Lancashire Witches 51-mile trail
The witch trials of 1612 are brought to life on a 51-mile trail marked by verses by Carol Ann Duffy.
THE AUTHOR AND editor of dozens of books of poetry, and former Poet Laureate, Carol Ann Duffy is perhaps most famous for her collection The World’s Wife – a series of poems from the point of view of the wives of historical figures from Shakespeare to King Kong. She is funny, insightful and wry in her depictions of these voiceless foils, and often scaffolds, for famous men (Mrs Icarus memorably recalls her husband as a ‘total, utter, absolute, Grade A pillock’). But there have never been more voiceless unfortunates than the women who fell victim to the Satanic panic that gripped England in 1612, and it’s Duffy’s righting of that wrong we’re celebrating here, one which takes a very concrete form in the landscape today.
Then 400 years after a trial that saw 10 women from around Pendle Hill hanged as witches, a 51mile trial was created and marked by 10 cast iron posts bearing the verses of a new poem by Duffy – The Lancashire Witches – commemorating their downfall. It’s a sorry tale set in stirring country, which began when a pedlar named John Law came across a poor young woman called Alizon Device in a field in the shadow of Pendle Hill. She begged him for a few pins, and when he refused, he was struck by a strange palsy that left “his head drawn awry, his eyes and face deformed, his speech not well to be understood”. It was probably a stroke. But the subsequent investigation would – in the minds of the accusers – root out a whole network of evildoers who subsisted on the skirts of Pendle.
Some 400 years later, as you walk this littlechanged, still stark peak in isolation, or trace the 51-mile journey of the witches to the gibbet on Gallows Hill in Lancaster, Duffy’s verses mark out a solemn beat. They conjure the dread mood of the episode splendidly (‘Huge crowd, rough rope, short drop, no grave’). Read in stanzas along the course of the route, each post also bears the name of one of the victims. Not the monikers by which it was convenient to know them – like ‘Old Chattox’ and ‘Demdike’ (demon woman) – but their real names – Anne Whittle, Elizabeth Southern – in a touching reminder of the humans beyond the hysteria.
▶ The Lancashire Witches Walk Guide by Ian Thornton-Bryar (Postmark Books) is available from £4.50 on Amazon and other bookseller sites.
Waterland by Graham Swift
If ever a landscape needed a story to render it more interesting, you’d imagine the Fenland of eastern England was it. Actually this pancake-flat, big-skied yonder does get under your skin after a time, leaving other places feeling oddly confining. But that can take years. If you want to do it in a weekend, read Waterland, the extraordinary novel of the Fens which restores all the dimensions they seem to lack. In a gripping story of family secrets, flat-bottomed boats and baby-snatching you’ll discover a fascination you never suspected in the flattest of lands and the most unpromising of subjects. Like how 1500 square miles of marshy badlands were drained beginning in the 17th century; how the ‘plumbers of the land’ waged constant give-and-take war with the flood, and why eels migrate 3000 miles from the fens each autumn to the Sargasso Sea. Perhaps most of all though you’ll feel a strange desire to walk a long straight dyke thinking deep thoughts under a giant sky. That’s an urge perhaps best explored on the Fen Rivers Way – a 50-mile flirtation of featurelessness running from Cambridge to Kings Lynn. Following the course of the Cam and the Ouse and punctuated by five railway stations allowing for easy day walks, it’s an excellent induction into Waterland world, to which you might not be nearly so allergic as you think.
Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome
To a walker, the Swallows and Amazons books are detective stories. Because although they’re clearly set in the Lake District, Ransome chose to hide the true locations behind the names given to them by the titular Swallows (John, Susan, Titty and Roger Walker) and Amazons (Nancy and Peggy Blackett). Using clues and a bit of googling, you can work out where all these places are: the lake is Coniston Water, ‘Kanchenjunga’ is the Old Man of Coniston (below),
Beacon Tarn is Trout Tarn, and (although this one is trickier to pin down) devotees reckon the Tilberthwaite valley might be Swallowdale, the valley which becomes the children’s adoptive home in the book of the same name. This is all because Arthur Ransome loved the Lakes; as a child his family holidayed around Coniston, and this is where he returned to after an astonishing journalistic career which took him to Russia and saw him befriending figures such as Lenin. These are timeless tales of spies, pirates and treasure – but they’re also beautiful depictions of how children see wild places.
WALK HERE: Download Old Man of Coniston at walk1000miles.co.uk/ bonusroutes