On Ode to Kinder Scout

An Ode to Kinder
(First published in The Great Outdoors Magazine, August 2005.)

Of claggy days on Peakland moors,

Of muted hues and looming tors,

Of startled grouse that rise and shriek:

“Go back, go back” on to the Peak.

We are on Kinder Scout today, you and me (although we’ve never met before) and we are running the full circuit of the plateau. We’ve adopted a steady and sustainable pace and our feet are skipping along in early-run ease, dancing over rocks and bogs, over heathery clumps and grassy tussocks. The rhythmic swing of our arms perfectly matches the controlled breaths we are trying to take. I don’t know about you, but I feel alive and full of running. I feel as though I could keep going all day…

We’ve only been under way thirty minutes but already this shared run has become the most important part of our lives as though it and nothing else could ever matter. And we are in the hills after all – what could be better than that? As we run east above Edale I sense us both developing a strong connection with this remarkable mountain, a connection that feels utterly different to the one that develops when walking. But perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised: a run touches different emotions and stirs the senses in different ways, and through that reveals notably different aspects of a place. Today we are paying less attention to long-distance views and instead are staring more intently at the peat and rocks beneath our feet. It’s fascinating how much you can learn about a mountain when you examine it in this focused way. Somehow, by seeing less, by focusing on immediate details, we are absorbing more.

The plateau stretches away to our left, moody under a dark sky and oozing water. Possibly, it would seem foreboding if we hadn’t spent the last fourteen years learning its secrets. At least, that’s how long I’ve been learning them; for all I know you’ve been wandering Kinder longer and know it better but are simply not letting on. For me, this is where it all began; this was my first real taste of wild country. It intimidated me on those early visits, but now I’m as comfortable up here as I’d be in the company of any time-tested friend. I’ve visited Kinder more times now than I can count. I’ve walked, wallowed, run, rested, climbed, jumped, backpacked, sunbathed, slept and even swum up here. And now I’m back once again, sharing it with you…

Our ascent from Edale was a lung-busting, calf-pumping, will-testing haul, but we made it to the tors at Ringer Roger without stopping and now face the pay-off: fifteen view-drenched miles on springy peat with no further sustained climbs. Fell running doesn’t get much better than this: a high-level belvedere route that continues onward for mile after mile after mile.

I love running in the mountains, really love it, although no more (and no less) than I love sauntering along carelessly with hands in pockets, or sitting in silent vigil in some wilderness camp, or resting in balance after the crux of some climb. There are as many ways to enjoy mountains as there are mountains themselves, but I do love running in them. It’s like breathing: without it, life wouldn’t be the same.

Today, I’m not running to compete. The time we take is irrelevant. And neither am I running to fulfill the obligation of some fitness regime. No, I’m running because I’m alive, because I have two legs that work, because I can. I’m running for running’s own sake, for the simplicity, freedom and joy of it. I’m running, quite simply, because the world is too full of possibilities to always walk.

I’m also running because travelling without baggage, without even rainwear or water, perfectly reflects the way I now feel about Kinder. I’m at home on this spongy tableland: what do I need extra gear for? You, of course, are being arguably smarter – you’re carrying the minimal survival gear everyone should: map, compass, waterproofs, some emergency rations, a lightweight survival bag. But I’m up here to experience the mountain unchained. Over recent years I’ve backpacked too many miles laden like an ox and this is the antidote. There’s a dash of freedom in it that’s beyond measure.

The path we are following twists through an insects’ forest of heather and starts bearing north. A grouse explodes from our feet, Bleaklow rolls into view directly ahead and the clouds lower a little, blurring the horizon. At every turn we recognise familiar brush strokes from our favourite mountain masterpiece: heather and bilberry spilling over coarse-grained millstone grit; patterns left by recent rains in beds of soft peat; dark hags curling at the lip like breaking waves; tufts of cotton grass bowing before the wind; small brooks gushing whisky-coloured water. It’s not wide views or big-scale features that define a mountain like Kinder but the small details, the delicate brush strokes that are often overlooked.

On my first visit I made my way to the so-called highest point and met a peat-splattered threesome already there. They were moaning in chorus about the non-summit nature of the summit, but were clearly missing the point. If ever there was a mountain that was about more than its summit then this was the one. Kinder is deep cloughs and wind-sculptured crags. It is sphagnum bogs and rough moorland grasses. It is winds to lean into and clags to get lost within; it is dagger rain horizontally flung. It is landing with relief on a gritstone island in a sea of succulent peat and wandering fifty yards to progress just ten. It is curlews and skylarks and golden plovers; it is ragged sheep and darting hares; it is big empty spaces and wide-wide skies. On Kinder, the highest point isn’t the point at all.

We trot on in single file, you and me, not talking much, just drifting in and out of the trance that can make a long run such a reliable way to leave behind the ‘ordinary’ modern world. Soon I’m swallowed up by the old elation that threatens to burst free in lunatic-like screams. I look back and you too are grinning like a person unhinged. With each stride I’m reliving past Kinder visits and moments. Each meander in the path and each feature bring old memories back to life. A run around Kinder is like flipping through an album of treasured mountain moments…

I remember the January when I was nineteen and new to the hills and could think of little but being in them. Not willing to waste even a minute of a precious visit to Kinder by sleeping in the valley – and not aware that it was then against regulations – I slept on the plateau instead, bivvying under the stars in a cheap plastic survival bag. By morning I was soaked with sweat and the bivvy bag was furred by frost and plated in ice, but when the sun rose through golden morning mists time itself seemed to stop. The perfection of the moment rendered every discomfort utterly irrelevant.

I remember the time a full moon and a forecast for clear skies sent me scurrying up for a solitary night hike, the first time I’d dared attempt such a thing. I climbed beneath a moon so brilliant the bicycle lamp I carried for light was redundant, but by the time I gained the plateau an impenetrable clag had formed. I swear I could barely see my feet and quickly lost the broad path on Kinder’s southern edge, back then the most churned-up and unloseable pedestrian thoroughfare in the British hills. But I persevered with my plan and, after three claustrophobic hours, the mountain rewarded me for it: with no warning it shed the clouds until they filled the Vale of Edale with a silver, moonlit sea. I’d never experienced anything like it – the magic was incomparable. It only lasted five minutes, but it was worth the effort, worth facing the dense nighttime clag. It was even worth the fear that followed two hours later when heavy footsteps and heavier breathing followed me in the fog until I fled the moor as though all the hounds from hell were nipping at my heels.

We run on, you with your memories, me with mine. At the head of Blackden Clough I recall a heat wave when I plunged into the icy pools of Blackden Brook to cool off, as well as a winter epic when the clough was a maelstrom of snow. My feet skated on ice, my hands numbed themselves on rocks and turf, and by the time I’d reached the plateau I was soaked to the skin from sweat and snow. Keen to cross Kinder swiftly and thaw out in Edale I stepped onto the plateau – and at that exact moment a flash of lightning and simultaneous CRACK of thunder split the blizzard clean in two. With one foot still in Blacken Clough I spun on the spot and started straight back down. At no time before or since have I changed a route in the mountains quite so fast.

Today there is nothing severe in the weather, although the clag is forming fast, and by the time we’ve rounded Fairbrook Naze we are well and truly in it. Tors loom and vanish in the fog like barely formed thoughts. Our legs start to feel heavy in the clinging peat; at least mine do – you still look impressively strong. But tiredness is all part of the adventure; if you challenge your endurance a long run can take you through many of the emotions that can also be found during a multi-month backpacking trip. And it can leave you just as renewed by the end.

Our memories continue to chase us. We pass The Edge above Black Ashop Moor, where I enjoyed the best day’s rock climbing I’ve ever had, when sunlight and cloud shadows rolled over moor and valley and I felt in tune with the world and the rock. I remember chasing a rainbow down the Woodlands Valley from here once, too, as well as guiding eight Scouts back across the plateau on a day so hot the peat was dust and once the sun had finally set we could still feel its warmth rising in waves from the hags. We finished at a spring I know that bursts clear from a slope high above Grindsbrook and the Scouts, young lads from the suburbs of London, all said they’d never tasted anything so fine.

We reach Kinder’s western-most point, make a sharp left and pass Kinder Downfall a mile later. Today, the Downfall is flowing as gravity intended – it’s not frozen into organ pipes or blowing skywards in a westerly gale. Today, it spills over gritstone blocks and vanishes into the clag. I can never pass the Downfall or look out towards Hayfield without paying homage to all the mass trespassers and access warriors both past and present who have risked being labelled criminals by the ruling classes for fighting for something that is, in truth, a natural moral right. This right to access nature and to wander at will up here is something I will never take for granted. (Kinder mass trespass.)

My running becomes laboured on the path to Kinder Low, but energy returns a little on the southern edge. We are on the home stretch now and, although I reckoned earlier I could run all day, I’m now glad that I’ll soon be able to stop. We pass Edale Rocks, Noe Stool, the Wool Packs, The Pagoda, Pym Chair – all old friends, each known down to the smallest detail. And even the clag has details. It’s not a monotonous blanket of heavy greyness but a fascinating world of suspended droplets that swirl in unseen currents and give substance to the air itself. My home now lies five-thousand miles from Kinder in an environment that’s the next driest thing to a desert, and I miss the clags intensely. I yearn, sometimes, for dampness, long to feel its touch on bare skin. And yet back when Kinder’s mists first wrapped themselves around me I barely gave them a second thought. Or, if I thought anything, it was resentment for an obscured view, and fear at the idea of becoming lost. I considered this as I ran, marvelling at the treasures offered by Kinder, ‘ordinary’ treasures that can so easily be overlooked.

After running the rim of Grindsbrook Clough we arrive back where we started at Ringing Roger. We’ve completed the circuit in a fraction of the time it once took to walk it and Kinder seems smaller as a result and no longer so daunting. But the knowledge we’ve gained of the hill from moving swiftly is worth a thousand times more that anything that might have been lost. Kinder might present a stern face to the world, but when you get to know the mountain it shows a softer side. It’s like gritstone itself: tough on the weathered surface but fragile within.

We fly on the descent, exhilarated and never more alive, laughing aloud as we take great bounding strides, moving faster than we probably should if safety were our only concern. Once we reach Edale I feel I could explode from the joy of what we just did and, feeling childishly defensive of ‘my mountain’, I check to see if you feel the same. But you’re playing it cool. “That wasn’t so bad,” you murmur dismissively, before a big grin cracks your face and gives the game away.

Later, wallowing in campsite laziness, we try to pin down the thing that keeps drawing us back. It’s not because Kinder is particularly high, although it can feel high and without doubt give ‘big mountain days’. And it’s not for unspoiled nature either, because Kinder is noticeably poorer for recent centuries of heavy-handed use. (Much of which has since been addressed since I was last on Kinder by Moors For the Future). No, we finally decide we keep coming back for the same basic reason that has kept tens of thousands of bogtrotters and several generations returning: for the absolute freedom of it. Freedom to be ourselves; freedom to throw off the shackles of the work-day week and the human world; freedom to find our place in nature; yes, freedom – it’s what the mountain stands for. ‘Kinder  Scout’ should be listed in the dictionary as the very definition of the word.

On Kinder Scout, feet can roam as freely as thoughts wander through the head, and in a nation as crowded as Britain’s such a place is beyond value.

A bitter place, of seeping grouphs,

And clinging peat and streaming cloughs,

And northern grit; it’s all I seek,

Go back, I will, on to the Peak.