Improver of Existing Paths

Article by Michael Thompson (August 1972)

For the serious fellwalker or casual tourist in the Lake District, a “Wainwright “is indispensable. These extraordinary, detailed guides to the Lakeland Fells are the work of one man – Alfred Wainwright. His handwritten, carefully illustrated books have sold nearly a quarter of a million copies, and the series of seven has taken him 13 years to complete: years spent walking 10,000 miles on more than 2,000 routes.

The summit cairn of Scafell Pike, 3,210 ft above sea level and the highest point in England, is the place to appreciate the enormity of the task facing Alfred Wainwright when he decided to produce a complete guide to walking the English Lake District. All round and below, 866 square miles of fellwalking country, a gigantic greyish panorama of unrelenting grass slopes and backbreaking rock scrambles, 214 principal fell summits and mountain peaks, and this man charted each and every way to the top, by each and every route possible.

It represents a remarkable achievement because he was 47 when he started and 60 when he finished, 13 years spent walking 10,000 miles, more than a thousand routes up and a thousand routes down. He could have finished more quickly, except that he was the borough treasurer of Kendal, so the walking had to be done at the weekends and the writing in the evenings. He was also married, with a grown-up son living abroad, and so he had to sacrifice almost all his home life to the never-ending succession of full days of weekend walking, sometimes spending Saturday nights at a country pub when distance made it impossible to get home. In 1968, he and his first wife divorced, but, he says, it would be unfair to blame walking entirely for the breakdown of his marriage.

The guidebooks also represent a unique achievement because each of the 2,100 pages of maps, views and text are hand-drawn and hand-lettered: nowhere is there a dot of printer’s type. The seven-volume Pictorial Guide to The Lakeland Fells—or “Wainwrights” as they are more usually known—have become the fellwalkers’ bible, and sales should reach 250,000 this summer.

Today, 65, married for the second time, and retired from Kendal Council’s employment, Alfred Wainwright is walking and writing full-time, producing guides to other areas of the northern countryside, combining the same skills of mapmaker, artist, guide, historian, social commentator and humourist that he developed for his Lake District project. “I suppose I did it because I am totally committed to, if not in love with, the Lakeland fells where the sheep are real, not human.”

Each fell is given the same devoted and detailed treatment, which starts with his own large-scale map where the author has corrected mistakes on existing Ordnance Survey maps, like footpaths which proved to go straight over precipices, and where he has added his own observations, from the type of gates and stiles to the site of an old cockfighting pit. The map is followed by separate bird’s eye views of the fellside for each of the four or five different routes to the top. Then there are the plans of the summit and the ridge routes to the neighbouring summits, and, for that triumphant moment of rest against the chosen summit cairn, the panoramic skyline view, naming every peak which can be seen on a clear day. Interspersed between the plans are the author’s own drawings of the views, cairns, ruins, and, sometimes, even a passing sheep.

The text, written in distinctive handwriting, warns when the path becomes too steep for the ordinary walker, exhorts greater effort when the path gives a false impression of steepness and, generally, covers so much more than the obvious. On Whin Rigg, the Wainwright guidebook has valuable advice for wet days: “The new powerhouse, expelling hot air from its grilles, is a useful drying out place.” On Bleaberry Fell, a warning to avoid a particular field where a bull is usually kept, and on Esk Pike, similar advice about a farm with unfriendly, if not dangerous, dogs.

And on Blake Fell, where the Forestry Commission has encircled the summit with a fence to keep people out, the comment is angry: “Dammit, if a man wants to climb a hill, any hill, he should be allowed to do so without being forced to commit a trespass. Why make the innocent feel guilty?”

The words sounded as if they came from someone who really valued his independence, the true individualist, and to meet Alfred Wainwright is to confirm the opinion. He is an impressive figure on any fell. Six feet tall and 14 stone, with an expanding waistline that matches the dignity of his slow and steady walk. A kindly, ruddy face topped with a surprisingly full head of completely white hair and a hesitant manner of speech, which does not mean that he is shy but does mean that he chooses his words carefully. Understanding the motivation which made him choose a task of such Herculean proportions means understanding his background.

“I was not lucky enough to be born in the Lake District. However, if I had been, I might not have been so appreciative of its beauty. Instead, I was born in Blackburn, Lancashire, where unemployment was bad and poverty savage. I was 23 before I could afford my first holiday and chose a week’s walking in Cumberland and Westmorland, and I gazed in absolute disbelief at the loveliness around me.

“Here, in the Lake District, I suddenly found this world without huge factories but with huge mountains. I couldn’t see any stagnant canals, but there were the freshwater streams. I didn’t miss the lack of concrete footpaths on the fells, but I was excited by the sheep tracks. I found a new and wonderful freedom where it wasn’t necessary to wait until the policeman had passed on his beat. That one week changed my whole life.”

The holiday over, he continued training as a municipal accountant and later accepted a drop in salary for the chance to join Kendal Council and make the Lake District his home. He was middle-aged before he tried to write anything other than local government reports.

“At work, my mind was often wandering from the balance sheets to those other figures I preferred, like Helvellyn, 3,118. I had been making drawings on my walks for some time, I had finished the garden for my new house, and I was fed up with reading Western novels. The plots were all the same, so I decided I would create my own personal tribute to the fell country. I knew I had the patience to complete the task. In fact, when I did the sums, I eagerly anticipated the 13 years it would take because I am an optimist.

“Pessimists never reach the top of anything. It is the optimists who huddle around a summit cairn on a wet day, and I set out to give them help and encouragement.

“Some people are surprised when they find that I did all the walking by myself, but that is because they confuse being alone with loneliness. I am least lonely when I am alone on the hills and free to indulge my imagination. I am also very busy checking the Ordnance Survey maps, making my own notes, identifying a particular ruin, taking photographs and trying to piece together the panoramic views. I had to climb Raise Fell, a neighbour of Helvellyn, eight times to find visibility good enough to draw the panoramic view. The worst moment is when someone thinks they recognise me. I might have to stop working, so I try to deny my identity and say my name is Walker, A. Walker.”

Home is a large, detached house he designed for himself on the edge of Kendal. Every wall carries several pictures of the Lake District, either his own drawings or the paintings of other artists. His study is an upstairs back bedroom, chosen because it has a good view towards the fells, where the drawers overflow with maps, the small desk is cluttered with pencils, pens, compasses and rubbers, and the washbasin is used as an emergency wastepaper basket.

This is where, for those 13 years, he worked late every night. Now that he writes full-time, each page takes a day and a half to complete in pen and ink, designed to the right size for the engraver to copy. “I suppose the idea of using my own handwriting started as a personal rebellion against a society which is too regimented for my liking. I was brought up a pen and ink man, trained to believe that accountancy was an art.”

He works patiently, sketching the maps and adjusting their shape to match the walk he is illustrating, choosing the relevant details from his copious site notes, adding his own drawings and then ruling the fine guidelines of pencil so that the handwritten text will still have the regimented appearance of type. “The object is to show the walker how to reach the top and to keep him interested when walking up a long grass slope becomes boring. If there’s any space left, I add a funny comment, but I am becoming careful of my funny comments. After the Lake District books, I did the Pennine Way Companion, and at the back of the book, I wrote that bona fide Pennine wayfarers could go into the hotel at Kirk Yetholm, Roxburghshire, where the walk ends, and claim a pint at my expense. The trouble is that so many have claimed their pint that I have already sent the publican £200. So, at the end of my new book, a walker’s guide to the cross-country route from St Bees Head to Robin Hood’s Bay, I have just written: ‘Buy your own drinks, this time, I’m broke!’”

He shares the natural reticence of most authors to discuss earnings. When I suggested that an average royalty of 15p per copy would represent earnings of £37,500 on 250,000 books, he said he only knew the books made him a “very comfortable living” and that he did give quite a lot of money to local charities. In the early days, he was his own publisher to ensure that the hand-drawn pages were reproduced the way he wanted, but as the paperwork grew, he was pleased to accept the offer from his printer, the Westmorland Gazette, to become the publisher. The Gazette, equally pleased, has since turned down several offers from bigger book firms.

“And now,” said Alfred Wainwright, deliberately changing the subject, “shall we go for a walk?” The request was perhaps inevitable from such a professional fellwalker. Despite years of tramping the fells for his books, time off is still spent walking for pleasure with his second wife, Betty. He met Betty, 15 years his junior, when she offered to drive him to and from walks for the Pennine Way Companion.

This afternoon, he chose Loughrigg Fell. The fell, above Grasmere Lake and Rydal Water, is only 1,101ft high, but according to the Wainwright guidebook, it is “pre-eminent among the lesser heights.”

His walking clothes are “old, sensible and comfortable,” boots, cavalry twill trousers, check shirt and sports coat. On his back, a small rucksack containing only the necessities—a raincoat, map, camera and a bar of chocolate. “I see people struggling up the slopes, loaded as if they were Sherpas on Everest. They forget that fellwalking is fun. For example, I don’t carry a drawing board or easel; far too heavy. The result is that, as an artist, I am a fraud. I photograph the scenes I like and then draw direct from the snapshot into the book. It’s the results that matter, not the means.”

The guidebook indicates a zigzag in the track above Deerbolts Wood. The author’s feet carefully follow the twisting path. “Look over there. Someone has tried to save seconds by cutting the corner, others have followed, and now the bank is crumbling. That’s bad fellwalking. A good fellwalker disturbs nothing. He treads firmly on already beaten tracks. He is an improver of existing paths. A bad walker is clumsy, kicking up loose stones to destroy the foundations of the path, trampling the verges until they disintegrate. He is, by habit, a spoiler of good tracks and, as we have seen, all too often, a maker of bad tracks.”

He walks on, his hands clasped behind his back, the persistent tread which allows him to cover about ten miles a day. “Survival of the countryside is one of my recurring themes. I try to educate the careless tourist and castigate the planners when they make the irretrievable mistake of sacrificing natural beauty for material gain.”

The path flattens out temporarily and passes a small tarn. “Look at those bog beans. Now, that plant, which produces very pretty flowers like small orchids, likes to grow with its feet in a few inches of water, and the shallow tarn is full of them. Isn’t it a lovely sight? That’s the sort of thing I might mention in the guidebook because walkers would like to be able to identify them.”

We walk on up Loughrigg. The conversation gets less frequent as the path gets steeper. He pauses to gaze down upon the tourists’ cars winding slowly along the road below. “What do they know of the views up here? The fact that I have never driven a car was a handicap because the Lake District bus service isn’t very good, but it also means that I have reached an age when my non-walking, car-owning contemporaries are dropping like flies while I remain immune from ailment, and this may be no coincidence. It is a natural function of the body to walk; it isn’t to drive a car.”

At the summit cairn, the guidebook’s panoramic view gives the names of the peaks as they come into view—Pike o’Stickle, Harrison Stickle, Pavey Ark, Sergeant Man… Did he really do all that? … Yes, he did, even this little hill was climbed six times to cover six routes to the top.

And then, the view enjoyed once more, it is downhill with some of his own emergency advice: “Remember the walker’s best asset can be a tough and rubbery bottom. Don’t be afraid to use it. When descending steep grass or rocks, the posterior is a valuable agent of friction, a sheet anchor with superb resistance to the pull of gravity.”

He says he is often disappointed that journalists have seen him as an eccentric because he has devoted so much time to one task. He hopes I won’t see him that way. I don’t because those who do seem to be mistaking single-mindedness for eccentricity.

However, there is no doubt that he is a romantic, totally guided by the overwhelming impact that the fells and mountains have had upon him. In one book, he describes how even in death, he plans to be beside his favourite tarn on Haystacks Fell. He wrote that after cremation— “someone who knew me in life will take me and empty me out of a little box and leave me there alone.”

Meanwhile, he is about to start work on a guide to the low fells around the edge of the Lake District, a guide, especially for old-age pensioners, and he is now planning his next project—the walking and the travel between walks for a three-volume sketchbook of each of the 277 mountains in Scotland which are over 3,000 feet high.

<<>>

This article was originally published in The Daily Telegraph Magazine in August 1972, written under the pseudonym ‘Michael Thompson’—a common practice at the time when journalists were contracted exclusively by one organisation, such as the BBC or Granada.

Homer Sykes, a Canadian-born British documentary photographer, was one of the first to publish photos of Wainwright discussing the Pictorial Guides nearly a decade before his television appearances. At just 23 years old, he had never heard of the enigmatic fellwanderer.

The meeting took place in early summer 1972, shortly after Wainwright had completed his Coast to Coast Walk guidebook, which had yet to be published. Both Michael and Homer visited him at his Kendal Green home, where Wainwright and Betty were gracious hosts. The interview took place in his private study before the three of them set off for a walk to the summit of Loughrigg Fell.

The original magazine photos have since been lost to time. Homer’s memory of their fate was hazy—he couldn’t confirm whether they were ever returned after publication. He recalled one photo featuring both Wainwright and Betty, but it was never published, as Wainwright felt uncomfortable with it. Unfortunately, that image is also lost. The photos featured here are almost identical alternatives, with several appearing in Martin Wainwright’s (no relation) 2007 book Wainwright: The Man Who Loved the Lakes.

As co-curator of the 2025 Wainwright exhibition at The Armitt, Ambleside, it had been an honour to feature Homer’s photography. My connection with him began while researching a pair of spectacles that Wainwright gifted to sculptor Clive Barnard in 1987. These tortoiseshell glasses, used during the Pictorial Guides years, are featured in the exhibition with Clive’s sculptures of Wainwright.

Determined to establish when Wainwright had worn them, I examined many photographs, including Homer’s original magazine photos. Immediately, I recognised the glasses he was wearing, although I couldn’t be certain they were the exact pair. I contacted Homer via his website, introduced myself, and explained the exhibition and the connection to the glasses.

Homer was delighted to support the exhibition and generously provided his digital files for printing. Thanks to these high-resolution scans, I was able to confirm with absolute certainty that these were the same glasses from that day in 1972. It was a pleasure to present Homer’s incredible photography alongside a tangible piece of Wainwright’s history. I often wonder—if these glasses could talk, what stories would they tell?

<<>>

Wainwright photographs courtesy of Homer Sykes.
You can explore more of his work at his website.