White horses over the Pennines
A quest for Britain’s lost high way
By Robin Harbury-Tenison
Originally published in the Sunday Express July 17th, 1994
And republished on Equine Ramblers UK website by kind permission of Robin Harbury-Tenison
In the Middle Ages it was a busy road. Now it has disappeared. Two riders take to the hills on a quest for a new Pennine bridleway.
The farm track was a recognised bridleway, marked on the Ordinance Survey map. Ahead lay a cattle grid, with a gate beside it for horses to pass through – but not in this instance, because directly in front of the gate was and electric fence. If I touched the fence, it would be painful. But if my horse touched it, it could be disastrous. A panicked horse might well throw me off.
Fortunately, being a farmer myself, I knew what to do. Avoiding touching the live wire – many fences are now run off the mains and may be delivering 6,000 volts – I removed the stake, lay the fence flat, laid my riding coat across the wire and anxiously led the horses across. Beyond the gate lay a busy main road. If anything had gone wrong, and the horses had bolted, there could well have been a major accident. Our horses are sensible about traffic – others might not have been quite so lucky.
My wife Louella and I have ridden horses all over the world and we are convinced that it is the best way to enjoy and understand the countryside. More and more people are discovering the same truth and there are now 3.5 million riders in Britain; probably as many as there have ever been. Today it is no longer only the rich who can afford to ride. Many people get up early before going to work to look after their horses, then hurry home to ride out and exercise together. The tragedy is that apathy and neglect have allowed most of the avenues for such an environmentally friendly form of recreation to be abandoned and closed.
Our first long-distance ride was in 1984, when we rode our two beautiful white Camargues, Thilbert and Tiki, 1,200 miles across France and back to our farm in Cornwall. We followed well-marked paths stretching from one end of Europe to the other and maintained by local volunteers. Over there, footpaths are bridlepaths and, within reason, horses can go anywhere – unlike here. In1946 an arbitrary distinction was made b
etween footpaths and bridlepaths, and so, because just after the war there were very few horses, there are today very few bridlepaths. The greatest equestrian nation in the world has almost nowhere to exercise its horses.
Soon after our French ride, which was filmed by the BBC, I heard that due to pressure from riders the Countryside Commission was planning the first long-distance bridleway in Britain – a route 300 miles up the Pennines, close to the hugely popular Pennine Way footpath. We wrote and suggested that we should help to promote it by riding our white horses along it. The idea was welcomed, but we were told that it was not quite ready and would we mind waiting a year or so? Instead, we became the first people to be allowed to ride 1,000 miles along the Great Wall of China: we rode the length of New Zealand, and crossed Spain twice on horseback. I wrote books about these rides, and then thought again of riding the Pennines. By now, 10 years had passed – but to our astonishment, we were told that the bridleway was still not open – and would not be ready until the year 2000! It seemed that a handful of people objected to about eight miles out of the 300 proposed on the grounds that they did not want horses riding through their village – and because their votes were important to the local MP, who happened to be the minister responsible at the time, the whole project had been delayed. We decided to go anyway.
Thilbert and Tiki needed to lose some weight, as they are not worked hard on the farm, but we knew that they would welcome taking some proper exercise with us again. Living in Cornwall, the North Country is farther away from us than France and we knew little about it, except that the people were reputed to be friendly. This we found to be true with a vengeance. After two weeks of gargantuan hospitality, and in spite of 13 days in the saddle, during which we rode over 260 of the 300 miles between Derbyshire and the Scottish borders, it is now our turn to go on a diet….
The horses were able to drink from troughs and streams along the way, but they were going to have to last each day without eating between breakfast and supper, so we thought it only fair that we should do the same. After starting the day with a hug cooked breakfast inclu
ding bacon and black sausage, we would often end it by enjoying and enormous supper with a Yorkshire pudding the size of a dinner plate crammed with a T-bone steak as big as a book, all washed down with a lovely pint of smooth Theakston’s bitter.
We began our journey at Cromford, near Matlock, where the High Peak Trail begins. It follows an abandoned railway line, one of the oldest in the country, having been built in 1830 and closed by Dr Beeching in 1967. At first, life was almost too easy as we rode along a level track much used by walkers and cyclists. Later, when we had to negotiate roads and unmarked cross-country routes, it became more taxing.
‘On the edges of Manchester and Sheffield there are more horses even than in Ireland’
The countryside was the greatest eye-opener. It’s not called the industrial north for nothing, and there were huge areas of conurbation from which ugly factory chimneys belched. Relics of great Victorian days, massive engineering feats, viaducts, bridges and buildings made of cut stone and wrought iron towered above us. But in between ran the incredibly beautiful and wild spine of the Pennines, where we could ride across windswept moors past high peaks to look down on the distant houses as though on another world. The names of places we passed through –Mount Famine, Lantern Pike, Crossing o’ th’Dean, Dowgang Hush – only added to the other-worldliness.
All around the edges of the great cities like Sheffield, Manchester Huddersfield and Burnley, urban sprawl has enclosed farmland to leave isolated fields where farming is no longer economic. Here we learned that a greater density of horses is kept than can found even in Ireland. Children with ponies, retired people taking up riding for the first time, working people who are simply enthusiast enough to make the effort to care for a horse – they all want to go out into the lovely country which they can see from their bedroom windows. The trouble is, they usually have to ride along a busy road to get there, even though there is often a quiet, overgrown lane which they could use as a safety valve if it were not obstructed. As a result there are all too many road accidents involving horses – at least 14 a day nationally – which cost the taxpayer a fortune.
On the third day, on a high ridge above Glossop, where neat double rows of stone walls marked the routes of prehistoric trails across wild Saddleworth Moor, little changed by man over the centuries, we looked down on houses which crept right to the edge of the steep ground, and across 
theirs roofs to the smokestacks and high-rise buildings of Manchester in the distance – Gotham City.
We found that a few councils, notably Oldham, had created networks of paths for bicycles and horses, havens of peace among the traffic noise. But far too many had avoided the issue, creating only footpaths, which excluded all other users. Much of the Pennine Bridleway that already exists is badly signposted, and often we found ourselves having to follow a dangerous main road rather than risk an unmarked cross-country route.
If the Government stopped prevaricating, and established a coherent bridleway through one of the most economically deprived parts of the country, people would flock to ride along it. The remote hill farm, now teetering on the verge of abandonment due to the backbreaking grind of trying to make a living on high, poor land, would be able to diversify into stabling and overnight accommodation for riders. Blackshmiths, saddlers and vets would be needed too, and the old packhorse trails, green lanes and drovers’ roads would live again.
These trails were designed to take very heavy horse traffic I the Middle Ages, when much of the land and trade was controlled by the great monasteries. Long lines of fell ponies carrying wool, coal, peat and lime used to snake through hills; vast herds of Scottish cattle and sheep used to be driven to market; and of course, everyone else used to get around on foot or on horseback. Now these trails are in a state of disrepair.
On Blackstone Edge, which Daniel Defoe described in 1774 as “the Andes of England”, we followed the same track where he ran into a snowstorm in August and nearly perished with “a frightful precipice on one hand and uneven ground on the other”. Although the wind was cold, we saw no snow and were comforted by the reassuring beacon of Stoodley Pike ahead – a monument built in 1814 to commemorate Napoleon’s abdication. High up, the scenery was stark and rugged but just below were wooded cloughs, sheltered and tranquil.
‘These paths took heavy traffic in the Middle Ages, when everyone travelled by horse’
We were charmed by both the beauty of it all and by the friendliness of the people we met. In June there were fields of buttercups, daises and lady’s-smock, great swathes of yellow broom and gorse. Higher up, the heather was turning purple between the beautiful long stonewalls which divide up the landscape so pleasingly. In the Peak District National Park some of these ancient walls were being patiently restored, giving new life to old abandoned lanes. Once, we rode for an hour along an old mine track lined on both sides with a dense blue carpet of violets. Most farmers we spoke to welcomed the ideas of more riders and saw the benefits, provided more people on their land did not mean dogs disturbing their flocks or gates being left open.
We sp
ent our eighth night in the delightful Sportsman’s Inn in Dentdale, where the River Dee flowed under our bedroom window and the horses grazed contentedly on the far bank. Riding up out of the valley towards Dent Fell, we passed under a tall viaduct over which a steam engine billowing smoke puffed far above our heads. A farmer shouted to us: “You’ll never make it up there on a horse!” We asked why. “The tracks been ruined by trail bikes and jeeps,” he said, “I won’t let my daughter ride it now.” We scrambled up all right, although the ancient track had been badly damaged. It was the only time we were warned off, but it was friendly advice.
Louella’s horse Tiki and my mount, Thilbert, responded eagerly to being ridden every day and were quite obviously enjoying themselves. All day they would forge ahead with no urging from us, ears pricked ad they whinnied to other horses in fields we passed and heads held high.
Each night they slept in a different place – sometimes a field that a farmer lent us behind a country pub, sometimes the bare back garden of a simple bed and breakfast, where they munched hay all night.
On the 10th evening, after crossing Melmerby Fell following the Maiden Way – a roman road heading up to Hadrian’s Wall – and not far from Cross Fell, the highest point in the Pennines, we dropped down into the pretty, unspoilt village of Garrigill. Thilbert and Tiki, tired after a long day, grazed on the village green before spending the night cropping the long grass in the unmown front garden of the cottage we were staying.
Every day, even when the cold, wet wind howled around us on bleak uplands and we were in danger from fog and bog, peering at the compass to be sure we were on the right track, we would always be rewarded by tremendous views from the top of the world. There are always tensions when your are on a horse: you can never relax completely, as even the most mild-tempered mounts can suddenly have a fright and leap sideways. But the sheer joy of sitting on an intelligent animal which is as keen to see what lies around the next bend as you are and which is, meanwhile, taking nearly all the effort out of travel, puts you in an almost continuous good mood. Life is so interesting when you are a little higher than the hedges, while birds are less afraid than when you are on foot and often do not bother to take off. We passed close to herons poised above rushy pools; grouse shouted: “Go back! Go back!” but held their ground defiantly; buzzards, curlew, pewits and golden plover wheeled and mewed overhead.
It really is the best way to travel and we would like to see the opportunity given to all to enjoy what we have just enjoyed. The proposed route of the Pennine Bridleway takes it as far north as Corbridge, a few miles from Hexham, which we reached at the end of a 28-mile ride on the 11th evening. But there is a yet more northern trail, which will take you right to the tip of England – a direction we pursued for another two days. After their long trek through Derbyshire, Yorkshire, Cumberland and Northumberland, Tiki and Thilbert were still keen for more.
Our final leg took us along another Roman road through the Cheviot Hills, far north of Hadrian’s Wall – Clennell Street, a stone track over the hills to the Scottish border. There we stopped and gazed into another country. It was somewhere around here that the Roman Ninth Legion vanished without trace and we could well imagine how it could have happened. Glad that the bridleway was well marked here, we turned gratefully for home, mocked by a Scottish grouse reminding us where we belonged.