The Pennine Way - the Path, the People, the Journey. Andrew McCloy

of the hills I could see.’

      Despite the long working hours, Tom regularly walked four miles to Clitheroe library to continue his reading; then, after scraping together 30 shillings, he bought an old bike so he could complete a 16-mile round cycle ride to Burnley for night classes. Eventually, after much hard studying, he won one of only two scholarship places to study geology at the Royal College of Science (now Imperial College) in London. What seemed a promising future was scuppered by the intervention of World War I. Tom, already an activist in the growing Labour movement, declared himself a pacifist and was initially given an exemption; but later he was arrested, court-martialled and sentenced to 12 months’ hard labour at Wormwood Scrubs, followed by a further term at Northallerton jail.

      Upon release, he continued his political activity, any chance of resuming his studies now gone. Initially he returned to printing, but before long began to develop a successful career in journalism, writing about walking and the countryside and repeatedly pressing the case for greater access to the Pennine hills. By the early 1930s, he was reaching a national audience, first as editor of the TUC-controlled Hiker and Camper magazine, then via his regular contributions to the widely read Daily Herald newspaper. The editor gave him more or less free rein to press the ramblers’ cause, and this was the platform that allowed him to conjure up the idea of a long green trail.

      Many years later, when the Pennine Way was officially opened, Tom was quoted as saying that, when he wrote the famous 1935 article, he never imagined the Pennine Way would ever be realised and that he was taken aback at the public’s enthusiastic response. Perhaps he was being typically modest, but immediately following publication of the article, he and fellow access campaigner Edwin Royce were persuaded to persevere with the idea by T (Thomas) Arthur Leonard, another of the great campaigners of the time, who among other things co-founded the Co-operative Holidays Association.

      So, three years after the article appeared, in February 1938, a Pennine Way Conference was held at Hope, in the Peak District, in a guest house run by the Workers Travel Association. The aims were to consider the proposal in more detail with like-minded people and to decide what to do next. Among the invitees were ramblers’ federations, YHA groups and footpath preservation societies. Both the invitation and the full minutes are reproduced in Chris Sainty’s 2014 guidebook The Pennine Way and are available to view in the Ramblers’ Association records held at the London Metropolitan Archives. They make fascinating reading.