Trailblazing trespassers
The Kinder Trespass
Kinder Scout is one of the bleakest and boggiest bits of the Dark Peak, a place not short of bogs and bleak bits. Today’s version of the Pennine Way timidly skirts around the edge. But the right to stride through in your mud-stained gaiters owes a huge debt to one of the defining moments in outdoor access.
The mass trespass of 400 people led to fights with gamekeepers and prison sentences of up to six months for several ramblers. It’s been celebrated as a triumph of working-class activism, and it probably contributed to the founding of the first national parks in 1951 and the Pennine Way a few years later.
Fighting for the right (to roam)
In 1887, 400 supporters of the Keswick Footpath Preservation Society tore down barriers around Fawe Park, the haunt of Squirrel Nutkin on the western shore of Derwent Water.
The following year, 2000 trespassers, including Canon Rawnsley (founder of the National Trust) invaded Latrigg. The result was today’s bridleway up Spooneygreen Lane.
Glen Tilt, in the eastern Grampians, runs down to Blair Atholl. In 1847 a party of botanists led by Professor Bayley Balfour faced up to a shooting party, several burly gillies, and an extremely angry 6th Duke of Atholl. A few weeks later, he turned back two students, using “oaths and other violence such as you would scarcely expect to hear from the lips of a gentleman”. The Battle of Glen Tilt happened mostly in the law courts. The Duke lost.