The seven Pictorial Guides, which had first appeared in 1955, came out at regular intervals from then on, roughly every two years, until the last one, the Western Fells, was published in 1966. By then his fan mail had grown enormously, with letters coming in every day. He managed to answer every one, though sometimes a month or so late, while still working at his day job as Kendal’s Borough Treasurer, and bashing on with his Guides, spending his weekends and daylight evenings in the summer either walking or writing his current book.
Many of his letters are very chatty, friendly and informative, especially about his books and what he was then working on, but he rarely ever gives away any personal information – either about his office job or his family life.
By 1960, his wife Ruth is never mentioned, even when occasionally old friends from the past write to him. It looks as if they have ceased to be on speaking terms, in the same house but living their own separate lives, never going out nor having holidays together.
Peter, his son, born 1933, who until he was a teenager was a regular walking companion with his father, also ceases to be mentioned in any letters. He left school aged sixteen and moved to Windermere, working at the local gas works. In 1959, he moved abroad to work for the Bahrain Petroleum Company where he stayed for the next 15 years. He wrote regularly to his mother, but heard nothing from his father.
AW appeared to prefer communicating with people he didn’t know, and was not likely to meet.
One of his earliest long-running correspondents was Len Chadwick of Dobcross near Oldham. He was a member of a local club called the Kindred Spirits Fell Walking Society. (The reference to OT presumably refers to its magazine.)
In a letter to AW in 1960, he happened to mention that he and some others were planning to spend two weeks climbing the Munros – the 277 Scottish Mountains over 3,000 feet – and enclosed their detailed timetable, routes and plans, all of which AW found fascinating. He himself had become interested in the Scottish mountains, despite his obsession with the Lakeland fells. He wrote back, promising to sponsor him, even though Mr Chadwick had not asked for any money or sponsorship. He even enclosed a cheque for £25 in advance, which was generous, considering the assaults were not going to be attempted till the following summer.
[on Henry Marshall headed paper]
Low Bridge
Kentmere
Westmorland
Telephone: Kentmere 45
31st October 1960
Dear Mr Chadwick,
‘Munro’s Tables’ herewith. I suggest you keep this to work from. It should be the Expedition’s Bible!
On looking through this book, I find there aren’t quite as many genuine Munros (separate mountains) as I thought, and I am now rather inclined to your opinion that 20 are as many as could be managed in a fortnight.
I didn’t intend my terms to be quite so harsh and am now prepared to extend my offer as follows:
5/- for every separate mountain over 3000 ft Plus 10/- for every top (not being a separate mountain) over 3000 ft according to the first two columns of TABLE II. As before, all members of the party must touch the summit-cairn to qualify. Maximum contribution 50 pounds (the same summit cannot qualify both for 1 pound and 10/-)
This adjustment should give you rather more scope and augment the funds. You should have some fun with your Scottish maps and timetables this winter!
Yours sincerely,
AWainwright
Westmorland
Telephone: Kentmere 45
8th Feb 1961
Dear Mr Chadwick
I return the November O.T. and am sorry that some delay has arisen in its transit from one reader to another. You wanted it back by January 16th, and it is now February 8th.
I have studied your provisional programme for the Munro Challenge with interest – obviously there has been a great deal of careful planning. It looks very attractive, especially as it introduces territory new to you – but it does mean a fortnight’s hard graft. Don’t forget that the first consideration should be that you are going up there to enjoy yourselves, and that you are on holiday. We don’t want you to come back two stone lighter and with an enlarged heart, not after all you’ve suffered with your teeth!
Personally, I don’t expect you to complete the programme. To do it in full, you will have to strike top form right away and get a fortnight’s continuously good weather. Anyway, we’ll have to see what happens. Of course I wish you the best of good fortune!
Yours sincerely.
AWainwright
[on Henry Marshall headed paper]
Low Bridge
Kentmere
Westmorland
Telephone: Kentmere 45
10th March 1961
Dear Mr Chadwick,
I am afraid the circulation of O.T. never follows your programme of distribution as far as dates are concerned, and here is your December issue coming back to you five weeks behind schedule.
In a couple of months I hope to be in Scotland myself on a much easier mission than yours in the summer. I plan to follow the coast from Lochinver to Kinlochbervie, or perhaps cutting across to Durness, doing about 10–12 miles a day (which is enough for comfort) and hoping for weather suitable for photography.
Yours sincerely.
AWainwright
[on Henry Marshall headed paper]
Low Bridge
Kentmere
Westmorland
Telephone: Kentmere 4
18th April 1961
Dear Mr Chadwick,
Thank you for your letter and newspaper cuttings, which I greatly enjoyed reading. I have a fancy for the Cairngorms, having read much about them but never actually seen them – except from trains at Aviemore. I might possibly visit the area next month.
I was extremely sorry to hear about Andrew’s sad bereavement, which must have been a great shock to him and spoilt his memories of a grand holiday. I agree that if he feels he must cancel his Munro arrangements in the circumstances we should not try to persuade him otherwise. If you are disposed to tackle the [illegible] alone, then of course the offer still holds good. Similarly if you decide to take some other companion. Or, if you prefer to do your postponed Ireland trip this year instead, the offer would hold good for 1962. I know what a nuisance a late break-up of holiday plans can be, and I leave it entirely to you.
I should be interested to know, later on, what you have decided to do.
Yours sincerely.
AWainwright
Another early correspondent was Bob Harvey, a research scientist for the BBC, living in Surrey, with whom AW exchanged photographs.
[on Henry Marshall headed paper]
Low Bridge
Kentmere
Westmorland
Telephone: Kentmere 4
22nd December 1961
Dear Mr Harvey,
I feel I owe you much more than mere thanks for your very kind letter. Your references to my books are extremely generous, and, as I am a man who blushes easily, somewhat embarrassing!
I have always maintained that I compile these books for my own self-gratification, enthusiasm for the job being a flame that needs no fanning by encouragement from others, and this is still perfectly true. But more and more I am coming to realise that others are finding pleasure in my efforts, and increasingly a new stimulus is creeping in – to do my best for the many friends I have won. I number you amongst them, and thank you sincerely for your kindness in writing to me. You have a happy literary style that makes your account of your various wanderings on the hills, of the incidents that happen to you, of the encounters you enjoy (and suffer!) most interesting and pleasant and amusing to read. It kept me chuckling all the way through it – and has done since.
The photograph you enclosed is a masterpiece of simple, effective arrangement – the man, the cairn, the boundless sky – and somehow symbolic, too. It’s an absolute gem, and although you don’t actually say I may keep it, I am going to assume it is a gift and have it framed to stand on my desk. An inspiration in itself!
I have never been back to Pike o’ Blisco since, but several people have written to say that the cairn is now restored, but yours is the first picture I have had and I would say it is now back to its original proportions. Thanks for your help. I didn’t know the fine cairn on Sergeant Man had also been wrecked – that was news to me – but a Keswick reader wrote some time ago to report that the slender column on Lingmell had been thrown down, and that he was making a series of visits to try to get it up again. Poor chap – he’s over 70!
I am terribly sorry it’s taken me such a long time to reply – I feel dreadful about this – but the delay does at least give me the opportunity to combine Christmas greetings with my reply – and the hope that 1962 will be a grand fell walking year for you. Perhaps after your next expedition you could find time to let me know what you have done! It would always been a pleasure to hear from you …
Yours sincerely
AWainwright
[on Henry Marshall headed paper]
Low Bridge
Kentmere
Westmorland
Telephone: Kentmere 4
19th May 1963
Dear Mr Harvey,
I have formed a deplorable habit latterly (due to a chronic shortage of time) of piling up letters received into a cairn on my desk instead of answering them promptly, as decency demands, and only when the edifice topples over do I give some attention to them. I have become adept at making excuses for neglecting correspondence and these are generally accepted (at least the writers write again) but occasionally it happens that I withdraw from the heap, with dismay and shame, a manuscript that, because of its interest or literary merit, deserved immediate acknowledgment – and, alas, I have allowed it to mingle for months with much less worthy material (usually from fond parents asking if its is safe to take their progeny up Jack’s Rake, to which I always answer ‘yes!’). Such a manuscript was yours, mercifully undated, describing your experience at the Lingmell cairn. You close this letter by wishing me a Happy Christmas. As there hasn’t been a Christmas for five months, you can imagine my remorse, for this letter, like the one I had from you earlier, was a classic. I shall treasure it, and the accompanying photograph.
As a matter of fact I have had several letters about the Lingmell cairn, which have left me rather bemused. Some people have claimed my thanks because they have rebuilt it; others have stated that it is still in ruins. However quite recently I had a letter from a scoutmaster (who I therefore assume to be a paragon of virtue) stating that he and his troop had fully restored the height of the cairn and its slender appearance from afar, while admitting to a certain weakness in the structure on the Gable side: this, he assured me, would be corrected on a later visit this year. When you come up in June, therefore, you might (or might not) find an edifice that stands no less proudly that did its predecessor. As an expert in the subject, you will be interested in the reconstructed cairn on Dale Head (photo enclosed) which replaces one recently scattered although not quite in the same place. This is a magnificent, professional job done in cut green stone (which must have been hauled up from Yew Crag Quarry), and is unusual in being wider in the middle that at the base. Take a look at it this summer – before somebody knocks it down!
Yours sincerely,
AWainwright
[first page of letter missing]
… making the correction isn’t quite so easy. It isn’t a simple matter of the printer taking out one figure and substituting another. The whole of the page (and all other pages in these books) is reproduced from a zinc block which gives an exact impression of the author’s original. The correction could only be made, therefore, by my doing the whole page again and having another block made. So far, I haven’t found time to do this, but later I may.
Actually, there is a mistake on Scafell Pike 17, too. ‘Bus shelter’ at Seatoller should be ‘Bus terminus’ (see Scafell Pike 15). There isn’t a shelter – I got wet there yesterday waiting for a bus. I ought to correct this also, but I’m hoping somebody will put a shelter there soon and save me the trouble!
Yours sincerely,
AWainwright
There were also women readers who wrote to AW, such as Joy Ross from Bowness on Windermere. She was a Cambridge graduate, mother of four, and a madly keen Lakeland walker and swimmer who had made her own maps of Lakeland, plotting every swimmable rock pool. She got him going on the subject of maps, especially those produced by Messers Bartholomew.
Dear Mrs Ross
Thank you very much for your interesting letter, and its kind (too kind) references to myself. Reading it made me blush, but I am, of course, very pleased to learn that my books are proving helpful.
No, I am not in touch with the Ordnance Survey or Bartholomews about the footpaths on their Lake District maps. Bart’s map is just hopeless, dangerously inaccurate and very misleading; no attempt has been made to show paths correctly, and they would have been better omitted altogether. For the Ordnance Survey, however, I have the most profound respect – their maps are my favourite literature, and their surveys and cartography is, in general wonderfully accurate, especially on their large scale maps. Features on the ground (walls, sheepfolds, streams, tarns, buildings etc) are 100% correct. There are three things I am disposed to criticize: first, the hachuring for crags, which is unreliable in many instances; secondly, the contours on the two and a half inch maps are often wildly wrong on high ground; and thirdly, the footpaths. In the case of the O.S., however, the trouble is not that they invent paths or smooth out the bends and corners, as Bart’s does, but that they do not keep them up to date. They still show paths that have completely vanished, although I do not doubt that they existed a hundred years ago; and conversely, they do not show paths that are not in popular use. These, however, are difficulties arising from too infrequent revision, not from inaccurate cartography.
You will love Lakeland more and more with growing familiarity – the sincerest test of affection – and you will find it equally charming at all seasons. I hope you continue to enjoy your expeditions to the hills, for no experiences are more rewarding. Every day on the tops is different from all others, whether you seek beauty, excitement, lovely views or merely exercise; every day has its individual memories. Even the soakings and weariness and bad moments are pleasant in retrospect!
Thank you for finding the time and taking the trouble to write to me. It was nice of you to do this.
Yours sincerely,
AWainwright
Fancy meeting 31 people on a day’s walk over High Street! I didn’t see that many in two years … by the way, that was a fine walk you did – Shipman Knotts to Loadpot Hill, and a commendable performance indeed. The family must be tough! I should have had to turn back at Nan Bield.
In May 1964, AW heard from the son of an old, though more senior colleague from his Blackburn days. Norman Hamm had been senior accountant, later the Borough Treasurer. Alas he survived only a couple of years in that post, dying in 1952, aged fifty-one. His son Roderick Hamm went on to have a distinguished career in local government, becoming Town Clerk of South Ribble Borough. In his letter to AW he reminisced about his father and the Blackburn office.
Municipal Offices, Kendal
7th May 1964
Dear Mr Hamm,
It was a great to surprise to receive your letter, and a pleasure too. Thank you for your kind remarks.
Very vaguely I seem to remember hearing of your schooling at Sedbergh, but the last twenty years are a void so far as news of your family is concerned.
Your letter has recalled for me an event that I think must have contributed to the idea of writing a series of pictorial guides. I remember saying farewell to your father as he left the office on the Saturday I finished work at Blackburn, but within a few minutes he returned to give me a book he had just bought for twopence on a second-hand book stall in the market Hall. It was an ancient but handsome volume entitled ‘Swiss Pictures in Pen and Pencil’. I still have it. This was a book of drawings of mountain scenes and I think it may have been this that first planted the germ of the idea in my head. Alas, I was never able to tell him so!
Yours sincerely,
AWainwright
AW had taken a camera out on the fells from his earliest walks and used his photographs when working on his Guides – not copying them, but as an aide memoir. He used a cheap camera and the results were not very good. He was always very disappointed when he got them back from the local chemist, so from about 1950 onwards he started taking them to a local photographer in Kendal, Ken Shepherd. He specialised in weddings and portraits, but he had his own dark room. AW got him to make prints for him and also enlargements. Percy is Percy Duff, AW’s office colleague, Deputy Borough Treasurer.
Municipal Offices, Kendal
1st Feb 1965
Dear Mr Shepherd,
59 negatives from my expeditions to Caledonia in 1964 are enclosed. I should be greatly obliged if you would kindly make 6” × 4” semi-matt enlargements from these, as before, in accordance with the marked prints also enclosed. At your convenience, of course.
MAY: |
Spean bridge, Mallaig, Kyle, Inverness, Braemar + Edinburgh Mainly cold and wet, with heavy rainstorms |
AUGUST: |
Spean Bridge, Mallaig, Kyle, Inverness, Helmsdale, Melrose. Mainly bright, but with cold strong winds. |
Most of the best of the pictures were taken from moving trains on the west Highland Railway.
Percy tells me you are not quite OK at present. I hope you are soon fit and well again.
Yours sincerely,
AWainwright
With Bob Alker, an old friend and colleague from Blackburn – who had moved to Preston where he became area accountant for NORWEB – he was a lot saucier, reverting to the style of his office magazine. There was still no mention of Ruth, but a lot of suggestive remarks about his sex life, or lack of it.
Dear Bob,
I am a little ashamed to note that your letter, to which this is a reply, was dated as long ago as Sep. 10th, but you cannot expect priority on the strength of past acquaintance (now if you’d been a soft, juicy woman it would have been different). What happens is that I maintain a cairn of unanswered letters on my desk and when it collapses I answer one and build the rest up again. In fact you have been fortunate. I know there are some in the heap dated 1963 and 1964 still awaiting attention, but, of course, none from women, who form the majority of my correspondents. It is my ingrained gallantry (which you remarked in earlier years) that makes me give them immediate attention, nothing else. I offer them no inducements (as a rule), but they keep coming running back for more. All I need to comment is that my knowledge of women’s anatomy is derived purely from hearsay, and they cling like leeches. I like them clinging like leeches. I always did.
Well, thank you for all your kind comments. It wouldn’t be me if I didn’t say they are well deserved. Last time I heard anything about you, you were dying, so that I am doubly pleased to hear from you and to learn that you had started fellwalking. Good lad! After fifty wasted years! You must look out for me – a tall, distinguished-looking figure (to quote one source) recognisable by the long tail of females straggling along behind. How they all hate each other! It’s funny, really.
Two pages is as much as any male correspondent gets from me. If you want to write again and expect an earlier and fuller reply, get your missus to write instead and address me as ‘Dear Alf’.
You have been warned
AW
A popular topic in letters to AW was the mountain top cairns. AW usually described them in detail in his Pictorial Guides, but of course as the years went on, they were not always as he described – or even still there.
In 1966, Eric Hargreaves, a maths teacher at Cockermouth Grammar School and chairman of the Cockermouth Mountain Rescue team, wrote to him about the Dale Head cairn being damaged.
c/o Westmorland Gazette, Kendal
19th July 1966
Dear Mr Hargreaves,
I must thank you for your letter, even though it did bring me the sad news of the fate of the Dale Head Cairn. This is a shocking thing to have happened. The cairn was one of the best in the district, and built by a craftsman. It was far too soundly constructed to suffer from the weather and no gale could have brought it down. The only explanation is that it has been deliberately wrecked.
There must have been some maniac about with a dislike of well-built cairns. The same thing happened to the cairns on Pike o’ Blisco and Lingmell, both outstandingly well built, but these two have been restored by willing hands. Perhaps some working party will do the same for Dale Head.
Sorry news, but thanks for letting me know.
Yours sincerely,
AWainwright
Mr Hargreaves wrote again, this time about the stretcher box on Pillar, as described and illustrated in Book 7, the Western Fells, page Pillar 11 (just published in 1966). AW rarely apologised for anything in his books but he was beginning to realise that objects would not always stay the way were.
c/o Westmorland Gazette, Kendal
16th December 1966
Dear Mr Hargreaves,
I am writing (belatedly!) to thank you for your letter of 9th November about the stretcher box on Pillar and to apologise for my long delay in replying – not due, I assure you, to a lack of appreciation of your kindness in putting me in the picture.
Well, of course, the collapse of the box on Shamrock Traverse illustrates the perils of guide book writing – nothing that man does can be relied upon to stay put. Rather oddly, though, when one of your members (Colin Greenhow?) told me of the placing of the box originally, I expressed the opinion that the foot of the Rock would seem to me a better place since people face down, not up.
Yes, of course, the implications of the vanished box (which I described as a landmark to look for) could be serious to newcomers relying on my notes, and I hope nobody falls down Walkers Gully looking for it. If they do the new site of the second box will be singularly appropriate. In the circumstances, since the fault is mine and not yours, it seems an uncommonly generous intention on your part to pinpoint the place by affixing an explanatory tablet. When I can find time I must either re-write my notes or add an erratum to say that things are not as they were when the book was written.
Yours sincerely,
AWainwright
Larry Skillman of Sevenoaks, Kent, also wrote to AW about the Western Fells – and suggested that AW should now turn his attention to Wales. AW wasn’t keen, but he did say he was working on the Pennine Way and also, unusually, revealed what his real job was.
c/o Westmorland Gazette, Kendal
13th December 1966
Dear Mr Skillman,
Thank you for your exceedingly kind letter. I appreciate greatly your very generous comments, and am only too sorry that my long delay in replying may have suggested otherwise. I was interested, too, to read of your preferences for the Western and Southern fells, but hope that when you make your intended long visit next summer you will find time to take a look at some of the other districts, especially, perhaps, Blencathra and High Street, which, even at the height of the tourist season, retain much of the loneliness and solitude that constitutes much of their appeal.
Snowdonia has never had the same attraction for me as the Lakes. I concede that the Welsh mountains are grander; but the trees, the lovely valleys, the colours and the dialect of the natives of Lakeland are all contributory to its particular charm. Several people have, in fact, suggested that I turn my attention to north Wales, but the urge is missing and I doubt now whether my legs could stand the effort. The Pennine Way, on the other hand, is very easy (as far as gradients are concerned) and I am enjoying it greatly.
My day-to-day work for the past 46 years has been in local government, and for the last 18 I have been Borough Treasurer of Kendal.
Thank you again for writing. It was nice of you to find the time and take the trouble to do this.
Yours sincerely,
AWainwright
With all the Pictorial Guides now published, and proving enormously popular, there came an inevitable if minor backlash. Several Lake District experts worried that he was attracting too many visitors to the Lakes, the popular paths would soon become eroded, all these newcomers, the amateur walkers, would probably cause accidents to themselves and each other.
AW got particularly incensed by criticism attributed to John Wyatt, who had become the National Park’s first warden in 1960, and was now the Head Warden and also author of several guide books to the Lakes.
Mr Wyatt’s criticism was reported in the Westmorland Gazette sometime in 1966, and AW sat down to write a strongly worded Letter to the Editor. He retained a carbon copy of the letter – but it is not clear if in fact he ever sent it.
Dear Sir,
During a long life I must have read statements more stupid than those attributed to Mr Wyatt in your paper, but I cannot bring them to mind. To say, as he appears to do, that my guidebooks to the Lakeland fells are the cause of countless accidents and are potential killers is really too ridiculous to warrant a reply, but I have been persuaded by indignant readers of his remarks to answer his accusations.
Having regard to the position he holds, My Wyatt must surely know that fellwalking involves rough scrambling, and the joy of it is to get up off the tarmac roads and find excitement and adventure and beauty along the stony tracks and in the lonely places amongst the hills.
Accidents occur, not because of ‘out-of-date’ guidebooks but because some walkers do not watch where they are putting their feet. Out of date? They will be out of date when the hills are out of date.
I claim that my books have often saved people from benightment and injury, and that there would be more incidents without them.
Does his criticism also extend to the Ordnance Survey maps, which also show the footpaths, and to the guidebooks of other writers? If not, why not?
Really, Mr Wyatt, Give fellwalkers credit for common sense. They are not lemmings!