In this edition of our regular dip into the Rucksack Club archives, we go back to the 1916 Journal. There are a number of interesting articles, and I have chosen two which are well worth a read.
The first is “In and About the Pennines” by R. B. Brierley. This is a long and, in places, somewhat rambling article but is remarkable for a couple of reasons:
- That the author had talked in his younger days to a man who had been a drummer at the battle of Waterloo.
- That this conversation about the Scottish drovers bringing sheep down the Pennines to sell in the Midlands was the inspiration for the Rucksack Club to plan a “ten days’ walk from Kirknewton to Castleton”.
The route of this walk is virtually identical to the route of the Pennine Way (Kirknewton being a village a short distance along the river from Kirk Yetholm) and predates Tom Stephenson’s newspaper article proposing the Pennine Way by 20 years (and the opening of the route by some 50 years!).
The second article “Cave Crack, Laddow” by J Rooke Corbett illustrates the point that fake photos are nothing new and that your bluff may be called! It also illustrates how far we have come from those days where the phrase “an easy day for a lady” could be used as a climbing grade. The world has changed in may ways and some are definitely for the better!