New Hardback
The Pennine Way – England’s first continuous long-distance path for walkers – stretches for 270 miles along the length of the Pennines. Inaugurated in 1965, it has become one of the most popular long-distance footpaths in Britain. For those starting from the south, it runs from Edale in Derbyshire through the old West and North Ridings of Yorkshire, Westmorland and Cumberland (now Cumbria) and Northumberland before reaching its northern terminus at Kirk Yetholm, just over the Scottish border.
Wainwright’s handwritten guide to the route, Pennine Way Companion, with its magnificent, detailed maps and, occasionally, tongue-in-cheek text, was first published in 1968.
The revisions to this new edition of Pennine Way Companion have been undertaken by Chris Jesty, who assisted Wainwright with the maps of his last two large-format books, Wainwright’s Favourite Lakeland Mountains and Wainwright in the Valleys of Lakeland.
Chris trained as a cartographer with the Ordnance Survey, and Wainwright himself said, not long before he died, that if ever his guides were to be revised, Chris Jesty should be given the job.
This new edition has been brilliantly revised and updated by Chris Jesty to meet the goal Wainwright set for the original edition: ‘to enable walkers to follow the Pennine Way without putting a foot wrong; or, if this aim is too wildly ambitious, at least to ensure that they do not go seriously astray, or trespass, or lose valuable time on false trails.’
In 2023, Chris Jesty, then over 80 years old, revisited parts of the Pennine Way and made important updates that have been incorporated into this edition of the guide.
The publication of this edition of Pennine Way Companion coincides with the 60th Anniversary of the inauguration of the Pennine Way on 24th April 1965.
This new edition also includes extracts from recently discovered letters that Alfred Wainwright wrote to the two landlords of the Border Hotel, Kirk Yetholm from 1968 to 1986, which tell the intriguing story of the Pennine Way pint that Wainwright offered to walkers who completed the walk in one expedition