Guest review by Nick Hodges: MEMOIRS OF A FELLWANDERER by Alfred Wainwright

  

"... an easy ability and simplicity of style; his delightful pen and ink illustrations of mountain and moorland ..."

Photograph with king parrot by Judith Ramage

Nick Hodges is an Englishman living in Australia. He is a teacher and freelance journalist concentrating on Travel and Nature. His work has been published in Britain's Sunday Times, The Times Educational Supplement and the Tourist Board magazine, In Britain. Down Under, his work has appeared in leading newspapers, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and The Sun Herald. He has recently completed 20 years of writing a monthly Nature Notes article for a Sydney newspaper. He has designed and taught adult courses on The Birds of Sydney.

Wainwright: to those in the know the name is synonymous with fell (or mountain) walking and his guides to Lakeland, the Coast to Coast Path and the Pennine Way are legendary.

AW - as he is often known - died in 1991 shortly before his Memoirs of a Fellwanderer was published.

Like me, his walking guide books are getting on in years. But whenever I visit the north of England and if the weather half co-operates, the need to climb to high places grips me and so off I go with the appropriate Wainwright volume in my hand.

It's AW's way with words; an easy ability and simplicity of style; his delightful pen and ink illustrations of mountain and moorland; Cold Pike and High Pike; Dove Crag and Loft Crag.

Wainwright grew up in Blackburn, Lancashire, where he worked in local government before moving both job and home to the Lake District with which he'd fallen in love at first sight.

Subsequently he came to know the paths and the fells like nobody else. In his Memoirs he explains how he took to drawing, writing and publishing his works and the many years of constructing what must be his greatest achievement: the seven volumes of the Pictorial Guide to the Lakeland Fells.

And Wainwright himself? His Memoirs indicate a man of both patience and impatience. Perhaps a grumpy old man? 'I suffer fools badly', he writes. When his first wife left he says, 'I never saw her again. I was not greatly concerned'. However, Betty, his second wife of 21 happy years, who writes the foreword to the Memoirs, sings his praises: he was 'a sensitive man hiding himself behind a gruff exterior'. Certainly he could be self-deprecating: 'I received an award from the Queen: she didn't know the reason for it either'.

AW disliked people walking in groups for the noise and the damage they caused to the trails. Coming across a single file of ramblers on a narrow mountain path he would acknowledge the first and then, as he passed the others one at a time, would studiously ignore them.

When recognised on the fells he would often deny his identity. Groups always received a 'no'. Single walkers had a better chance - especially if young and female.

Walking alone was his way; nearly always the only way. He distinguishes between loneliness and aloneness. The fells were all he needed: his 'silent friends'.

It's all in the Memoirs.

Also, how he hated gadgets and all things mechanical. He distrusted cameras even though he used one.

Among Wainwright's other interests were cats and Coronation Street and, perhaps most importantly, the charity, Animal Rescue. As for books: 'maps have always been my favourite literature'. Between completing one of his seven pictorial guides and starting the next, he writes, 'I paused only to refill my pipe'. All of his spare time and energy were needed for the research and compilation of these pocket-sized volumes.

He never missed a day's work and was never ill. His excellent health he believes was as a result of not having owned a vehicle, preferring to walk whenever possible; yet he smoked 'like a chimney'.

Nearing the end of his Memoirs AW lets off steam about the state of things. He cannot understand those who suffer from depression, bemoans the fact that the Lake District is crowded with caravans - and visitors of the 'wrong' kind; has a good old rant suggesting what we might today call right wing views. And his preferred punishment for football hooligans? I'm not writing it here: suffice to say it makes the blood run perilously close to cold.

But then he relents with a complete turnabout extolling the virtues and beauty of the world: 'this book is not a personal lament but a thanksgiving'.

Most walking guides praise that which they promote and gloss over the hard bits. Not Wainwright. He prefers Lakeland walking to the Pennine Way where, 'the cold so shrivelled some of the body organs necessary for a full and enjoyable life that I feared they were perished for ever'.

But I digress. That's from another book by Wainwright. The quotation is here simply because I like it.

Right now I feel that need: it's time to wax my boots, take a guide book and head for the hills. I'll go alone of course - but I know AW will be with me.

Memoirs of a Fellwanderer is published by Frances Lincoln.

See also Nick's review of This Birding Life by Stephen Moss

WR note: As well as his treasured books and his influence on countless fellwalkers, Alfred Wainwright's great legacy to the book world is the Wainwright Prizes, now the world's foremost award for nature and conservation writing. Established in 2013 as a single award, it's now expanded to include various categories, including children's books and illustration. We've featured several shortlisted and winning books on the blog and will soon post a review of the 2025 Wainwright Prize Book of the Year, Raising Hare by Chloe Dalton.