During the 1970s, AW published twenty-two books – a sudden spurt, partly due to the fact that he was now happily married and domestically settled and had his own chauffeur – but also because a lot of the books were quite short, with usually more drawings than words.
It meant his fan mail grew even larger, but he still insisted on answering every letter, if not always immediately. And of course he still did not give away his home address to ordinary readers but continued to use the Westmorland Gazette as his address.
Most of the letters are from readers who love his books, and just want to tell him; others are informing him about their own walks and experiences; some pick holes in his spelling or routes, and they mostly get short shrift.
Once he retires in 1967, and begins to feel he is getting on a bit, he often uses this as an excuse not to take up suggestions and invitations made by readers or old friends. He also begins to harken back to the old days in Lakeland, before all the cars and tourists. He wrote a letter in 1969 – undated – to the Westmorland Gazette, complaining about what was happening to Kendal. In 1969 there was also a letter to an old friend from the past, George Haworth, who had been with him at Blakey Moor secondary school in Blackburn. He had gone into the Post Office, not the Town Hall. He was hoping AW would join them at an old boys reunion dinner.
38 Kendal Green, Kendal
16th September 1969
Dear George,
Thank you for your letter and its very interesting enclosure. I return the latter in case you want it before the dinner on the 19th.
I shall not be there, nice though it was of you to suggest that I attend. It would be just too overfacing to have to meet some forty white-haired and bald-headed old gents who professed a former acquaintance when I couldn’t recognise a blessed one of them. In fact, not more than half-a-dozen names on the list ring a bell, and those only faintly, but three (Barker, Tatlow and Wolstenholme) were subsequently colleagues in the Borough Treasurer’s Office. You can give my regards to Lawrence Wolstenholme, if you will; he was the only one I knew well.
No, I can’t bring J.C. Pye to mind at all, but H. Rydings I remember well if in fact he was a teacher at the time I was there. I’m surprised, if he it is, that he is still kicking around (but don’t tell him so!). Of the other teachers I recall Abbott, Mellor, Moulding and a Miss Almond, and of course Mr Boddy, but I could not mention any other names. H. Parker was in my class, I think – he came from Mill Hill – but I fancy that most of the others would belong to a different period.
My congratulations on your ascent of Cust’s Gully. To tell you the truth I never managed to get up that awkward pitch after trying on both sides of the gully, and in spite of being on a rope. There was nothing frightening about it but I simply could not bend my legs enough to get up the places where movement is constricted. It is, I would think, generally not true that long legs are a help in climbing and certainly not when climbing rocks. I had an awful job in Jack’s Rake for that very reason. It’s not that your feet are a long way removed from your brain, it’s simply that you can’t bend a three-foot leg in a two-foot crack. However, you clearly had no such troubles. Anyway, I suppose you just daren’t fail a task that your own offspring had accomplished. How interesting that she is taking a Mountain Leadership Course! I’d better enrol as a pupil if she can guarantee to get me up Cust’s Gully without bloodletting.
I hope you have a very successful evening on the 19th.
Yours sincerely,
AWainwright
The Westmorland Gazette,
Kendal.
Dear Sir,
THE FUTURE OF KENDAL
Amongst all the clamour for big changes in Kendal now that the bypasses are almost with us, may a small voice be heard?
The clamour is for a radical change of purpose, for modern development and new facilities, for more industry, for greater attractions for visitors, for more car parks – lest the town stagnate. Kendal is a delightful place, paradoxically say those who would change it.
Yes, it is. It is a delightful place because it was not planned, because it grew up anyhow over the centuries without interference from a surfeit of authorities and developers and consultants and outside advisers.
And why the hurry? Kendal has been here for the best part of a thousand years. Why is the year 1969 so important for decisions about its future? Kendal, even yet, is unique. Destroy the features that make it unique and they are lost for ever. There can be no going back to things as they were if a mistake is made.
Prosperity, the plank of the argument, is not altogether a matter of big turnovers and thronged shops. Prosperity has to do with contentment and tranquillity, too. If stagnation means quieter and safer streets and less noise I am all for it.
Visitors come to Kendal because they like it as it is, not because it has super camping sites and multi-storey car parks and all the fun of the fair. Introduce these things and you introduce a new type of visitor, less discerning and less appreciative.
I, as a resident, like Kendal as it is. I liked it even better twenty years ago before the planners were let loose on it.
I cannot believe that I am the only one out of step.
Yours faithfully
12th January 1969
Dear Mr Hancock,
Thank you for the interesting letter enclosed with your Christmas card, and for your good wishes. I didn’t know that the Lake District had an admirer who was prepared to travel by train all the way from Edinburgh and back again just for the joy of spending a few hours in Borrowdale and its other delectable places. Many people do in fact travel similar distances with the same in view, but they have cars and motorways to help them along (Birmingham is now only a three-hour journey by road) but I have not heard of anyone else coming regularly across the Border and committing himself to public transport. In your case I suspect that much of the attraction of these outings derives from the pleasure of travelling on the Waverley line, which, incidentally, I also know well and always enjoy.
In beseeching me to come up to Scotland and sample its glories, you do me less than justice. As a discriminating seeker after grand scenery I have long been addicted to the Highlands, especially those along the western seaboard, and for the past fifteen years have spent all my holidays up there, usually with a Freedom of Scotland railway ticket, but more often latterly in the company of a friend with a car. I claim, in fact, to have completely surveyed the Highlands with a camera and have a collection of around 500 enlarged photographs to prove it. Scotland is magnificent (north of Glasgow) but I have never conceded that it is more beautiful than Lakeland – until last October, when I got a late chance to make yet another tour by car, and, not having been up there so late in the year before, was absolutely spellbound by the glorious autumn colours. Lock Lomond, in sunshine, was a dream of delight, the birches in Glen Garry showed a beauty out of this world, Loch Maree was a fairyland. The whole place was lit up by colours I had not suspected from summer visits. I was enthralled.
Earlier, in August, with a Freedom ticket (not to be issued in future years) I went over all the railway lines likely to be closed, even going up to Thurso in case the opportunity never came again. As regards the Waverley line, I always make a point of using it for the return home, invariably spending a last night at Melrose. As you suggest, it is a journey to make with your nose to the window.
I must thank you for your kind references to my books. I’m glad you find them helpful. If I were forty years younger I’d just love to do the same for Scotland. I have a vague idea of doing a book on walking the Border line from the Solway to Berwick, but, this apart, must content myself with places nearer home. Such as the Pennine Way. Ugh!
Thank you again for writing.
Yours sincerely,
AWainwright
c/o Westmorland Gazette, KENDAL
2nd July 1969
Dear Mr Rimmer,
Thank you for your interesting letter about Cust’s Gully, damn it. The letter has been held up somewhere, otherwise I would have replied earlier.
Honestly, I don’t know what you’re bellyaching about. I told you that the first pitch had defeated me, and that I had retired to lick my wounds, never to return. Warning enough, surely, to expect some trouble? Therefore, not having done it, I couldn’t describe what terrors lay beyond the first pitch. But, from my reading of other descriptions, I feel sure your account of a horrific second pitch must be exaggerated. When I was there I had with me a companion who managed to get up the lower pitch and completed the ascent of the gully, returning to me down the branch gully. He looked ashen-faced upon his return, I admit, but said nothing of having met any further difficulty higher up the gully. Looking up it from my dishonourable place of waiting, I could see nothing above but a choke of stones. The rock-climbers guide mentions the one pitch only (as dead easy!). I think it likely, therefore, that a recent fall of rocks may have built up into a second pitch, especially as you say it was all loose.
Nay, damn it, don’t blame me. I told you not to go.
Yours sincerely,
AWainwright
c/o The Westmorland Gazette |
|
Kendal, Westmorland |
21st November 1969 |
Dear Mr Vipond,
Your kind letter of 5th November has been passed on to me by the Gazette office.
Yes, you are right to criticise the title ‘Boardale’ for the drawing numbered 50. I was in the greatest doubt myself before deciding to use it and did so only because I could not think of one more suitable. I know the place well, and have always come across it myself after descending Boardale, as many people will have (unless arriving by the infernal internal combustion engine, to quote your description). Martindale, to me and to most people, runs higher into the hills from the old church. The foreground to the drawing is a sort of no-man’s-land, neither in one valley nor the other. Perhaps your suggestion of ‘Howe Grain’ might have been better, after all.
I share your great regard for this corner of Lakeland, even though, at weekends, the motorists seem to have discovered it as a place for a nice picnic. Which it is, but I wish they could have left it alone and undisturbed for those who get there on foot. I remember it as a place of absolute peace and tranquillity, a very lovely backwater known to but few.
In fact, present trends being what they are, we may have been fortunate, people of our generation, in knowing the Lake District at its very best, and it may never be the same again for those who follow us. More’s the pity.
Yours sincerely
AWainwright
Some of these readers were regular writers and often it turned into a correspondence which lasted many years.
c/o The Westmorland Gazette
KENDAL
8th August 1970
Dear Mr Dougherty,
Thank you so much for your extremely kind letter of 5th July. This really deserved a much prompter reply, and I am sorry that circumstances have prevented me from giving it earlier attention. Your comments on my books are very generous and of course I greatly appreciate all you say.
With regard to Litt’s Memorial, yes, the inscription has been deciphered and communicated to me by several correspondents, and in every case agrees word for word with your translation. The word MEREOILL has in all other cases been given to me as MEREGILL, which is what it should be. I should express particular thanks to your wife, who, in the interests of knowledge, kept her face pressed into a bed of sheep droppings for twenty minutes. This I was not prepared to do myself. And they say men are the tougher sex!
As for you kind suggestion about North Wales, no I am too old now. If I were thirty years younger (how often I have said that!) it would give me pleasure to go over those wonderful hills with a small-tooth comb, but I’m afraid the task is quite beyond me now. In any case, the Highlands of Scotland (a lifetime’s work) would be my prior choice. Wales never appealed to me quite so much. The mountains are fine, of course, but the surroundings haven’t the appeal for me that Lakeland has. Wales, I always feel, lacks the soft beauty of Lakeland and always seems to me untidy: the sprawling quarry heaps, the pylons, and so on. It hasn’t been cared for and jealously guarded as has Lakeland. I’m not too fond of the Welsh accent either, if I must be honest: it would be a source of irritation if I had to spend much time there. But these are excuses. I am past it, that’s the sombre truth.
I read with interest your list of some of the lesser well-known fell-walks you have done, and I was pleased to learn that you have enjoyed these equally with the classic climbs. So did I, at the time. And nowadays, with many more people on the hills, even more so. The crowds aim for the better-known heights, Helvellyn, Gable and so on, but many of the smaller ones continue to be unfrequented and remain quiet and here one can sit and meditate undisturbed by others. The last time I was on Gable, a few weeks ago, the summit was overrun by noisy parties, transistors blared and it was a relief to get off it.
Thank you again for finding the time and taking the trouble to write to me. It was nice of you to do this. Your letter was very kind and I shall treasure it.
Yours sincerely
AWainwright
… I appreciate very much all you say, and never more in evidence than in your references to caravan sites. Of course I agree absolutely. These ghastly eyesores are authorised by people who would recoil with horror if somebody slashed a Constable landscape. I think myself that they should be prohibited in any area of natural beauty. Individual protests are unavailing, and the only hope lies in organised objections by the associations who care for rural England. I have sent the appendix to your letter to the Secretary of the Friends of the Lake District, who shares our views most strongly and has often appeared as an objector on behalf of his association when applications for the development of caravan sites are under consideration.
It was nice to hear from you again.
Yours sincerely,
AWainwright
Dear Mr Dougherty,
I have just been looking and lingering, for the umpteenth time, over the delectable view-cards of the Dolomites you were kind enough to send me after enjoying your fabulous holiday amongst real mountains. The pictures are superb. They stir the imagination almost to screaming point. Why, oh why, have I never ventured to leave these shores and go in search of my own Shangri-la? Perhaps because I was never certain where to look. Now I know. The foot of my personal rainbow would be found in the Dolomites, of course. Where else?
But I doubt whether I would ever, even in the distant days of youth, have been able to emulate your own fearless wanderings around those magnificent peaks. You did amazingly well for a mere fellwalker apprenticed to English molehills.
Perhaps it has been the fear of frustration that has kept me from venturing too far afield. It must be galling – at least I would find it so – to gaze at some soaring peak, and want to climb it, and know you can’t. Red Screes I can, and Bowfell, and even Scafell Pike, with the comforting assurance that I cannot fall off into space or be halted by an impassable rockface or be swamped by an avalanche, and that I will not get lost or benighted, and that I can reward myself at the end of the day with a rousing meal and a comfy bed. I am timid, I admit. I like to tackle something I know I can finish.
The Doughertys, obviously, are of tougher fibre. Not for them the simple paths on easy foothills. The challenge is too strong. For them, the dizzy heights, the call of the unknown, the privations, the ultimate triumph.
… Perhaps, after all, if I keep looking at them, as I most certainly will as a daily routine, I shall find a pleasure not greatly less than an actual visit would give me. Aided by a vivid imagination, which I do not lack, I can now do the skyline of the Gruppo Di Brenta, be home for tea, and sleep in my own bed.
Thank you again for the conducted tour. I appreciated and enjoyed it.
Yours sincerely,
AWainwright
… At present, however, I cannot rid my thoughts of Scotland, and am due to spend a few days at Easter in Skye with two particular expeditions in mind on the Black Cuillin. I last climbed there in 1954, enjoying a heavenly week of perpetual blue skies, and the memory of those wonderful mountains has haunted me ever since. Here, without any doubt, are the finest peaks in these islands, not up to Dolemite standards but of compelling appearance and with the added advantage that you can at least get up on to most of the summits and needn’t just stand and admire from a distance.
The second Scottish book is being published next week. I cannot remember whether you ever asked for a companion to Coire na Feola, but just in case you would like another I have asked the Gazette to enclose details with the leaflet they will be sending to you in a few days.
With very best wishes for rapid return to full health. You will feel a lot better when the daffodils come up in the garden and the sun has some warmth.
Yours sincerely,
AWainwright
… Your descriptions of Ireland’s scenery are mouth-watering. My wife, who lived there for five years, is always begging me to go and see the delights of the island for myself, but so far the unrest there has put me off. However it is on my itinerary for the next few years and has been brought forward by your account of the pleasures to be found along the western seaboard. 1982 perhaps …
In Book Six – the North Western Fells – first published in 1964, AW described how he had spotted a young rowan which had secured a precarious foothold on Hassnesshow Beck, on the way up to Robinson. He asked any kind readers if they would let him know in 1970 if it was still alive and well.
In 1970, lots of people did write to him, including Tommy Orr from Whitehaven, who had gone up with a party and taken photographs.
38 Kendal Green, Kendal.
Dear Mr Orr
I was absolutely delighted to receive your confirmation that the young rowan on the way up Robinson from Hassness is still alive and well. Indeed it is flourishing exceedingly, judging by the photographs you were kind enough to send along with your amusing illustrated report. The last time I saw it, in 1963, ’twas but a tiny two-branched sprig. From time to time, since then, I have been kept aware of its progress by other walkers who have passed that way, but yours is the first notification in 1970 and the first photographic evidence that has been supplied. The presentation of your report shows commendable initiative and talent, and I shall treasure it. Clearly the weather conditions were such that only the most intrepid of alpinists would venture forth on those cruel slopes of snow, and the whole party is to be congratulated on a performance that can surely seldom have been bettered. I have a new respect for the inhabitants of Whitehaven and especially its females.
Write again in 1980 and tell me the rowan is still there. Please!
Yours sincerely, with many thanks,
A Wainwright
In 1980, Tommy Orr sent another drawing and information to AW. By then, he was being inundated by sightings and reports. According to AW, ‘no single feature I have mentioned in my books has brought me more letters’.
38 Kendal Green, Kendal
Dear Mr Orr,
Thank you, thank you, thank you for the graphic account of your New Year’s Day pilgrimage and the accompanying photographs and nail biting illustrations. What fortitude, what courage your party displayed in their determination to confirm the survival of my rowan! Congratulations to all, and especially the ageing cripples.
I am so touched by your devotion to the cause that I have sent off to the Editor of ‘Cumbria’ the 20-year saga of the rowan with two of your photos, ‘1970’ and ‘1980’, and demanded that he publishes it.
If any of your party are capable of submitting a report in 1990, please do so. I may have gone to the happy hunting grounds by then. But the rowan will still be there, bless it.
Yours gratefully,
A Wainwright.
In writing back to Trevor Davys, AW gave away his home address from the beginning – which was unusual.
38 Kendal Green, KENDAL
29th August 1970
Dear Mr Davys,
I must beg forgiveness for what must seem a rather shocking neglect to reply to, or even acknowledge, your kind and very interesting letter of a month ago.
I appreciate your kind references to myself; the rest of your letter takes on the form of a brief autobiography to which my own experiences of life in relation to Lakeland are an answering chord, although the moment of ‘impact’ for me, happened forty years ago. I think you will find, as I did, that although the revelation comes suddenly it is no transient thing that passes away with familiarity, but an experience that recurs, fresh and vital as ever, each time acquaintance is renewed. I sacrificed something to live my life here, and it was the best move I ever made. It could be for you, too.
Thank you for finding the time and taking the trouble to write to me. It was nice of you to do this. I enjoyed reading your letter.
Yours sincerely,
AWainwright
38 Kendal Green, Kendal
5th May 1971
Dear Mr Davys,
Thank you for your interesting letter and accompanying sketch.
First let me deal with your enquiry about Rake’s Progress on Scafell and tell you that it is no place for your 2 and a half year old daughter, although I have no doubt she would be game enough to try it. The Progress is a rock ledge, not quite continuous, running across the face of Scafell Crag at a higher level than the pedestrian route, which skirts the base of the crag. You have shown its course perfectly on your sketch. It starts exactly at the point where the Mickledore ridge abuts on Scafell. The pedestrian route here goes steeply down scree along the base of the cliffs; the Progress starts to climb broken ledges upwards to the right before trending down to run parallel to the pedestrian path and some fifty feet above it: the ground between the two is very steep but not vertical as is the crag above. At the far (west) end the Progress descends easier ground to join the pedestrian route. There are a few bad steps along it that rule it out for ordinary walkers, but climbers use this terrace to reach the start of some of the rock-climbs on the Crag. If I were you I would leave it alone.
I have amended your sketch to show the route normally taken up Lord’s Rake. The turn left you show is the West Wall Traverse, a refinement of the original way. Both routes are quite feasible, although extremely steep and rough. It would be as much as you could manage to look after yourself without having a young daughter in tow, so with reluctance I must advise you to let Lord’s Rake wait for a few more years – unless, of course, you have an opportunity of going there alone first to spy out the land. This area is tremendously exciting, and I can understand your eagerness to go there. I felt the same myself, long before the chance came. One other warning – don’t try to come down either West Wall traverse or the full length of Lord’s Rake before you have been up them. This was the mistake I made on my first visit: I reached the top of Scafell up the easy slope from Eskdale, couldn’t identify the head of Lord’s Rake and got into trouble looking for it.
I hope your Whitsuntide is a great success. I am sure it will be if you leave Scafell alone, but it could be a tragic non-success if you ventured there with a young child. She deserves commendation for getting as far as Kern Knotts but Scafell Crag is a much tougher proposition.
Yours sincerely,
AWainwright
Trevor Davys, who lives in Nottingham, says he was grateful at the time to AW for his advice and warnings. ‘My 2 1/2-year-old daughter was Rebecca. She loved the Lake District and made her holidays there in later life. She got an MA in Library studies and read all AW’s books. Sadly she died aged thirty-seven.’
38 Kendal Green, KENDAL
12 June 1971
Dear Mr Booth,
I am glad you have found my books helpful on your visits to the Lakes and the Penyghent area and I warmly appreciate all you say. I especially like your idea of the miniature ornamental cairns, and often wish I had brought home with me a single stone from every mountain summit I have visited, and neatly labelled and dated it. But if I had done this, the house would now be cluttered up with stones, so perhaps it is as well!
I assume, from the mention of your recent marriage, that you have almost a full lifetime of happy hill-wandering to look forward to and I hope you have a great many wonderful days on the mountains in the years that lie ahead. But you must go easy on the cairns. They take a lot of dusting!
Thank you again for finding the time and taking the trouble to write to me and doing it so nicely.
Yours sincerely,
AWainwright
38 Kendal Green, KENDAL
Westmorland
5th July 1971
Dear Mr Booth,
There was a delightful surprise awaiting me upon my return the other day from a holiday in Wester Ross (which explains my delay in acknowledging it) – a replica of the Lingmell cairn, no less, and all in one piece. This gift was completely unexpected, and I assure you is greatly appreciated and will be treasured. It now stands on the edge of a high shelf in my room, so that I have to look up at it as I have looked up at so many cairns in my time. Up on the shelf, peeping over as though on the edge of a cliff, it gives the impression of being about a hundred yards distant, which is just right – I always really enjoyed the last hundred yards to any cairn: the hard work finished, the reward almost within reach. It is a splendid addition to my collection of mountain trophies, and I prize it highly. I look up at it often. It is an inspiration. Thank you so much for the kind thought.
Yours sincerely,
AWainwright
By his third letter back, AW was addressing the Booths as John and Odette, which was very personal. Mr Booth had tickled AW’s interest by sending him a replica cairn. He made them by taking small stones from the real cairns then gluing them together. He was very pleased to see in Memoirs of a Fellwanderer, published 1993, that on page 151 there is a photo of AW at home with his replica Lingmell cairn on the window sill behind him. It proved that AW was not simply being polite in his letters. Mr Booth worked all his life on the railways, starting as a signalman and finishing as a safety manager. During his years writing to AW, he moved from York, to Chester and to Reading, before retiring in Swindon.
11 June 1972
Dear John and Odette,
Thank you for your letter. It was nice to hear from you again and to learn that you are still building cairns. The one you kindly sent me is still in prefect condition. Not a stone out of place or even loose! I see Lingmell every time I raise my eyes from my desk, however wet and misty it may be through the window. Incidentally, now that you have finished the Three Men of Gragareth I have another to suggest that will keep you occupied for months – Nine Standards, where there is a fine collection of cairns, the best I have ever seen. They are most impressive, and look like Stonehenge as you approach them. Trouble is, you would need a large mantelpiece to display them, and dusting would be a delicate operation. So perhaps you shouldn’t bother. But do go and look at them sometime. You know where they are – between Kirkby Stephen and Keld, and easily reached from the top of the Birkdale road.
I have just finished my book on the St. Bees–Robin Hood’s Bay walk, and thoroughly enjoyed it. This gave me my first introduction to the Cleveland Hills and the North Yorks Moors, which I found a delectable area, largely because most of my walking there coincided with the heather in bloom. I was there again a few weeks ago, to see the daffodils in Farndale and re-visit a few places that had specially appealed to me.
Thank you for your very kind invitation to visit you in your new bungalow. I do not see any early possibility of this, but perhaps if you were ever to report that the Nine Standards had now been repeated on top of your TV set I think I would simply have to call next time I was in your area!
Thank you again for keeping in touch.
Yours sincerely,
AWainwright
10th April 1973
Dear Odette and John,
Thank you for your letter. It was a pleasure to hear from you again. Before I mention more mundane matters, let me say how pleased I was to hear your big news, although the arrival of the newcomer will certainly mean a stop to cairn-building and fellwalking for some time afterwards, but not, I hope, the end of these activities. You enjoy your expeditions too much, and they should be even more exciting with three in the party. Some proud new parents have reported from time to time that their offspring have bagged a peak before they could walk (carried on father’s back). So let’s set a target for you. Roseberry Topping (the Cleveland Matterhorn) before John Junior is a year old.
I had wondered whether you had ever taken me up on the Nine Standards idea, and am glad to learn that you did and that the work is proceeding well. Thank you for your invitation to call and see the masterpiece. I may just do that sometime when Junior is house-trained. My own Lingmell cairn, on the window-sill beside my desk, looks fine, with not a stone out of place.
38 Kendal Green, KENDAL
Westmorland
26th May 1974
Dear John,
Thank you for an interesting letter, and congratulations on being not the first but nearly the first to do the St Bees–Robin Hood’s Bay walk. I’m glad you enjoyed it. You probably had super weather conditions – it’s been a wonderful springtime – and it is rather a relief to learn that you did not encounter opposition at any stage except from the Moor House barbed wire. So did I when I was there, as a result of which I wrote to the County Clerk at Northallerton about this particular section and received the most solemn assurances that a through route would be established here and the farmers told of the right of way – obviously nothing has been done. It was clear to me at the time of my visit that nobody had used this right of way for donkeys years, an opinion confirmed by the farmer at Brompton Moor, to whom I spoke about it. Others who have done the walk have not reported any difficulty here and I had hoped that the County Clerk had been as good as his word. Apparently not. I haven’t been to York or its vicinity since last you wrote, but I bear in mind the wonderful array of cairns waiting to be inspected. One of these days! My own Lingmell cairn remains in pristine condition – not a stone loose or out of place.
Yours sincerely.
AWainwright
38 Kendal Green, KENDAL
Westmorland
Dear John,
Thank you for your letter and kind references to the Scottish mountain book, I have taken all my holidays in the Highlands for donkeys years, latterly making three visits every year, in spring, summer and autumn, and, without doing too much walking, made myself very familiar with the terrain. These visits are proving the highlights of my retirement and I greatly look forward to them, especially now that I am working to a set plan of campaign. I envy you the experience that awaits you, of a first expedition, a first tour of those wonderful mountains north of the Border. The two cardinal rules to observe are, first, to get into Wester Ross and Sutherland, because the further north you go the greater is the reward, and, secondly, to keep to the west side rather than the east.
I must congratulate you on your promotion, although personally I would prefer York to Chester, but at least the move will bring within range a whole new series of mountains tops and a fresh decade of cairn-building, although I think it unlikely you will want to reproduce Snowdon’s highest inches, which looked quite a mess when I was last there a couple of years ago. However, I hope all goes well in the new job and that the added responsibility leaves you free to get out into the hills as much as ever.
The Lingmell cairn still adorns my desk and remains in pristine condition. Not a stone has fallen from it, not a stone is loose.
Thank you for repeating your kind invitation to me to drop in to see you someday. I rarely turn my face south, but perhaps I will someday. Chester is high on the list of places I must see when the call of the hills becomes less insistent, but, touching wood, that has not happened yet.
With kind regards,
Yours sincerely
AWainwright
38 Kendal Green, KENDAL
26 January 1976
Dear John and Odette and Jamie,
I’m sorry that I cannot let you have a copy of WESTMORLAND HERITAGE. This was a strictly limited issue, one thousand copies only, and I was not even given a simple complimentary copy. In fact, all I have is a printer’s proof. You will be less disappointed when I tell you that the book was priced at 11.50!
Sorry to hear that cairn-building has come to a full stop, at least pending a change of environment. Nine Standards still awaits attention and is, I assure you, a much better subject than Ill Bell. My own Lingmell cairn still stands proudly on the window-sill above my desk, the perfect monument. Not a stone out of place. Not a stone even loose. Better than the original!
Yours sincerely,
AWainwright
c/o The Westmorland Gazette
KENDAL
7th March 1974
Dear Mr Bishop,
Thank you for your very kind letter, which deserved a more prompt reply but unfortunately was held up in the Gazette office and has only just reached me. Sorry about the delay!
I read of your travels from Coast to Coast with considerable interest, and especially so because yours is actually only the second letter I have had that reported completion of the walk, the first coming some months ago. This apparent lack of interest has surprised me, because I receive literally hundreds of letters a year from walkers who have done the Pennine Way. Maybe more will be following in your footsteps this coming summer. The book has in fact sold extremely well.
However, as I say, I was most interested to learn that you had accomplished the walk and am pleased to note that you enjoyed the experience (even the Vale of Mowbray?). Of the two diversions you made, I approve the Ullswater-Howtown alternative, which is pleasanter than my own route over the tops, but am sorry you preferred to follow the Swale downriver from Keld. My own preference here is certainly to cross the hills by way of the old lead mines, a splendid walk of fascinating interest; indeed, apart from the crossing of the Lake District, I considered the Swaledale lead mines and the North York escarpment to be the highlights of the journey.
Congratulations on doing the walk; I hope it is the forerunner of many more expeditions and that you enjoy happy seasons on the fells long into the future. And thank you again for taking the trouble and finding the time to write to me.
Yours sincerely,
AWainwright
c/o The Westmorland Gazette
KENDAL, Westmorland
8th April 1974
Dear Mr Morris,
Thank you for your extremely kind letter and generous comments.
I have noted your ambition to climb all the 214 Lakeland fells, and I have checked your arithmetic and found it to be faultless, but I am mightily perplexed by your intention to repeat the performance 15 times. There must be a reason for this but it eludes me. You would certainly qualify for inclusion in the Guinness Book of Records if you accomplished the feat, but I don’t honestly think you ever will, certainly not from a base as far away as Essex. What I would advise is that you tackle every one of the 214 over the next few years, plus 56 lesser fells I have listed in a book called the The Outlying Fells of Lakeland due to be published in a few weeks, thus making 270 in all. This task is enough to keep you actively engaged until the ’80s, after which there are 560 mountains in Scotland over 3000’ awaiting your attentions.
So while I would not like to discourage your present plan, I believe it to be far too ambitious and virtually impossible of attainment and would strongly suggest the modified target I have mentioned. Whatever you decide, you may be assured of my good wishes. I can think of no better way of spending leisure hours than by walking over the tops according to a set plan and choosing your weather. Days spent thus are all happy ones. I hope you have a great many such, with fair winds and good walking conditions, over the nest few years.
Yours sincerely,
AWainwright
c/o The Westmorland Gazette
KENDAL, Westmorland
4th August 1974
Dear Mr Green,
It was a pleasure to hear from you again, and I really must hasten to congratulate you on your successful assault on the Aonach Eagach ridge – an objective I have had my sights on for donkeys years but never ventured to attempt. I have grown old looking at it from a safe distance, and now the effort is beyond me. You are one up on me there, all right!
As it happens I have already done a drawing of the mountain in advance for the third volume of Scottish drawings, which means, as the first is only now being printed, a wait of another two years, but you can have it, with pleasure, when it becomes available. Since my memory, like my legs, is no longer capable of sustained effort, I beg of you to remind me nearer the time.
There are still stirrings of life in me. In June I climbed two Munros in the Glen Affric area. Easy ones. Nothing like Aonach Eagach.
You must be a proud man. I would be, if I were in your boots.
Yours sincerely,
AWainwright
27th September 1975
Dear Mr Green,
Thank you for your reminder. I expect to be able to let you have Aonach Eagach quite early next summer. I have just got Volume Two off to the printer, having been delayed for more than a year by a desire to do a sort of requiem for dear-departed Westmorland, which too is now finished, so that I am ready for Volume Three and rarin’ to start, although, as I think I told you, the drawing of A.E. and a few others are already done. In two weeks time, I go up to Glencoe to finish off the fieldwork for that area. I go there in some apprehension, actually, having booked a caravan in Glencoe and being unaccustomed to this type of accommodation. But hotel charges are really getting out of hand. I shall know later whether the suffering is worth the saving.
You are obviously a good deal tougher than I am. How often have I looked up lingeringly at A.E. and An Teallach and Liathach and the rest and how much I have read of their terrors for the timid pedestrian, and how often I have turned sadly away. I am getting old. I like a clear and easy path. I will be in touch in a few months if I survive the caravan.
Yours sincerely,
AWainwright
c/o The Westmorland Gazette
KENDAL, Cumbria
14th June 1974
Dear Mrs Deketelaere
Thank you for your very kind and friendly letter of May 30th. It was a pleasure to hear from you, and to learn of some of your expeditions and experiences on the hills. These left me a little envious. It must be great to be only 58. I’ve forgotten; so long ago!
I still have very long legs, but nowadays I would approach Easy Gully on Pavey Ark with considerable apprehension and would certainly need a shove on the awkward step.
North Wales, no, not for me. I admire the mountain scenery but am annoyed and frustrated by the pronunciation of their names. No Blencathras and Glaramaras and Helvellyns in Snowdonia. And too many people go. Two years ago I climbed Y Wydffa from Pen-y-Pass in a procession of at least three hundred others. No, I am turning more and more to Scotland, and especially Sutherland and the Far North. You must go and look at Suilven before you are 70 because you will most certainly want to climb it.
By your reference to Mollie’s husband, I assume you must mean Molly Lefebure’s. He permits his wife to correspond with me.
AWainwright.
AW was also still in correspondence with Len Chadwick, who had been one of his researchers on the Pennine Way. Len got very depressed when he lost his job as a shorthand typist – then later his home. AW tried to cheer him and also find him a job as a youth hostel warden. Len died alone in a home in Oldham in 1987.
c/o Westmorland Gazette
KENDAL
11th January 1974
Dear Mr Chadwick,
Well, thank you for writing, but I must say your letter made rather depressing reading! Hardly the inspiring and optimistic message one expects at the beginning of a New Year. Nothing seems to be going right for you – bad weather, flu, three-day week, notice to quit and nowhere to go, lack of funds, loss of prestige, inability to interest people in brilliant ideas, a spoiled Christmas, and so on. A catalogue of doom.
There must be a glimmer of hope somewhere. The present may be black but the future must surely hold some promise of better times. Are you so depressed and downcast that you haven’t noticed the daffodils coming up in the garden? This has been a bad winter for everyone, and things can only improve. I have never known you so gloomy. Cheer up. Who knows, come springtime you might be right on top of the world again, perhaps married to a wealthy widow, living in a comfortable home with four good meals a day provided, no worries at work, leading fifty-mile marathons at weekends, perhaps seeing the ’latics at Wembley. 1974 could be the best ever.
Me, I have finished the outlying fells and am just putting the finishing touches to a first volume of Scottish mountain drawings.
Next time you write, I hope you have better news for me and are in a much brighter mood. Never give up used to be your motto, and I think that when the sun gets a little warmer and your flu is cured and the curlews come back to the hills, it will be again.
Yours sincerely,
AWainwright
c/o Westmorland Gazette
KENDAL
8th April 1974
Dear Mr Chadwick,
I was glad to have your further note telling me that you had been discharged from hospital and been able, through the kindness of a friend, to get temporary accommodation for a few weeks. This will have relieved your immediate worries and given you a short breathing space for further enquiries which, I hope, will produce a permanent and satisfactory address.
Your infirmity is obviously going to take quite a time to cure, but if you are patient and do as the doctors say there is probably no reason why you should not get back to near-normal after a few months and be able to resume your work or some lighter duties. The 50-mile marathons, however, are out, but I have found myself as much pleasure in pottering around the country, resting often and taking things easy, and I am sure you will, too.
As for sorting your papers, I will do that if they are sent in a parcel, not too big, I hope, because my own quarters are chock a block with maps and books.
The Outlying Fells will be out soon after Easter and I will send you a copy to help pass your time.
Yours sincerely,
AWainwright
AW continued to be upset with the RSPCA, after his generous offer of funding back in 1967 came to nothing, and he was looking round for other animal charities and causes to support instead, but it was not until 1974 that he officially resigned in a furious letter. It was after this letter that he became involved with a local Kendal charity, Animal Rescue, and decided to help their campaign to build their own animal shelter.
38 Kendal Green
Kendal
20th July 1974
Dear Mrs Norton
When I was elected President of the Westmorland Branch of the R.S.P.C.A. at a recent meeting, I accepted the office, but with some reluctance, mainly on three grounds: first, because I have long been of the opinion that the work of the Branch has been impeded by the old age and resulting loss of enthusiasm of some of those in charge, and I am myself afflicted by advancing years and would have preferred the appointment of a younger person; secondly, because I am aware that the serious defects in administration of the Branch have been, and are increasingly, a matter of local concern; and thirdly, because I know, by painful personal experience, that the charges of arrogance and indifference that have gained so much press publicity recently are well founded and by no means confined to Headquarters. However, I accepted office, intending it to be for a short period only, during which time I hoped to be able to restore public confidence and in particular see that much more was done for the welfare of distressed animals – an aspect of the Society’s work in which the record of the Westmorland Branch is deplorable.
You were present at the Branch meeting last Tuesday and witnessed the events. Orderly proceedings were disrupted from the start by the insistence of a paid officer of the Society to make a statement in complete disregard of the Chair, a breach of etiquette I have never known in forty years of continuous committee work. The statement alleged a trivial contravention of the Society’s rules, a technicality, nothing more serious than the dates on which certain named members of the Committee had paid their subscriptions. Rather unfortunately for him, and due to local mismanagement, the officer’s information was inaccurate, as was pointed out to him. Nevertheless, when I asked if he was inferring that those members had no right to serve on the Committee, he affirmed that such was the case. When I asked why their ineligibility had not been mentioned at the meeting at which they were appointed (at which he was present) he could not give a satisfactory answer. When I asked if he was trying to say that those members should not be in the room at all, he said they should not. The members named then left the meeting, as indeed they had no alternative – and these were the same people, all willing helpers, who had organised and run last Saturday’s flag day when other members and office-holders had not even put in an appearance.
I considered the matter had been grossly mishandled and was a calculated affront, planned in advance with the connivance (as I later discovered) of others present. If there had been substance in the objection, surely it would have been kinder and more proper to have explained the position by letter in advance of the meeting and spared the members concerned the humiliation and embarrassment of being taken completely by surprise at their denouement in front of other people. When adult humans behave like this, even the animals have cause to be ashamed of them! So I left the room also, only to be insulted by later entreaties, from the same officer, to return to the meeting with certain named members who had, only a few minutes earlier, been told they had no right to be there. So much for his insistence that the rules be adhered to! Apparently they can be ignored to serve a purpose, as indeed they have been on other occasions. I found the whole business quite sickening.
I have no wish to preside over an assembly where matters are so obviously deliberately going wrong, where mismanagement is actually supported by paid officers of the Society, where some members can sit in silence without protest and see fellow-members shamefully treated, where personal animosities and witch-hunting are practiced, and the welfare of suffering animals neglected as a result. Nor do I think the presence of so many paid officers is at all necessary: I regarded their attendance at this meeting an extravagant waste of money subscribed in good faith for the prevention of cruelty to animals, not to the building up of a bureaucracy bound by red tape and Parkinson’s Law.
As President of the Westmorland Branch, I request you to send a copy of this letter to all persons present at the meeting last Tuesday, including the Society’s officers, and to the Director of the R.S.P.C.A. with a request, which I expect him to ignore, that an investigation be held into the affairs of the Branch and the conduct of his officers at that meeting. When you have done this, then I ask you to report my resignation to your Committee.
Yours faithfully,
AWainwright
In 1971, AW started a correspondence with a dog called Meg who lived in Southport and was apparently a very keen fell walker.
38 Kendal Green
Kendal
5th July 1971
My dear Meg,
I know you never bothered to learn to write, and I am sure you never bothered to learn to read, either. How could you when you have been so busy climbing hills? First things first! But perhaps your old Daddy will tell you what I say.
I think you are a super little girl. You are the tops, really and truly. Yes, a few others have climbed all the 214 hills, but they were big strong men. The youngest I know of was a boy from Carlisle, but he was 16 (sixteen, not six). So you hold the record and ought to get Daddy to write to the papers about it and get you on television. People have got medals for less!!! You have done very well indeed, especially as you have been slowed down so much by your Daddy. It’s time he gave up, at his age. Why, he’s nearly as old as I am!
What next? Well, there are 533 mountains in Scotland higher than Scafell and Helvellyn. I’ve only been up two of them, but if I was a little boy (or girl) of 6 I’d be wanting to get started on them. Learning to read and write can wait until you are really old, say about 30.
It must be awful for you, having your old Daddy with you all the time, crawling along like a snail under all his heavy clothes and boots and not letting you run after the sheep. Can you not get a rope and pull him along faster? Really, these grown-ups! They make you sick …
But never mind, love. You have many years ahead of you. They’ll be happy years if you spend them amongst the hills. I wish I were seven, and you would go with me. What fun we would have, chasing the sheep, and blow your old daddy. He could wait in the car with your Mummy. Wouldn’t it be super?
Love from AW
31st December 1974
Dear Meg,
I know you are a truthful little girl and I believe everything you tell me, but I must confess that your letter the other day, informing me that you had now climbed all the Lakeland fells for a second time, was a great surprise to me. It is a truly remarkable performance. You ought to go down into history with Scott and Amundsen and Drake and Marco Polo. Never before in the records of fellwalking has there been such an achievement as yours. I myself was nearly sixty before I could claim to have climbed all the fells – you were six. And now you have done them all again, and are still only nine and a bit. You make me feel I have wasted my life, but I haven’t really, because as you grow older you will find that there are other things to live for, other interests, other targets to aim for, other ideals, perhaps not so exciting but no less worth while. You must work hard at your lessons and be as good at them as you are at fell-walking. And I hope you will write again sometime and tell me of your progress in other directions.
In the meantime, congratulations on a wonderful performance.
Daddy should pin a row of medals across your chest.
Yours sincerely
AWainwright
Thank you for the lovely photo. Best wishes for 1975
What AW didn’t know was that the man behind the dog letters was her owner Max Hargreave, a chartered accountant in Southport. He didn’t take up fell walking until he was fifty but he became so keen on AW’s guides that he took it upon himself to stand on the top of various Lakeland fells and collect signatures for AW to be awarded an honour. He then sent the petition to the Mayor of Kendal and, lo and behold, in 1967 AW was awarded an MBE.
AW never knew this until he received a letter from a Mrs Sutcliffe of Otley who told him about the petition raised by Mr Hargreave. AW still did not realise he had in fact been in touch with Mr Hargreave for some years – or at least with his dog.
c/o Westmorland Gazette
KENDAL
17th October 1977
Dear Mrs Sutcliffe,
Thank you so much for your kind letter of the 12th.
This clears up a ten-years-old mystery, because I had really no idea of the circumstances leading up to my award of the M.B.E. I remember that, some time before the official notification was received, the Town Clerk of Kendal told me that my name had gone forward as the result of a petition, but when he went on to add that the signatures had been collected by a man on the summit of Great Gable I thought he was pulling my leg good and proper, and not until I received your letter had there been confirmation of this story. Now I learn from you that there was such a man and that he was a Mr Hargreave of Southport, with whom, incidentally, I have never exchanged correspondence. As, at the time, he did not make his identity known to me, obviously preferring to do his good deed anonymously, I think perhaps I should not communicate my thanks at this late stage, but I will keep a note of his address for future reference.
Your letter was intended to give me pleasure. It did just that. Thank you for taking the trouble to write to let me have the information.
Yours sincerely,
AWainwright
AW then heard confirmation from Mr Hargreave himself.
38 Kendal Green
KENDAL, Cumbria
5th November 1977
Dear Mr Hargreave,
Well, thank you for clearing up a ten-year mystery! I had long ago given up all thought of ever finding a solution to it. Then, out of the blue, came the letter from Otley, from a complete stranger, giving me the clues I had thought would elude me forever.
I am glad to have the story straight from the horse’s mouth (if you will forgive the expression) and get the facts right. Apparently the garbled version I got at the time was substantially correct but inaccurate in detail. Now I know exactly how things came to pass, and am at last given the opportunity to express my thanks for all the time and trouble you took on my behalf.
What happens in the case of an award such as this, is that you receive a very official letter from the Prime Minister (dear Harold, in my case) informing you of his intention to include your name in the next Honours List and asking you whether you are prepared to accept. You say yes, and subsequently you are invited to attend at Buckingham Palace for the occasion. But never, either by letter or verbally, are you told why you have been selected. And certainly you are never told on whose recommendation, or how your name came to the P.M.’s notice. So I went, and I got it, and I never knew why for sure until a lady in Otley told me.
Of course I remember Meg, and actually have been expecting to hear from her with a report that she has completed the trinity. Since she first wrote I have had scores of letters from correspondents proudly announcing that they have climbed all the 214 fells, and asking if they have broken a record. I never fail to tell them about little Meg (which seems to deflate their ego because they never write again). I hope she keeps well and still has a fond liking for the high places of Lakeland.
Thanks again, a lot.
Yours sincerely,
AWainwright
At the end ot the Pennine Way Companion, published in 1968, AW promised a free pint to all walkers who had done the whole route and arranged with the landlord of the Border Hotel in Kirk Yetholm to send him the bill every year.
When I interviewed AW at his home in Kendal in 1978, by which time 100,000 copies of the book had been sold, he was signing a cheque for £400 for the previous year’s bar bills. In those ten years a pint had gone up from 1/6 to four shillings, but he said he didn’t regret it. If people had done the 270 miles, they deserved it. But when he completed A Coast to Coast Walk, published in 1973, he said there would be no treats this time.
He personally was not all that thrilled by the Pennine Way as a walk. But he always kept up the payments on the Pennine Way, almost to the end of his life, which meant he was continually getting letters about it – usually thanking him for his generosity.
… You are very welcome to the pint, and well earned it. In fact, being a bit cynical about the Pennine Way (believing there is much better walking to be found elsewhere in this fair country of ours), I consider that anyone who walks the Pennine Way from end to end and lives to tell the tale, deserves shares in a brewery.
Yours sincerely,
AWainwright
Miles Rhodes of Moulton, Northampton, wrote in 1975 to confess that he had rather cheated when claiming his free pint. He had done the walk in two stages – first half in 1971 and second in 1972, not realising the free pint was only for those who had walked it all in one go.
c/o Westmorland Gazette
KENDAL
22nd October 1975
Dear Mr Rhodes,
Thank you for a delightful letter, which I appreciate greatly. It has more than earned you absolution from your innocent mistake in claiming a free drink at Kirk Yetholm. Indeed, so generous are your comments that a block of shares in a brewery might have been a more adequate reward. Certainly you need have no further qualms of conscience. Your comments on my books are so generous that I feel I am the gainer from this brief acquaintance.
Although there is a note of pessimism in your letter about your future walking prospects, I am sure that if you are capable of walking the Pennine Way, as you have proved, you will have before you many more happy seasons in the open countryside. I hope you have, and that you enjoy fair weather, pleasant company and rewarding experiences on all your expeditions.
Thank you again for finding the time and taking the trouble to write to me. And for doing it so nicely.
Yours sincerely,
AWainwright
Meanwhile, AW was still receiving occasional letters from his old friends from the past, such as Bob Alker, whom he knew from his days in the Blackburn Treasurers’ office.
… I am pleased to learn of your success as a superb photographer and lecturer. You ought to get up to Glencoe or Torridon or Sutherland with your camera. These are now my favourite stamping grounds since inundating the Lake District with fellwalkers: the mountains here have become crawling ant-hills. Caledonia stern and wild – this is the place to be.
It is distressing to find you still belly-aching about Great End 8. I intend to make the necessary alteration the last thing I do before I lay down my pen for good, in about twenty years time. Tell your missus to let me know when you die. I might be able to attend the funeral, but I doubt it. I fear I will be much too busy, but at least I will be reminded of Great End 8.
If there’s any of the old gang left, apart from Maudsley and you and me and possibly Arnold Haworth, do please give them my regards if you see them.
AW
[At bottom of this letter he has sketched a ‘before’ and ‘after’ self portrait.]
c/o Westmorland Gazette
KENDAL, Cumbria
24th May 1976
Dear Philip,
The Westmorland Gazette have passed on to me your very kind letter of a month ago. I am sorry about the long delay in replying, which has been caused by absences from home (working on location).
I found all your comments interesting, and it is good to know that you have taken up fellwalking in earnest and already have a commendable record of expeditions to your credit. In a way, I envy you your early start; mine came much later in life. Like you, I have enjoyed all my days on the hills, my one sad regret being that circumstances prevented me from tackling all the Scottish Munros: now, alas, such a feat is quite beyond my powers, and time is running out for me. But what a target for a young man looking for fresh fields to conquer (or hills to climb)!
The main purpose of your letter was to arrange a meeting, but this, I am sorry to say, is just not on. I find myself overwhelmed by similar requests to such an extent that I have reluctantly had to call a halt to interviews in order to concentrate on my books without interruption. As I said, there is not much time left for me to do all I want to. So, at least until I have laid down my pen for ever, I must ask to be excused.
Thank you for writing to me. I hope you enjoy many many more seasons of happy fellwandering and mountain climbing.
Yours sincerely,
AWainwright
In a letter to Roger Elsom of Southampton, an Ordnance Survey employee, who had just done his first long distance Lakeland walk – from Thirlspot to Ambleside, via Helvellyn, Nethermost Pike, Dollywaggon, Fairfield and Great Rigg – AW revealed something he would liked to have done in life.
c/o Westmorland Gazette
KENDAL, Cumbria
8th September 1976
Dear Mr Elsom,
Thank you so much for your very kind letter.
I am always interested to learn of the reactions of anyone sampling the Lakeland Fells for the first time, and, with never an exception, I find that all newcomers to the district seem to fall immediately under the spell and thereafter become confirmed addicts to fellwalking. The route you chose for your initiation was a good one, lengthier in fact than anything I have ever accomplished in the course of a day’s walk along the tops, and the stage seems set for similar and equally enjoyable excursions in the future. But don’t expect fine weather every time! It has been known to rain up here.
I was especially interested to hear of your association with the Ordnance Survey, in praise of which I was never more sincere. I admire their work immensely, being lost in admiration of all their work. Their maps are, as ever, my favourite reading. Only once or twice have I had occasion to question their accuracy, these instances being quite trivial except for one bad boob on the Howgill Fells. I think, if I had my time to do over again, I would try my best to get on the staff. But I might have let the team down, for I could not have contributed more to the general excellence of the maps. They are a fine example of dedicated effort and meticulous accuracy. My private sanctum at home is crammed to the ceiling with Ordnance maps, most of the them dog-eared with overmuch use but all loved and respected and handled with reverence.
I wish you many many more happy seasons of fellwalking, and thank you again for finding the time and taking the trouble to write to me.
Yours sincerely,
AWainwright