AND ANOTHER THING

Remember, there's no short cuts on t'fells

PAUL JOHNSON

It is exactly 50 years since I first visited the Lake District and discovered the delights of walking on the high hills. We lived in north-east Staffordshire, on the Derbyshire borders, and tramped a lot on the moors. But hills of over 3,000 feet real mountains! — were quite new to me. I shall never forget the excitement of first seeing the great range, spread out in the early summer sunshine, in subtle shades of azure, sapphire, lapis lazuli and indigo, from the platform of Oxenholme Junction, where we changed from the main line. We travelled in the maroon livery of the old LMS, 'our' railway. People had much stronger loyalties then; we thought the LMS the world's best, exactly right, as opposed to the LNER, regarded as com- mon, or the GWR, smug and stuck-up, or the Southern, just plain boring. Our buses were brown but the rattletrap which took us from Windermere slowly up Langdale was painted yellow, in itself a fascinating novelty, though less so than the grim precipices which soon crowded around us. We walked the last half-mile to the little cluster of whitewashed buildings right at the head of the dale, the farm where we stayed.

For six shillings each a day, my sister and I had full board at this ancient, stone- flagged, fortress-walled, primitive but spot- lessly clean homestead. Though it was wartime, we tucked into huge plates of bacon and eggs at breakfast, and roasts of beef and mutton in the evenings; and to take with us on our walks we had delicious sandwiches, lovingly wrapped in neat pack- ets of greaseproof paper. To drink we had a choice between Tizer and Dandelion and Burdock, both much esteemed in the North. These were the only items in our diet not produced on the farm, which abounded in fresh cream, salted butter, crusty bread, blackberry pies, and Eccles and Goosnagh cakes.

Being a 13-year-old, I had a narrow little bed in a room I shared with Jack, described by the farmer's wife as 'a serious walking

gentleman'. I owe him a great deal because he taught me how to love the fells and

respect them by learning their lore and dangers. He took me up Dungeon Ghyll and Pavey Ark, the immense cliff above Langdale, showing me how to scramble safely. Together we saw the Lord's Rake on Scafell, and the famous Nape's Needle on Great Gable. At night and early in the morning, for the sun woke us at six, he regaled me with irresistible horror-stories of his rope-climbing days: how Herbert Arkwright had been 'near killed' on Mid- dlefell Buttress, and how they'd brought down the body of poor Stanley Hardcastle, lost on Crickle Crags, by taking the door off a barn and using it as a stretcher. His lugubrious northern nature abounded in gloomy advice. `Ne'r stick thy foot on Gim- mer Crag, lad, and if tha must, avoid Amen Corner, I beg thee.' Take no notice of Hell's Ghyll, there's nowt in there but trou- ble.' Watch out for t'screes on backside of Bow Fell, lads 'ave vanished there without trayce.' He told me a gruesome tale of how a young man and girl, 'being shameless like', bathed naked in Angle Tarn, and had been sucked down into its icy depths by an outraged deity. Jack liked a good shudder, and would then compose himself for sleep by reading a chapter of the Bible.

The simplicity of those days seems far away now. The work on the farm was back- breaking and endless, and none toiled harder than Mary, the kindly, red-cheeked daughter of the house, in her starched white apron, glittering fresh each morning. She had been looking forward to her annu- al treat, a dance at Chapel Stile, to which she proposed to walk five miles there and five back. But at the last minute a sick cow kept her at home and up most of the night. She was philosophical about it, telling me: `Well, at least they won't find out I can't do slow foxtrot, nor samba neither.' Daughter of a statesman, as Lakeland freehold farm- ers are called, she could doubtless expect to make a suitable union, in due course, with a statesman's son, when he came back from soldiering. But there was not much romance in her life, punctuated by the changing but always harsh rhythms of the year. She had once been out 15 hours, she

`We've replaced the forks with these.'

said, rescuing sheep from drifts in a heavy January snowfall.

Wordsworth had been dead 90 years then, but the dales had probably changed less from his time than they have since.

There was a taxi in Ambleside but few cars in Langdale and less petrol. The old walked, the young biked. Some remem- bered the coaches, and having to get out, to spare the horses, going up Dunmail Raise or Honister Pass. Unlike the commercial crossbreeds of today, which can't be left untended on the fells, all the sheep were the old Herdwick line, bravest and cleverest of their species, and sweetest to eat though small and yielding little wool. There were still old-style shepherds. On High White Stones, back of beyond behind the Lang- dale Pikes, I met one with an impressive white beard, who said he was 80; he had his great-grandson with him. At Sawrey, in the next dale, Beatrix Potter was alive and president of the Herdwick Association. All kinds of old trades carried on. Gnarled men built dry-stone walls for ten shillings per seven yards. In the Furness Woods, there were charcoal-burners, leading a primitive, nomadic life in makeshift huts.

Savage-looking creatures worked little cop- per mines near Coniston. You could watch the slaters, squatting on the ground, their trousers tied with cord just below the knee, splitting the slates with astounding speed and accuracy. There were many more locals than `offcomes' in those days. You might see one or two climbers on top of Scafell or Gable, but otherwise the hills were as empty as when Coleridge risked his neck scrambling into Borrowdale.

Coleridge picked his own reckless route, straight down the rocks, and left a hair-rais- ing account of it. Jack took a censorious view of such southern folly: 'There's not much sense below the Trent,' as he put it. He warned me: 'Always take map and com- pass, torch and whistle, and an extra jumper.' He taught me how to distinguish

between a genuine path and a meandering sheep-trail, and added: 'Thou must stick to the path. Remember, on t'fells there's no such thing as a short cut.' True, and in a much wider sense, too. Looking back on

the past half-century, it strikes me that we

would have been spared much misery if ideologues, millenarians and eraltes of all

political persuasions had not forced humanity to learn the hard way that there are no short cuts to anything.