The following are some of the reasons why you should consider hiring someone elseIn the Olde Starre Inne in York, on an August night in 1955 members of York Mountaineering Club met. David Laughton, club chair of York Mountaineering Club, appeared waving the Dalesman Magazine that month. They may have been lamenting York’s lack of mountains or hills.
Bill Cowley, the author of Farmer’s Diary, had issued a challenging. Cowley would provide a cup – “an inexpensive one” – to anyone who traversed the North York Moors in less than 24 hours: “… You would cross Carlton Moor, Cringle Moor and Cold Moor; Botton Head and Bloworth; the long flat expanse of Stony Ridge … over Howl Moor and Simon Howe, by Tom Cross Rigg and Snod Hill to Lilla Cross, then over Fylingdales Moor … to the sea.”
When Laughton asked if his fellow climbers were up for it, there was a loud “Aye”. The seven men and women of YMC, who had spent several weekends hitchhiking on the moors in order to determine a route were now ready. Cowley and two Middlesbrough Senior Scouts as well as a Guisborough Forest Ranger, plus Cowley began their attempt on the 1st October at 12 noon.
The group waded through the heather for 23 hours and used a compass to navigate towards Ravenscar at the coast where the tankards would be distributed. Cowley named the walk the Lyke Wake Dirge in honor of the Moors burial mounds. A “lyke” is a Yorkshire dialect term for a corpse.
“This ya need, this ya need,/ Ivvery need an’all,/ Fire an’ fleet an’ cannel leet / An’ Christ takup thy saul
I recommend the version by Steeleye Span(Who sound like ghosts in a vast cathedral ruined.)
Malcolm Walker was a young, trim, funny, and bronzed man, aged 19. In 1971 he, his wife Edna, their children Paul and Lindsey and Edna moved into York Street, where I was living. I think I always knew Malcolm had been a Lyke Wake pioneer – not that he ever boasted about it, but the walk was at the peak of its popularity then, the ultimate challenge in the great testing ground of the “broad acres”.
Malcolm and Edna were my parents when my mother passed away. They took me and my younger sister under their wings. Most summer weekends, we went camping with them. I recall navigating by dinghy along the River Swale in the broiling summer of 1976, and happy trudges through heather, with the Walkers’ border terrier, Copper, forgoing his delight in frolicking ahead to walk beside me for a while – out of sheer politeness, it always seemed.
I walked with Malcolm and Paul to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Lyke Wake in 2005. I received the badge, which represents my achievement and summarizes the Yorkshire philosophy, “distrust jollity”. On the walk, there’s not much jollity. It seems that the moors don’t want to see you. The wind will burn you if the sun does not. Sit on the heather, and you will be bitten by something. Ideally not an adder. Only in retrospect do you appreciate the scenery: the fauvist colours – pinks, yellows, lime greens – and the drama of the time-lapse weather.
Paul Walker called me a few weeks back to tell me that he would be attempting another Lyke wake in the 70th Anniversary year. Lindsey, her husband and three sons would be joining him along with five of Walker’s six children. Christine, Lindsey’s and Paul’s spouse, would drive support cars. Malcolm, who is now 89 years old, would walk to the finish line. Was I up for it? Saying “no”, at the age of 62, would have been like throwing in the towel. Nat, who had completed a 30 miler with Malcolm in the past, would join us.
To get out of the darkness, we started at Osmotherley around 2.15am. Middlesbrough shone below us as we scrambled up the crazy paving at Carlton Bank. The sun was a pasty white, and the clouds were engulfed in rain as dawn broke. Six hours later we had to follow the seemingly endless ridge that was once an ironstone rail above Farndale.
After Newsletter Promotion
We trudged through enigmatic stone standings, orange ponds, and vast black expanses (to suppress it, hence the resentful feeling of the landscape). Sometimes, the rain clouds cleared, and Farndale was transformed into a golden green. We finally reached Blakey Moor. Lion Inn. Whereas the people in the pub were appalled by my appearance – “You look This is a great way to get started. cold … Your eyes are bloodshot” – I considered them ridiculously complacent, with their suede shoes, red wines at 11am and fireside seats.
We skirted Rosedale, and continued on our way. Paul’s child said that he saw a waterfall of light pouring through the clouds. “It was like God coming to Earth.” Malcolm’s grandchildren told me snippets about him: how he took them for walks with the hiking group of the printing company where he worked. I heard how, last year, the day after Edna’s funeral, he undertook the York Parkrun, which he’s done several times, always joking that he came “first” (in the 80 and over category, that is – a subdivision he usually has to himself).
Malcolm was waiting for us in the early evening on Jugger Howe Moor under a milky-blue sky. He walked with us the last five mile, talking to anyone who was interested (which wasn’t everyone at that point). Our target was a radio mast which seemed to be receding further away every time I looked away. At 8pm we had walked 42miles and reached the radio mast. The Raven Hall Hotel in Ravenscar was the venue for our photos.
Malcom was drinking beer from an “inexpensive”, trophy mug he had bought in 1955. I asked him what made anyone do the walk. “Well, I think there are many things to say. You can also check out our other articles. it,” he said, and we reflected silently on our crossings (my two, his half-dozen) – on bouts of nausea, hay fever, bites and blisters. “I count the walk an achievement, I suppose,” Malcolm said at length, “but nothing to this …” and he waved his tankard in the general direction of his family, all reanimated by hotel comforts.
I said that their meeting had been pre-meditated by the walk. Malcolm nodded and said, “I suppose you could also say that in its favor.” The sun set over Robin Hood’s Bay, with pink clouds rolling on a purple ocean. I could’ve said this wasn’t a simple family tea, it was an event that everyone would remember, but, as previously mentioned, Yorkshire is a place where one doesn’t go overboard.
Andrew Martin is the author of “The Andrew Martin Writer” Reading on Trains Substack
