posted 13 July 2005 20:44               

Taken from the authors personal notes:
'Well, I'm glad it's finished, I must say. I mean the walking, not the making of the book, which has been very enjoyable. No I mean the walking, the floundering in glutinous peat bogs, the stumbling in soggy heather, the squelching in muddy fields. Surely I must have been unlucky about the rain! I spent 18 months on the pennine way, walking it in bits and pieces. Mostly it rained - pouring rain, rain that came down like stair rods. I came to pray not for fine days, which seemed to much to ask, but for gentle and not too wetting rain.'

That was one of my favourite parts. I am hoping to follow Wainwrights, my fathers and many other peoples footsteps in doing the pennine way with some friends. Reading Wainwrights guide has made me want to do it even more both for my own personal pleasure and also to pay respect to my dad who first got me into hill-walking.

posted 16 July 2005 16:36               

AW's advice about the final section from Bryness to Kirk Yetholm.

"If castration was the penalty I wonder how many would offend!"

AW speaking out about football hooligans in Fell Wanderer.

"they should be put in three foot square cages and made to repent for their sins"

AW on battery farmers.

posted 17 July 2005 10:37               

"We have gone soft...The only deterrent for violence is physical pain...National Service should be brought back for the layabouts who cause trouble and have never been subject to iron discipline. We let vicious criminals live in furnished cells and be waited on by public servants, the cost being paid by the society they have wilfully injured. Off with their heads!"