During the last few weeks I’ve been reading a few books written by, or about, Alfred Wainwright – what a great thing the Library reservation service is!
I started with two of his novels: the story of his 1938 ‘Pennine Journey’ (written at the time, but published many years later) and ’Memoirs of a Fellwanderer’. They both gripped me enough that I read them cover-to-cover in one sitting. Before this I’d only ever read a few of his guidebooks and seen the odd repeated TV appearance. Unsurprisingly, his love affair with the Lakeland fells shines strongly throughout. But the novels did make me reconsider the curmudgeonly old man image I’d previously held – it’s easy to forget that such people were once young. I wasn’t, for example, expecting to read about him spending nights alone on the fells. And something which resonated with this solo walker was his contempt for those who seek to influence personal freedoms on the fells – to him it all boiled down to a simple need for common sense. In one chapter he expresses a real dislike of large groups; it made me chuckle to see that a previous reader had pencilled ‘damn right’ in the margin.
After the novels, I turned to Hunter Davies’ biography on him, which certainly helped fill in some of the gaps. Hunter starts by explaining that he wrote the biography as a confirmed fan of AW, and by the time I’d finished reading, I felt much the same way. Indeed I ended up being sufficiently inspired to pay a passing visit to AW’s birthplace, see the photos below.
Wainwright’s Desert Island Discs radio appearance can still be listened to on the BBC iPlayer (in the UK at least) – I suspect I enjoyed this recording all the more for having read the books first. There’s a bit of a classic in there about his first wife leaving him … I won’t spoil the surprise.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p009mfrs/Desert_Island_Discs_Alfred_Wainwright/
In terms of this blog, the main disappointment was how little was written about CtoC – maybe his life was simply in an established pattern by then, and so there was little new to say. For my own walk, the two main things I shall probably take with me are an increased appreciation of the thought put into each and every page of his guidebooks, and a renewed determination to make good use of any en-route chip shops!