Author: Geoffrey Glasby D.Sc.

Publisher: Xlibris Corporation

Published: 2012-03-28

Total Pages: 52

ISBN-13: 1469178958

Victorian Britons knew all about walking. It was part of daily life. However, organized rambling was a totally different matter. G.H.B. Ward (1876-1957) began life as an engineer at a local steel works in Sheffield. In the autumn of 1900, he placed an advert in a newspaper inviting people to join him on a moorland walk. As a result, 13 people turned up for what is thought to be the first ever organized public walk - around the Kinder Scout plateau on 2 September 1900. This led to the formation of the Sheffield Clarion Ramblers which is recognized as the first working class ramblers club and which became the forerunner of the great ramblers’ movements we know today. As one Clarion man wrote of the group's first ramble in 1900: "If our feet were on the heather, our hearts and hopes were with the stars." This mystical communion with the open air, with sore feet on the pathway to Heaven, is reflected on every splendid page of The Best of the Sheffield Clarion Ramblers' Handbooks. The book's editor, David Sissons, has devoted 12 years to researching Ward, who, as a good socialist, refused an OBE for his services to the great outdoors but accepted an honorary M.A. from Sheffield University which was awarded on his deathbed! Sissons describes the old man's outlook as "applied Wordsworth, putting into practice the poet's ideals, trying to raise the working class to a higher level". Ward was obsessed with heights, distances and directions. For every hour he spent on the moors, he would spend another burrowing in the archives through Enclosure Acts and Charity Commissioners' reports. In 1907, Ward participated in the illegal mass trespass on Bleaklow, a fore runner of the 1932 mass trespass. In 1910, he became the founding editor of the Sheffield Clarion Ramblers Club Handbook and chaired the Sheffield Clarion Ramblers until his death in 1957. In 1926, he founded the Sheffield and District Federation of the Ramblers Association. In 1945, the Ramblers Association bought him the summit of Lose Hill in the Peak District which was named "Ward's Piece" and which he subsequently presented to the National Trust. Ward also worked on the purchase of the Longshaw Estate in Derbyshire and was a founder member of the local Youth Hostel Association. He was also an activist for walkers’ rights and a Labour Party politician. Ward was undoubtedly the dominant figure in the early campaign for walkers’ rights in Britain. For those interested, the Best of the Sheffield Clarion Ramblers' Handbooks which he edited for more than 50 years can be ordered from the Yorkshire Post Bookshop. The Handbooks are just four-and-a-half inches by three and small enough to slip into a jacket top pocket and are bibles in the rambling world. They include information on place names, local folk lore and the history of the moors and valleys of the Peak District. Nominally, they were just a prospectus of scheduled walks, with the occasional warning that "only the hardiest ramblers must attend", but they were widely read. The editor of the books, David Sissons, devoted 12 years to researching Ward. Sissons describes the old man's outlook as "applied Wordsworth, putting into practice the poet's ideals, trying to raise the working class to a higher level". Interestingly, in his book, Across the Derbyshire Moors published in 1945, Ward ranked the best full day’s walk available from Sheffield to be round Kinder Scout from Edale Station by Jacob’s Ladder, William Clough, the Snake and Alport Bridge to Hope. He estimated the distance to be 20 miles which he considered to be equivalent to 25 ‘Derbyshire miles’ taking into account the energy used for the ups and downs. To enjoy this walk, he recommended that one left Edale not later than 9.30 a.m. and returned from Hope by train or bus but not before 8 p.m. Clearly, the ramblers of Ward’s generation were a cut above the modern generation! The Old Nags Head at Edale is the official start of the Pennine Way.