Walking Pendle Hill’s new trail: the Two Toms

Pendle Hill can be a frustrating lump of rock. The most popular access route, from the village of Barley, barely skims its north-western edge, hitting the summit by means of a staircase. Another classic route, the zigzagging climb from Downham, doesn’t reveal the full scale and shape of the hill.

Then there are the time-worn witchcraft associations to be steered around. Far more than Bideford in Devon or Manningtree in Essex, or nearby Samlesbury, Pendle Hill is lodged in the national psyche as the backdrop to the unjust trials of 11 women in 1612 – a story that has been if not quite romanticised then spooked-up and broom-sticked into a dubious fiction over four centuries.

A new trail, The Two Toms, provides a refreshingly witch-free walk that takes in the whole hump of Pendle Hill. The trail, devised by local walkers Nick Burton and Bob Sproule in association with Mid Pennine Arts (MPA), is 25 miles in total. It splits neatly into three legs – three separate leaflets with detailed notes are available – with B&Bs easy to find around Whalley, Colne and the slopes of Pendle Hill.

The Two Toms honours two local hiking heroes who deserve proper national recognition. Tom Stephenson (1893-1987) was brought up in Whalley and championed the creation of national parks and the right to roam. He was secretary of the Ramblers Association and, as a journalist at the Daily Herald, penned a seminal 1935 article about a “long, green trail” linking the Pennines to Scotland. He campaigned tirelessly for 30 years to create the Pennine Way, which was officially opened in 1965.

Tom Leonard (1864-1948) worked as a pastor in Colne and took mill workers from the town on an outdoor holiday to the Lake District in 1891. He went on to create the Co-operative Holidays Association and the Holiday Fellowship and was a founder member of the Youth Hostels Association.

I walked the first two legs on the balmy weekend of 9-10 July, with Burton and Sproule guiding. The outing was part of MPA’s ongoing Pendle Radicals project, which celebrates the work and legacy of local free- thinkers and artists. I was raised in Lancashire and moved back there last year after a 30-plus year gap; the Pendle Radicals social media posts are always interesting, and their hikes and events have been a way for me to get back into my home turf.

The first section is a slow-building upward amble, from the ancient ecclesiastical centre of Whalley – where Stephenson lived, at Princess Street, with his parents and siblings. The route passes through woodland, along the edge of a golf course, and over a series of moors – with good views back to a prominent hill called Whalley Nab and the arches of an impressive railway viaduct. A bridleway leads to the Nick of Pendle, a major pass on the western flank of the hill. During our walk there we had a picnic on a slope of Pendleton Moor where Chartists once gathered for a meeting – the OS map (OL41) records the site with a “Chartist’s Well”. The leg wraps up at Newchurch in Pendle, where I was told a tomb containing the remains of members of the Nutter family recently attracted a coachload of black magic enthusiasts. Alice Nutter was one of the so-called “Lancashire witches”. As I said, that old story has got a bit ridiculous.

The second section, which we did on the following day, is mainly downhill, taking in the last Clarion House – a socialist ramblers’ talking- and tea-shop dating from 1912 – and a lovely ridge through sheep-speckled hill country. We passed through Barrowford, perhaps the prettiest of the mill towns in this corner of east Lancashire, and crossed the Leeds-Liverpool canal, before scaling a steep street up to Colne town centre – where Tom Leonard was a pastor in the 1890s.

When we think of “radicals” we usually imagine union warriors or tub-thumping agitators. But, for their time, the Two Toms were very much on the fringes, and their campaigns were certainly revolutionary. Landowners kept open countryside for themselves and their grouse-shooting friends and resisted the appeals of working-class walkers who wanted only a space to breathe clean air, think and stretch their legs. Even those who wanted access only as a shortcut to work were routinely refused access. There was also a growing awareness of the health benefits of the outdoors. While Blackpool and other seaside resorts supplied most people with the type of holiday they needed, there were always factory and mill employees who wanted something other than freak shows, mechanical rides and fish and chips.

For Leonard, access to nature and countryside chimed with his religious beliefs. “The best things any mortal hath are those which every mortal shares,” he said. For Stephenson, walking was an educational pursuit – he studied geology at night school – as well as a political act. He said it was the views north from Pendle Hill that fired him up when he was still aged 13, working as an apprentice block printer in the same calico printing works as his father.

Our two-day walk was also filled with views, though more to the other three cardinal points – a rich collage of green hills, masts and wind turbines, and the former industrial towns that drove the two visionaries to seek fresh air and exercise for themselves and their fellow men and women.

The new route is open to all and MPA is working to have plaques positioned at key points to commemorate the Two Toms. Burton and Sproule will guide a small group to complete the third leg on Sunday 4 September – and anyone can go along. The 11-mile walk will start at Colne and finish at Earby hostel, taking in spectacular views from Pinhaw Beacon over the Pennines; the route was always conceived as a way to link Pendle Hill with the Pennine Way, which doesn’t pass through Lancashire. All participants will receive a copy of the Two Toms walk leaflets to aid future excursions.

“This walk is a celebration of the 20th-century legacy of youth hostels and the first official long-distance path,” says Nick Burton. “It links the achievements of both Tom Leonard, founder member of the YHA, and Tom Stephenson, creator of the Pennine Way. The walk, through classic south Pennines scenery, takes in a landscape enjoyed by generations seeking fresh air and recreation away from the textile towns of Lancashire and the West Riding.”

The walk starts at 9.30am on 4 September at Colne Library. Free refreshments will be available at the end of the walk. Free to join; register at eventbrite.co.uk