South Pennines Walk And Ride Festival 2010

About the South Pennines Walk & Ride Festival

Welcome to the South Pennines, the secret treasure of the backbone of England! Of all regions that make up the Pennines, this area of high moorland and deep-cut valleys that straddles the Yorkshire/Lancashire border is the often-overlooked jewel, a landscape rich in social and industrial heritage – and a wonderful destination for those who love the great outdoors.

Parts of the area are known as Brontë Country, after Haworth’s famous literary family who, a century – and-a-half ago, drew inspiration from the surrounding moors to create a legacy of classic novels that still draw people here from around the world.

Others inspired by this special landscape of high moor and steep valleys have included the late Poet Laureate Ted Hughes, of Mytholmroyd, and Bradford born David Hockney, one of the 20th century’s most influential artists. The artistic heritage of the Pennine hills and those who have lived among them and in their shadow are inseparably interwoven.

The Pennine landscape left by retreating glaciers 12,000 years ago would once have been blanketed by forest, the preserved roots of which still occasionally protrude from the peaty uplands. Man’s need for timber and grazing land saw those great forests felled, leaving poor, peaty soils covered today by heather, bilberry and coarse grasses. Such impoverished uplands provide the ideal habitat for birds such as curlew, plover and dunlin, game birds like the red grouse, and rare raptors including the super-fast peregrine falcon. Large tracts of moorland are protected under European law because of their importance for such ground nesting birds.

The wooded cloughs which drain those moors are home to fly-catcher, dipper and heron and you might be lucky enough to see roe deer, badger, fox or vole.

Sheep farming came to the Pennine uplands centuries ago and is still the predominant agriculture. During the 17th and 18th centuries, textile industrialists built water-driven mills, foreshadowing the Industrial Revolution. The wonderful network of footpaths and bridleways enjoyed by today’s walkers, riders and cyclists is a legacy of that past: those routes were commercial thoroughfares for centuries, used by packhorses trains hauling lime, cotton or woollen cloth pieces from weaver’s cottages to piece halls such as those in Halifax, Heptonstall and Addingham, and by workers heading for valley-bottom mill towns such as Hebden Bridge, Marsden and Ramsbottom during a period of industrial innovation that turned Britain into the workshop of the world.

When, in the 1940s, the Hobhouse Committee examined the suitability of various areas for designation as national parks, the South Pennines was somehow overlooked so today its beautiful expanses of wild moors and wooded cloughs offer peace and solitude.

The South Pennines Walk & Ride Festival is designed to help you discover, appreciate and enjoy this special area. Join us in the company of friendly local guides, experts and fellow outdoor enthusiasts for 16 days of discovery and pleasure that include walks of all descriptions, cycle rides, horse rides, special events and evening talks. We look forward to meeting you to share just a little of this amazing natural and cultural heritage.