ‘five shillings for beds!’

In preference to lunching at inns he recommends a diet of apples and nuts, which seems strikingly modern.

Haymakers and reapers – George Stubbs

We often forget that there were many travellers on foot in early modern England, including, Cobbett reminds us, the ‘perambulating labourers’ who moved around the country with the various harvests, especially hay and wheat:

We saw, all the way down, squads of labourers, of different departments, migrating from tract to tract; leaving the cleared fields behind them … and then, as to the classes of labourers, the mowers, with their scythes on their shoulders, were in front, going on to the standing crops, while the hay-makers were coming on behind towards the grass already cut or cutting. The mowers are all English, the hay-makers all Irish’.