Kinder Scout is a mountainous plateau in the dark peaks of Derbyshire – a landscape populated with eerie wind sculpted boulders – some like the petrified forms of giants, others massive and layered, a city of the dead, a prehistoric world that must have perplexed and astonished generations.
Climb Kinder Scout and you are often in the clouds, as we were, in July 2023, a summer of rain. But when the clouds cleared the views were dizzying, to see so far, and so much, further peaks, pale and distant, the valley, villages, rivers, roads, a railway. The boulders on Kinder Scout take on many forms, of huge fists, monstrous mushrooms, lost peoples, alien civilisations. I hadn’t expected this, the weirdness of it, the wonder. Below us waterfalls cascaded into the valley and the world rolled away, it was breathtaking, magnificent and life enhancing. And it was not a straightforward climb, at least not from our starting point, Edale. It was a scramble up a steep ravine, or clough, of large boulders, this one called Grindstone. This meant taking extreme care, stepping from rock to rock, it would have been easy to lose concentration and slip. It’s not dangerous, but it’s not easy. But it is demanding, and it takes effort. To climb Kinder Scout up Grindstone Clough requires a certain level of fitness and persistence. You have to want to get to the top. Poor Cathy, my partner, half way up a well-meaning bloke behind us pointed out her boot was split, the heel detached. Cathy was, rightly, annoyed. What was the point, she said, in him telling me? It was worse, both boots had gone, both heels detached. But we had to press on, and we did, to the top, and the boots held. But later, they were given a funeral, fifteen years she’d had those boots, but Kinder Scout got the better of them.
Kinder Scout was the planned objective of the mass trespass of 1932, led by Benny Rothman, then just 20, a member of the Young Communist League, when groups of walkers gathered to protest against the landowners who, in 1877, had begun to close off the area, possibly to protect their grouse shooting an activity that took up, at most about two weeks of every year. In 1894 a railway station opened at Edale, giving Mancunians greater access to Kinder Scout. But in the 1920s more and more parts of Kinder Scout became closed off. The area had long been open to the public, most walkers were workers from Manchester who had, until then, enjoyed the free access, which now was being denied. Ewan McColl, folk singer, then 17 and plain Jimmie Miller, took part in the trespass, which probably never actually made it to Kinder Scout – they were waylaid by gamekeepers with dogs and eventually six of the young rambler were arrested and five imprisoned, the harshest sentence of 6 months.
The Manchester Guardian covered the trial, and this led to growing hostility towards the landowners. Eventually in 1949, the creation of National Parks – ten to begin with, but since then another five have been created. Although Kinder Scout is a symbol of the right to roam, the work of changing the law is probably more the result of the work of other groups – most significantly the Ramblers’ Association. The Sheffield Clarion Ramblers had made an earlier trespass, but this didn’t get the publicity – many rambling groups opposed the mass trespass of Kinder Scout, believing quieter methods would achieve access. Kinder Scout has become a symbol of the right to roam, but it was not a single blow dealt by the working class on landowners. It was not until 1958 that Kinder Scout became open to the public, and not until 2000, 68 years after the mass trespass, that the Crow Act – the countryside rights of way act, made provision for public rights of way further access to the countryside. And it should be noted all legislation to greater access to the countryside in England and Wales has come about under Labour Governments.
Even now only 8% of land in England and Wales is open to the public. In Scotland the access is far greater, where nearly all land is accessible to the public. Similarly people in some of the the Nordic countries, particularly Sweden, have almost complete access to the land – with laws stipulating that a hiker has a right to camp for one or two nights. There is a health crisis in the UK, with treatment for diabetes type 2, for example, being a huge drain on the NHS. And yet there is some evidence to show that exercise, and particularly walking, can lower the risk. So it’s not a huge leap to imagine that granting more open access to land could not only reduce the strain on the NHS, but save lives.
(this is a transcription of an episode of my podcast ‘These Weird Isles’ – available via Spotify, Soundcloud, Amazon, Apple etc.)