Walking in Edale and on Kinder Scout

This May we celebrated Isabelle’s 60th birthday with a day’s walking in Edale and up on Kinder Scout, in the Derbyshire Peak District. At 636 metres Kinder is the highest point in the Peak District – indeed just about anywhere in England south of Yorkshire – and the nearest place with real hills to Cambridge.

Edale is famous for several reasons. It is the start of the 267-mile Pennine Way – though somewhat confusingly when you leave the village you are offered two versions of the route, up Grindsbrook or Jacob’s Ladder. As Edale can get very busy on a warm spring Saturday, we avoided both, preferring the Crowden Clough footpath which also leads up to the Kinder Scout plateau.

Crowden Clough is usually quiet and so it proved on this occasion – we passed but a handful of people on our way up the valley, and probably saw more dippers and grey wagtails flitting around the waterfalls. Curlews hung on the air as we made our way up towards Crowden Tower and the start of the plateau. As we stopped for lunch, a ring ouzel was singing on one of the rocks across the valley.

Edale and Kinder’s second claim to fame is the mass trespass. On 24th April, 1932 a group of Sheffield ramblers, protesting for the right to roam, set off from Edale for a mass trespass on Kinder Scout, where they successfully met a second group of ramblers who had started from Hayfield on the other side.

Following scuffles with gamekeepers six ramblers were arrested and five were found guilty and given sentences of between 2 and 6 months prison. Their efforts were not in vain when seventeen years later the 1949 National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act led to the establishment of the Peak District National Park, and the first recognition of a right to roam. Ever since the peaty bogs of Kinder have been a prime target for the walkers of Sheffield and Manchester.

At the trial, Benny Rothman spoke memorably: ‘We ramblers, after a hard week’s work in smoky towns and cities, go out rambling for relaxation, a breath of fresh air, a little sunshine. But we find when we go out that the finest rambling country is closed to us, just because certain individuals wish to shoot for about ten days a year.’

Ewan McColl was to succinctly rephrase this in The Manchester Rambler: ‘I may be a wage slave on Monday, but I am a free man on Sunday’. There’s a video of Mike Harding singing the song at the Moorland Centre in Edale, or another good version from Sean Cannon of the Dubliners.

It may have been a Saturday rather than a Sunday, and I haven’t been a wage slave in the strict sense of the word for some years, but we certainly felt like three free men and a free woman as we stood up on Crowden Tower. From here there are several choices – you can turn left along the edge of the plateau towards the Swine’s Back, Kinder Cross and along to Kinder Low or down into Hayfield.

One clear day, armed with a compass, I set out straight ahead across the plateau. After what seemed like endless peat bogs I eventually emerged at Kinder Downfall, little more than a trickle on that summer’s day. I have seen it as a spectacular waterfall after wet weather, with the west wind blowing the water back up onto the moor, or reduced to icicles in a harsh winter.

This time, with a long drive back to Cambridge ahead of us, we turned right along the edge towards Grindslow Knoll. We passed more weathered gritstone outcrops and appreciated the National Trust’s attempts to improve the path as it crosses the degraded peat.

 Edale has long been one of my favourite places in the country, with special connections to my family. My father and grandfather were walking there when my mother went into labour for my birth. We in turn were there on the cold New Year’s Eve when my father died. Growing up in Manchester and Rochdale gave me a love for the gritstone moors, and it’s the place I head to when I need to escape the flatlands – good both for the feet and the soul.

We have walked around Edale in all weathers, but never as fine as this day. The sun was still shining as we headed down the slopes of Grindslow Knoll back towards the village, past the fortunate drinkers in the Rambler Inn who had less far to drive home.

A few years ago I finished writing Hold On during a day’s walk from Kinder. Here it is, with Lester Lloyd-Reason on lead guitar and Amanda Hall on harmony vocals.

For more blogs, and links to my music, go to my website at www.johnmeed.net.

Walking the seven sisters

We walked all day through meadows of silver
Over the cliffs where the white gulls play
And we rolled down the hill to the inn at the end of the day
(You and John Peel)

 When I stayed with my grandparents in Eastbourne in the 1970s, I walked many of the paths across the downs around Alfriston and Wilmington. But for some reason, every time I set off with my grandfather we took the bus into the town centre and changed onto the bus that ran up to Beachy Head.

Heading west we would leave behind the crowds and trace the vertiginous path along the clifftops and down to Birling Gap, where if time was on our side we would scramble down the cliff to the beach while fulmars hung in the air above us. Back on the cliff path the grass glowed silver in the morning light and stonechats stood sentry on the gorse bushes.

I always associated my grandparents with walking. My very first memory is of walking out of Rochdale with my grandmother who had come to care for me while my mother was giving birth to my sister. They had already stayed for my own birth; when my mother went into labour, my grandfather had been walking Kinder Scout with my father, celebrating the mass trespass some 20 years earlier. My early childhood holidays were punctuated by walks across Wilshire downs. And once my grandparents moved from Enfield to Hampshire following my grandfather's retirement, we would walk up to Hambledon to watch cricket on the pitch that had been central to the game's development in the 18th century.

Beyond Birling Gap we would continue up and down the dry valleys that separate the sisters. Michael Dean leads up to Bailey's Hill, and Flathill Bottom up to Flat Hill. On sunny days the views west along the coast were breathtaking. On a foggy day we would stray further inland through the sheep folds, and my grandfather, already into his seventies, would lie on the damp grass and roll under the wire fences.

Beyond Flagstaff Point I invariably began to doubt the number of sisters, and indeed have never quite believed there are just seven of them. And with equal regularity, as the walking rhythm led to gentle conversation, my grandfather (a Telegraph reader, 'for the cricket reports') would ask whether I shared his belief that one day socialism would come.

The sisters end at Cuckmere Haven, and from there we would walk inland to Exceat to meet my grandmother in the pub for lunch before taking another bus back to Eastbourne.

Many years later I wrote ‘You and John Peel’  in recognition of the role that both my grandfather and John Peel played in helping me to survive my teenage years. Once I had completed the song, I realised that it was almost entirely about my grandfather, and was on the point of changing the title. But in one of those strange coincidences that seem to follow my songwriting around, in the afternoon before I planned to play the song in public for the first time I bumped into a friend who told me that John Peel had just died. I could hardly leave him out in such circumstances.

You and John Peel

We walked all day through meadows of silver
Over the cliffs where the white gulls play
And we rolled down the hill to the inn at the end of the day
Long summer days echoed with leather on willow
My childhood days could never end
Through my teenage torments you were still my best friend
You gave me hope
When others were dragging me down
And I was alone – you and John Peel

We talked all day about cricket and politics
You said that socialism would come one day
And I dreamed a world that was fashioned your way
On the old people’s ward you said you would never come home
And honesty ploughed up your honest brow
Half a lifetime on I miss you now
You kept me sane when I was close to the edge
And I was lost – you and John Peel

You never lost your temper or your cool
But I learnt more from you than I learnt at school
And you gave me the shoes for my journey through life
And I never thanked you half enough
Now I spend my days far from meadows of silver
Far from the cliffs where the white gulls mew
Further still from the days I spent with you

www.johnmeed.net

Walking across the Sierra Nevada

We have just got back from a couple of weeks traveling around Andalucia, including a few days in Granada – my favourite city. After visiting the Alhambra we spent an afternoon walking up the valley of the Rio Darro, with views over the Alhambra, out across the Albaicin (the old moorish quarter) and up the valley towards the foothills of the Sierra Nevada.

Many, many years ago my friend Gordon and I walked right across the Sierra Nevada - we took the bus from Granada and spent the first night in a simple refuge just under the summit of Veleta, which along with Mulhacen marks the highest point of the sierra. Even in the height of summer there were still patches of snow.

The following day we bathed under a waterfall of a mountain stream that would later become the Rio Lanjarón. Throughout that day we followed the Rio Lanjarón down the valley – still high enough to cope with the heat of the July sun. We saw no-one else other than a goat herd who waved from the hills on the other side of the valley. That night we slept in the open air of a pine forest, sharing our chocolate with the wood ants.

The following day we realised we had taken the path along the western side of the valley rather than that to the east which would have been more dircet. It meant that, rather than arriving in Lanjarón before the sun became too hot, we had to trek for hours as our water ran out. Fortunately, we made it before sunstroke set in, though the water of Lanjarón tasted sweeter than ever.

Thirty-eight years on I realise that one of the charms of Granada for me is its proximity to the mountains, and the fact that town and countryside merge together. Not to mention, of course, the astonishing moorish architecture:

There is more about our trip to Andalucia on my website at http://www.johnmeed.net/andalucia/

Walking the streets of Paris in the footsteps of Louise Michel

It was just after we joined the Rue des Fossés St Jacques on a cool August evening that we found, painted on the footpath, the words: 'Au Panthéon; Simone de Beauvoir et Louise Michel'.

We had celebrated my birthday in a Greek restaurant just off the Place St Médard, at the southern edge of the 5ème arrondissement. After eating we had climbed the rue Mouffetard towards the Place de la Contrescarpe and the Panthéon, the final resting place of the great men of France. Of the 71 worthy people buried there only one, Marie Curie, was a woman. I could understand the case for de Beauvoir joining her; but Louise Michel was new to me.

I visit Paris regularly but over the years I spend less and less time on the Champs Elysées and the grands boulevards for which Haussemann had in the 19th century demolished large swathes of an older Paris, leading Baudelaire to write in Le Cygne: 'Le vieux Paris nest plus; la forme d'une ville change plus vite, hélas! que le coeur d'un mortel.' (Old Paris is no more; the form of a city changes more quickly, alas! than the human heart.)

I prefer the less ordered older quarters of Paris that escaped Haussemann's  attentions, mainly those clustered around the hills or 'buttes' of the city, including Montmartre. My favourite is that which tumbles down the contrescarpe along the rue Mouffetard. As we walked back down the slope I determined to find out more about Louise Michel.

By the time we set out again the following morning a combination of an iPad and hotel wifi had given me a short introduction to the remarkable life of this anarchist, teacher and poet. Born in 1830 in the Haute-Marne as the illegitimate daughter of the son of the local chateau and one of his servants, Michel trained as a teacher and moved to Paris where she opened a school, wrote poetry, corresponded with Victor Hugo and became active in left-wing republican politics.

We walked along the rue Pascal, following the course of the river Bièvre which used to flow past the Gobelins and the tanneries at the foot of the Rue Mouffetard but is now confined to an underground canal. We were heading in the direction of the Butte aux Cailles in the 13ème arrondissement – in 1871 one of the last strongholds of the Paris Commune.

The Commune was established in Paris (and in many other major French cities) following France's defeat at the end of the war against Prussia. The spark that lit the uprising was the French army's attempt to take back the cannons that had been used to defend the city during the siege of the final months of the war. And it was Louise Michel who had alerted the people of Montmartre to the presence in the city of the French army.

We crossed the Boulevard Auguste Blanqui – named after the revolutionary who had been imprisoned by the French government to prevent him joining the Commune – and ventured up the rue Daviel towards the Butte aux Cailles – in English the 'hill of quails'. This area is another where much of the old housing has survived since before Haussmann, and numerous narrow streets and passages scramble up the hillside, lending the area a village-like feel until a more modern tower block looms up ahead and brings you back to modern Paris.

The Commune survived for two months – time to introduce new ideas and practices far ahead of their time – but eventually the French army began to move into the city, massacring thousands of communards as they went. Louise Michel fought the soldiers in the suburbs and later the city barricades. At her trial Michel denounced her persecutors:

'Puisqu'il semble que tout coeur qui bat pour la liberté n'a droit qu'à un peu de plomb, j'en réclame une part, moi ! Si vous me laissez vivre, je ne cesserai de crier vengeance… Si vous n'êtes pas des lâches, tuez-moi!' (Since it seems that every heart that beats for freedom has the right only to a little lead, I demand my share. If you let me live, I shall never cease to cry for vengeance… If you are not cowards, kill me!)

At the top of the butte we found the place de la Commune de Paris and drank tea in the cooperative café Le temps des cerises, named after a song by Jean-Baptiste Clement which the author later dedicated to a nurse who had been with him on one of the final barricades:


Mais il est bien court, le temps des cerises,
Où l'on s'en va deux cueillir en rêvant
Des pendants d'oreilles.
Cerises d'amour aux robes pareilles
Tombant sous la feuille en gouttes de sang.
(But it is too short, the time of the cherries
When together we gather them while dreaming of earrings
Cherries of love dressed in red robes
Dripping from the leaf in drops of blood)

Louise Michel was not granted her wish by the court, but was instead exiled to New Caledonia, where she supported the indigenous people in their fight against French colonialism, and ran a school with methods that were a century ahead of their time. It was there that she concluded: 'C'est que le pouvoir est maudit, et c'est pour cela que je suis anarchiste.' (Power is cursed, and that is why I am an anarchist.)

She was eventually freed and returned to Paris in November 1880, to be welcomed by an immense crowd. She continued her fight for social justice and remained a thorn in the side of the government, spending several stretches in prison. She wrote extensively – poems, pamphlets, an autobiography and a personal history of the Commune. When she died in 1905 some 100,000 people followed her cortège through the streets of Paris.

We continued to wander around the Butte aux Cailles, lingering in particular in the passage Boitton with a Parisiénne who spends her spare time exploring and photographing the backstreets of her beloved city. She told us where we could find the graffiti below.


There is talk that François Hollande may decide to include another woman in the Panthéon, and Michel would seem an ideal candidate – along with Simone de Beauvoir and Olympe de Gouges, who published a Declaration of the rights of women during the revolution of 1789. In the meantime, she retains an alternative commemoration beyond the gift of any of today's politicians – Victor Hugo dedicated his poem Viro major to her:

Et ceux qui, comme moi, te savent incapable
De tout ce qui n’est pas héroïsme et vertu,
Qui savent que, si l’on te disait: « D’où viens-tu ? »
Tu répondrais: « Je viens de la nuit d’où l’on souffre. »
(And those who, like me, know you to be incapable
Of all that is not heroism and virtue,
Who know that, if you were asked, 'Where do you come from?”
You would answer: “I come from the night where there is suffering.')

We walked back along the Avenue des Gobelins and that evening ate in Les Bugnes, a Basque restaurant just off the rue Mouffetard.

I write blogs about music and other topics at my website, www.johnmeed.net. 

Walking near Rutland

Cambridgeshire has long declared war on grass. The fens to the north of the city and the low chalk hills to the south have all been put to the plough, and at this time of year provide a monotonous vista – black to the north and brown to the south.

To find the pleasing green of meadows and pastures you have to head west, and so on the last day of September we set off for the Rutland/Leicestershire border and Tilton on the Hill – a typical village of the area with quiet streets of warm stone, perched on top of a 200-metre high ridge.

We tumbled down the hillside in the direction of Lowesby, disturbing the tranquility of flocks of sheep and flights of sparrows.

After a while we crossed one of Beeching's disused railway lines – though remarkably the isolated Lowesby station is still intact and lovingly cared for. It put me in mind of Michael Flanders' 'The Slow Train' – ironically just a day after I had learnt that his daughter Stephanie, purveyor of the rampant market economics that had cost us our rural railways all those years ago, had left the BBC to join J P Morgan.

As the sun burst through we picnicked overlooking Lowesby church, surrounded by munching cattle and watched by wheeling buzzard, red kite and kestrel. A passing walker told us of the 100 bus which still runs from Leicester to Melton Mowbray through these villages, somehow surviving Osborne's cuts, and allowing fellow walkers to leave their cars at home.

Moving on from Lowesby we wandered through more fields of rich green to Hamner's Lodge Farm, another survivor from a lost age when farmyards were less tidy, more ramshackle and full of animals. A largely unconcerned 'guard' dog looked vaguely in our direction, leaving it to the cattle to warn disgruntledly of our passing.

From the farm we continued to climb back up the escarpment amidst clouds of linnet and charms of goldfinches. We stopped again for a while to soak in the views west to Charnwood and far beyond towards the Peaks before turning back into the easterly wind towards Tilton and thence home.

I write blogs about music and other topics at my website, www.johnmeed.net.