Walking the Pennine Way put everything into perspective for me, including my right to be here
Dear Pennine Way: I'd like to wish you a happy 60th birthday. Many thousands have trodden along you, and so have I. You've brought us blisters but also beautiful views, buoyed spirits and a renewed sense of belonging.
I got the idea to walk the Pennine Way – which on 24 April turns 60 – after being racially abused on a TransPennine train journey. A man asked me if I had a British passport, threatened to set me on fire and told me to go back to where I'm from. The latter hit a nerve: I am from the North of England and proud of it. One day I was looking at a map of that journey and saw the Pennine mountains rising up. I zoomed closer and saw a place called Hope, and I determined that I'd walk through the glorious place I'm from and try to channel hope throughout.
Walking was transformative to my physical and mental health. I'd been suffering from anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder – racism and inequality affect mental health. Walking was ameliorative as I focused my attention on the wonders of wildlife, burned away stress by the River Ribble and felt my heart beat louder as I hiked on up through the Yorkshire Dales, stopping to marvel at the view from Pen-y-ghent as the clouds began to clear.
I walked along the 'backbone' of the country – as the Pennines are known due to their astonishing limestone cliff formations – as a way of showing backbone myself: I won't let racial abuse stop me adventuring in a country where I belong.
My journey was inspired by the Manchester Ramblers from my home town, who walked against exclusion in the Kinder Scout mass trespass – which celebrates its 93rd anniversary also on 24 April. Their walk helped improve access to the countryside, paving the way for the formation of the Peak District (the country's first national park), the Pennine Way, and the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000.
The Manchester Ramblers – immortalised in Ewan MacColl's song – showed that they could help walk the world to a better future. It's important to ensure that their hard-won freedoms aren't eroded: England's national parks are imperilled due to budget cuts. It's vital we speak up for their existence, for their belonging here.
There were moments when I thought I couldn't go on – not least after almost toppling off Malham Cove – but what fuelled my footsteps, alongside the extraordinary landscape, was a burning sense of defiance. In Settle in the Yorkshire Dales, I saw a plaque commemorating the journey of Alfred Wainwright, who walked the Way in 1938 and wrote A Pennine Journey, published in 1986. Reading it was enraging on account of the misogynistic stereotypes – Wainwright writes about 'the wild joys of boyhood' and comments: 'I've wondered many a time: have the ladies the same capacity for enthusiasm? … I have not yet witnessed genuine enthusiasm in one of them; often I have seen a pretence of it, but the divine spark was missing.' I may be missing the 'divine spark', but my enthusiasm powered me on over mountains, valleys and considerable obstacles, all the way to the sadly now felled Sycamore Gap tree at Hadrian's Wall.
Toxic prejudices still persist about who belongs here and who is capable. My book, titled I Belong Here, is a chronicle of my Pennine journey and also a clarion call for rightful belonging in the face of hostile and persistent exclusion of minorities from societal power structures, and media, and publishing and literary landscapes. Ironically one agent advised me to take out the word 'Pennines', because 'the book won't sell as no one cares about the north'. I was also told that someone like me couldn't be a travel and nature writer – the subtext being that I was not white and/or male so I did not fit with the 'lone enraptured male' profile prevalent in this genre (Wainwright might be turning in his grave to know I was shortlisted for a nature-writing prize named after him. My PE teacher would be surprised too.
As we celebrate this great walking path, it's worth remembering how far there still is to go for all to be safe and free and welcome while walking through the world. In England, 92% of the land is not covered by the right to roam, contrasting with Scotland, where the public has access to walk through most of it as long as they do so responsibly. England's land is still entrenched in centuries-old feudal inequality. And as women walking, we face greater levels of harassment outdoors, the vulnerabilities heightened for a woman of colour with risk of racist harassment.
Long-distance hiking is a lesson in stoicism in the face of obstacles. It's an apt metaphor for the journey through life – little wonder that the walk has been a literary trope for centuries. But rather than approaching the Way as a competitive sport, I did it my way, as it were; I didn't care about finishing fastest but wanted to savour each step instead.
So happy birthday, dear Pennine Way. Five years on from my epic journey, I'm trying to keep walking a hopeful path. I hope if anyone who's reading this today (or in 60 years), feels stuck or lost in life, or crushed by discrimination, that you don't give up, that you keep on going; that you believe you belong here, because you do. I hope you'll keep going for the view along the way as well as from the top of the mountain.
Anita Sethi is the author of I Belong Here: A Journey Along the Backbone of Britain and is featured in the new exhibition A Trail of Inspiration: the Pennine Way at 60
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