Walking the Peak And Pennines by Mike Harding lands on the shelves of my shop.
Book Club Associates, 1992, Hardback in dust wrapper.
Jacket illustration: Pat Harding on an outcrop of The Roaches. Illustrated by way of: Colour Photographs; Maps; Illustrated endpapers and blanks;
From the cover: Mike Hardings latest book mixes long walks and meanders, folklore and history, gossip and conjecture along with superb colour photography to provide, in his inimitable style, an exhilarating guide to the hills, moors and valleys of that rib-cage and spine of white and dark rocks they call the Pennines.
Mike Harding has always loved walking, and has roved the land of the Peak and Pennines since he was a child. He is particularly intrigued by the multi-layered nature of the land, and by the language, place names, maps and books that provide clues to the scratches and scribbles of history: This is the way I view a landscape, as a palimpset of meanings and people, map upon map, shadow upon shadow.
The book covers an area that runs from Dovedale in the south of the Peak District National Park, over the bleak and lonely Dark Peak to the smouldering industrial valleys between Oldham and Huddersfield, then north through Todmorden, the Brontes Haworth and finally to Pendle Hill. Throughout his journey, Mike is conscious of the people who helped to mould this landscape: the summits under which the bones of Norsemen and Celts are buried, and the moors and hills where the mill poets roamed after a weeks work at the loom. This is not a country-comfortable landscape, but it has a nature all of its own.
Walking the Peak and Pennines is a book to use as a starting-point, to enjoy and discover places that are perhaps not yet over-run and where one can still walk quietly in rare solitude.
Very Good in Very Good Dust Wrapper.
Green boards with Gilt titling to the Spine. [VIII] 247 pages. Index. 7¾” x 10″.
Of course, if you don’t like this one there are plenty more available here!
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