Pennines Mountain

This is Great Britain. Over a third of our country is made up of mountains.

Around half the population of England lives in the shadow of this vast northern range of hills.

I'm going to be exploring them from the inside...

Watch your head!

'..Discovering their fabulous mineral wealth

'and celebrating them in traditional mountain song.'

THEY YODEL

These are the mountains that built Britain's greatest industries,

but what do they offer us today?

They are the Pennines.

It's a massive thing, the Pennine range - 268 miles straight up

the rump of the country - from the Derbyshire peaks, all the way to the Scottish Borders.

They call it the backbone of England,

and like some Thai masseur, I'm going to trample all over it.

So, I thought I'd better get my hands on some reliable transport -

a worthy and parti-coloured pack horse, with a folding roof and room for a couple of saucepans.

If you can't overtake 'em, join 'em.

Into second gear, very good.

No power steering, it's all brute force.

Come on, let's get up the hill!

Come, come on, come on!

We're gonna make it, we are.

Oh, no, I think we can get a little bit more out of it. Ah!

We've done it! We're round the corner.

Yes, we did. We may not scale giddy heights but just driving around here is going to be an adventure.

Welcome to Bottom Gear.

The Pennines begin with the Cheviot Hills in the Scottish Borders.

They then snake south through the Cumbrian Fells, the Lancashire Moors and the Yorkshire Dales.

And down to the more populous end, where cities like Manchester

and Sheffield crowd in on the Peak District.

It's a lovely place,

the natural beauty so exquisite it's hard to believe that millions

live so close... until you get on the roads.

We get a lot of friendly motorists who come behind us in a queue.

They love the camper van so much, they can't bear to do anything

except just get behind it and admire it.

CLATTERING

Wonder what that was?

Perhaps it's time to pull over to answer an unavoidable question about this place.

You may be wondering whether the Pennines are mountains at all, especially if you're Swiss.

You'll probably be thinking, "What mountains, what is he talking about? These are

"are nothing, this is the pimples off the goose."

But, Swiss people, you may be interested to know we have laws

in Britain, and the Countryside And Rights Of Way Act 2000

have gone to the trouble of defining what a mountain is, which is land above 600 metres in height.

That makes the Pennines into a range of mountains.

And 600 metres is a proper climb, or, at least, it is if you do it in triplicate.

I want to sample a famous Pennine mountain marathon.

'It's called the Three Peaks Challenge, and it involves a close

'relationship with three of Yorkshire's biggest hills.'

Towering Ingleborough,

ominous Whernside,

and craggy Pen-y-Ghent.

They're each around 700 metres high.

And they are quite difficult to tell apart, but that's because they were all formed out of

the same alternating layers of limestone and gritstone, which made these gigantic steps.

The challenge is extremely well-regulated, and only a bit like old-fashioned hard labour.

'You have to complete the trek in under 12 hours.

'And first, you have to clock in.'

-BELLS SOUNDS

-It's upside down as well.

'For myself, I'm making a One Peak Challenge.

'I'm only doing Pen-y-Ghent. This is not just because I'm congenitally lazy, but because I have rather

'foolishly agreed to tag along with a crack team from the British Army Military College at Harrogate.

'The Army uses the Pennines to toughen up the already outstandingly fit.

'Civilians like me would normally complete this 26-mile long mountain challenge in about ten hours.

'But Sergeant Robertson has a more ambitious target for his prospective soldiers.'

Hopefully, with the guys I've got today, we can do it in maybe six and a half, seven. We'll see how it goes.

But in order to do that, you'll have to set quite a heavy pace.

We'll march up the hills and then we'll run along

the plateaus and we'll run around... we'll run down the hills.

Quite a good one for the young lads who

have just learnt map reading. It's good to put their skills into practice.

But for someone who's not ready for it, and not trained for it, it will be very hard.

'Will it? Well, I wonder who he has in mind, then?

'I don't want to be the gormless one who lets down the troop.'

We're at a fairly casual pace at the moment, aren't we?

-This isn't the pace we're going to do it at?

-No.

Every time that I watch An Officer And A Gentleman or Saving Private Ryan,

there's always a fierce sergeant figure who comes in,

-starts yelling and they end up having a fight...

-Yeah.

Is that what, is that what he's like, then?

-He's nothing like, no.

-You can speak freely to me.

-No, honestly, no.

-He can't hear us talking.

He doesn't come in and scream in people's faces?

-No, he's a good bloke.

-Is he?

No, I'm not just saying that!

I can't keep up already!

'Within ten months, some of my companions today could be in combat in Iraq or Afghanistan.

'For them, being fit is part of being ready.

'The Pennines is considered a proper mountain challenge,

'and I think I'm beginning to agree.

'In under an hour, we'd raced almost to the summit,

'well ahead of even Sergeant Robertson's punishing schedule.

'I made it, but only just.

'Doing this sort of training requires a proper sense of commitment.'

-OK, thanks very much. I think I'm gonna...

-Yeah, no problems.

I want to be, I want to desert now.

I'm going to go to one of those clinics and get

my legs made a bit longer, because it helps if you've longer legs.

-You're running this bit, then?

-Yeah.

-OK.

-See you later on.

-See you later on.

Thank goodness they've gone!

Oh, well, look at them running off.

But I get the chance, which they didn't have, to look around and take in

what is an extraordinary landscape.

It has a magnificent,

timeless quality.

We're not really on a very high mountain, but the perspective on the world changes almost immediately.

That was a mountain,

and it feels like I climbed it.

It's not exactly great weather,

but it's magnificent weather,

even on a day like today - October, great clouds coming over, which would be somehow

irritating if you were in London, have a certain sort of grandeur.

You can see

for miles and miles and miles, as Pete Townsend once expressed it.

I'd better go and clock off, I don't want them sending out the Army to find me.

I've bailed out now because I've got other peaks

to challenge, including the wild and stormy highest top of the Pennines, and for that I need to be prepared.

Can I have my little card, please?

-Just been on the peaks?

-Oh, yes.

-Thank you very much, there it is.

-So I clock out now?

'Alas there's no One Peak club to join, but at the cafe I had a bit of vital shopping to do.'

Apparently, you can lose a vast amount of your body heat

through your head. It's very important to find the right hat that doesn't make you look...

..Pillock.

I think that's good, don't you? That's the best so far.

I don't know, I'm gonna freeze to death, I can tell.

'I've left the Army to their business as I'm in search of what

'has, for thousands of years, been one of the most valuable resources of this region - water.'

To look for it, I'm going 70 miles north to Cumbria and up Cross Fell.

Cross Fell stands at 2,930 feet.

Outside of the Lake District, it's the highest mountain in England,

and it is in a notoriously weather-beaten place.

The Helm wind was so fierce that a local bishop decided to try to

lessen the demonic power of it by erecting a cross on the summit.

'We may be in a heavily-populated region, but we don't have to go far

'to feel that we've got away from it all.'

Daniel Defoe,

the author of Robinson Crusoe, undertook a great tour of Great Britain and Ireland,

and he described these high peaks as "little more than a howling wilderness".

You know, I think he was probably right.

'But what I'm looking for is here somewhere, right at the top of Cross Fell,

'in this strange, wet, spongy summit, where the clouds congregate, and the River Tees begins.'

Well, there we are, exactly,

somewhere or other.

'In ancient times, Cross Fell was known as Fiends Fell because it was

'believed to be the haunt of evil spirits.

'I can't think why.'

Whoa!

look at this! Wow!

There's an awful lot of water up here.

Cross Fell is a major British watershed.

Ugh! Solid ground.

Now...

this is it.

This must be Tees Head and, of course, I'm not lost at all.

All I have to do is follow the stream as it makes its way down and under the cloud cover

and, eventually, I'd find myself in Middlesborough.

Or perhaps Newcastle, because two more of Britain's most powerful and

industrialised rivers - the River Tyne and the River Wear - also begin near the top of Cross Fell.

It's because of the height of this range that these tiny streams start to pick up power and begin a journey

which means a lot to the flat lands down below.

Only ten miles downstream, the river is already transformed.

Here, at a high-force waterfall, the Tees suddenly plunges 70 feet through a rocky bottleneck.

It's easy to see how the sheer power of this charging river became the motor that drove the great steel

and iron foundries of Middlesbrough,

90 miles from Cross Fell at the junction with the North Sea.

Looking at this incredible mess, it's difficult to think it grew

out of that original sustainable renewable energy source - water.

Nothing could be more life enhancing and life supporting than a mountain stream.

'And as I continue my journey, I'm heading for a well-known salmon leap.'

Salmon, making their way upstream to spawn, have to jump these cascading rapids.

I've been waiting here now for nearly ten minutes,

and, er...

this is actually what I hate about fishing.

I haven't seen one, but I have got a cold arse.

It's not there.

'I'm told the trick is to know where to look, and whatever you do,

'don't look away.'

ONLOOKERS CHEER

'I have to see one jump, even if my bottom freezes to the rock.'

Did you catch that at all?

No.

GRIFF LAUGHS

When the salmon gets into the stream,

she whisks like this, as hard as she can with her tail, to try and get up, up, up.

But you certainly begin to will the salmon to make it, it seems such an extraordinary effort.

Very exciting,

but you missed it.

Oh!

'Everything comes to those who sit around for hours getting slightly damp.'

There!

Yeah, good. Hooray!

We got one.

Well, I'm full of the warm and inspiring joy that comes now from seeing nature do things.

Just finding salmon here at all seems a little miracle to me,

given that we human beings have used our time in this area

to take absolute control of this water.

'I'm going up to look at Britain's first industrial river, the Derwent,

'from the air, in the steady hands of pilot Chris Ruddy.

'This is going to be a little miracle, too.

'It's a bouncy day,

'but I'm sure we'll stay up...

'..Somehow.

'It's certainly worth it.'

Magnificent, like a work of art.

It feels like a natural world, but it's actually a world which has been

controlled, manicured and managed.

Chris, where are we heading now?

We're just now approaching the top of the Derwent Valley.

This river beneath us is the Derwent here.

'This river played an important part in starting a small eruption called the Industrial Revolution.

'In 1771, Richard Arkwright's Cromford Mill was built on a tributary of the River Derwent.

'It was the world's first water-powered cotton factory.

'And the Derwent has been a good and faithful servant,

'not only powering industry, but also watering its workforce.

'As the cities of Sheffield, Nottingham, Derby and Leicester grew, the Derwent Valley

'was seen as the perfect place to store their drinking water.'

Many people say that oil is black gold.

Perhaps the real gold is water.

Between 1901 and 1943, three dams - Howden, Derwent and Ladybower - were built.

Controversially, two entire villages, Derwent and Ashopton, were sacrificed to the reservoirs

and lie submerged at the bottom of these waters.

In fact, until quite recently, when there were times of drought,

you could actually see one of the church spires sticking above the water as the water receded, yes.

Ladybower Dam also has a celebrated place in military history.

It was used as a dress rehearsal for a theatre of war.

The RAF's Dambuster Squadron came here to practise dropping the famous bouncing bomb.

Personally, I remember it well.

What a great film it was, what a marvellous moment.

'I must have seen it about 50 times.

'In May 1943, and just about every Sunday afternoon

'for the next 20 years, the Dambusters successfully breached two German hydro-electric dams.'

They've done it! They've got Eder Dam as well.

It was a famous victory.

But long before man built the dams and the factories and the mills, water was already transforming

this landscape, albeit a little more slowly.

During the Ice Age, ice one-kilometre thick scoured the soil up here, exposing the limestone.

Rain and frost got into the weaknesses in the rock and cut intricate channels and courses.

It created these natural, pocked limestone features.

This fascinating phenomenon is here because of the amount of rain that falls on these hills.

It is rare, beautiful and closely protected by a public body, Natural England.

Paul Evans is the man in charge of preserving them.

This is the famous limestone pavement.

This is the famous limestone pavement. If you haven't been here

or the west coast of Ireland, you will never have seen.

It's a very, very bizarre thing.

-What causes it?

-Well, it's a combination of ice and water.

Glaciers, about 12,000 years ago, stripped the surface off, so removed all the soil, all the vegetation.

And then 12,000 years of basically dissolving by rainwater.

It's internationally important, because it's incredibly rare. It's our rainforest, you could say.

-It's of that sort of rarity.

-Is it really?

'In the little channels and holes in the rock, the shade and the humidity

'creates a microclimate, which encourages lime-loving grasses and rare plants to flourish.'

There's some beautiful things growing in there.

Historically, this plateau was on a major drovers' route.

Hundreds of thousands of cattle used to pass along, grazing around the pavement as they went.

But over time, the cows have been largely replaced by sheep,

which, being sheep, have been snacking on the wild flowers.

This simple change is altering the fragile balance of the habitat.

Today, Paul and his Natural England team are on a mission -

to return this area to the wild meadow it once was.

So, they've been paying farmers to replace some of those pesky sheep with these eco-friendly lawnmowers.

I think we can walk on a bit now.

-OK...

-Here they come, here they come. Look out, it's a stampede!

-I'm going to use you as a human shield.

-Fair enough.

'Farmer Bill Grayson looks after this herd of distinctive, and rather frisky, blue-grey cows.'

What is their specific quality, then, for being here?

They're very efficient converters of poor quality grazing.

They will convert it into meat or milk.

Oh, I see, but as cows, what they require is a fair amount of looking after.

Whereas sheep can be left to, sort of...

-That's the beauty of these cows. They look after themselves.

-Have you seen a difference?

Yes, a huge difference. I like to come back every spring, and see, you know, all the flowers

that weren't there when we started, you know, beginning to thrive and spread.

These limestone pavements are just one of the mind-boggling

geological formations you find up here in the Pennines.

They're part of what they call Karst landscape.

It's the limestone.

The rain falls and dissolves the stone, making it into an acid, which cuts more stone away

as it dribbles through the cracks and the fissures.

The process has created the ideal site for a little experiment I have in mind.

I am walking up here to find a particularly

large section of limestone wall like a huge rock amphitheatre.

This is Malham Cove. Spectacular, isn't it? It looks

like it might be a quarry, but it's an entirely natural phenomenon.

A perfect place, I think, to meet an expert, the British expert,

in a particular form of mountain communication.

She's called

Greta Elkin and...

DISTANT SINGING

I think that might be her. Yodel-eh-ee-ooh.

-Yodel-ee-ooh.

-Oooh-ooh...

Hm, now, I've often thought I've got an undeveloped talent for yodelling

and now was my chance to test it.

Country singer, Greta Elkin, is Britain's top yodeller.

So, I thought this cliff would be a good place to test the power of my

own yodel against Greta's professional and highly trained throat.

Now, my mum used to embarrass me...

-Right.

-..When I was a kid.

She'd arrive in somebody else's house, and she'd always walk in

and go, "Yoo-hoo", like that,

because that was a sort of signal between certain women in Epping.

-That she was here.

-Is that, do you think, how it started, yodelling?

Well, it started, I suppose, in the mountains.

That's how they communicated with each other.

One would stand on one mountain, one on another, and they'd go something like.

SHE YODELS

Yodelling is a Swiss invention.

Alpine shepherds first used it to communicate over mountain tops.

It was later adopted by American cowboys on the range and then, of course, by country and

western singers, which is where Greta first heard it as a child.

Most of the yodel's with your throat. A falsetto.

Le-oo, oh-oo, oh-oo, oh-oo...

But I just go. I just go, you-oo, you-oo, you-oo...

Yeah, but you've got the little falsetto there

-and a lot of people don't have that.

-Have I?

You have, Griff, you really have.

-So what, what, that is the secret of getting a bit of a yodel going?

-Falsetto voice.

-It was time to go head to head, well, yodel to yodel, really, with Greta..

-Le-eeee...

You-oo-yodel-ee-oo...

Absolutely nothing, not a solitary echo.

Ee-ee-ee... Ep-de-de-deeee...

My yodel had been outclassed.

So, respectfully, I left Greta down below and, like a lonely goat herd,

went up to watch the sun set over Malham Cove.

Thousands of years ago, a huge waterfall to rival Niagara

plunged over this cliff, but the water was diverted and the exposed rock was left standing here.

My journey is about to take an unexpected turn, in that

there is a whole mountain landscape that I've not yet explored at all.

It's time I followed the route that Pennine mountain water inevitably tends to take.

I'm travelling on to Derbyshire, to caving country.

Quite unexpectedly, there are miles of hollows,

chambers and subterranean passages under these gently swelling hills, and I am going into the honeycomb.

So, what is the name of this cave here?

-We are standing at the entrance of Giants Hole in Derbyshire.

-Right.

'Cave explorer Dave Nixon is taking me into the deepest cave system in the country.'

I like these helmets cos as soon as I put a helmet on, I instantly bash

my head against something, cos you can't see where you're going, so you go, "Oh, doing, doing!"

Just what an odd shape you are to want to go crawling around in tiny holes.

-Well, we're all the same size when we're lying down.

-I see.

-Come on.

'The rock is carboniferous limestone.

'It is actually made out of millions of tiny sea creatures.

'Their skeletons were deposited on a seabed and then squashed to make stone.'

It's quite a black hole down there.

Yep, that's where we're going, deeper into Giants.

'The same acid process that produced Malham Cove and the limestone pavements

'has opened an extraordinary network of elaborate tunnels and cathedral-like chambers.'

-Oh...

-Watch your head.

'Our mountains have long been conquered and mapped on the surface,

'but down below there still remains dramatic undiscovered country.

'This is Britain's last uncharted mountain territory.'

Essentially, you go cave exploring?

There's 10% of cavers who actively go out, trying to seek new places, try to look for, you know,

to explore, to go, to push the frontiers to pioneer.

We'd reached our destination safely, a cave called Base Camp Chamber.

This is, if you like, a little antechamber.

Is it? A mere cupboard under the stairs as far as things go.

-Absolutely.

-There are much bigger ones. How incredible.

But you come to bits where, you know, you suddenly have to

tie on a rope, and then start going down into the darkness?

Uh-huh, yeah.

'In fact, less than two miles away from where we're standing,

'below these Derbyshire mountains,

Dave Nixon had recently made an astonishing discovery.

'It's a cave he called

'Titan and it's the largest underground chamber in Britain.'

Titan is one of my discoveries. I'm very proud of it.

-How big is it, then?

-Really big.

It's just about the height of the London Eye, about 145 metres.

-How extraordinary to find yourself a great big cave.

-Yeah, it was a special day.

-Cave exploration is more akin to mountaineering.

-Old-fashioned mountaineering.

-Yes.

It doesn't matter, there are no ethics, the whole idea is just to get there, and get back

in one piece and tell a great story at the end.

I'm going to slip off...

'It was time for us to get back in one piece.'

It's an extraordinary experience to go underground like that, really.

There's something rather spooky about it, isn't there?

The idea that somehow deep below the earth are these, these great empty spaces.

I'm quite pleased to be out of there.

Of course, some people went underground in these

hills to do rather more than admire the stalactites.

I'm heading to Weardale, the heart of mountain mining in the Pennines,

because it's not just water that runs through these rocks, there are other riches, too.

Since Roman times, huge quantities of lead have been extracted from these metal-rich hillsides.

As late as the 1900s, the Weardale Valley was one of the world's most important lead fields.

Nowadays, all that's left are the museums that commemorate the Cumbrian mining bonanza.

While digging out the lead, though, the Weardale miners also uncovered a fabulous range of mineral deposits,

like these on display here in the Killhope mining museum.

Some of these minerals can be cut down and polished to make gemstones, not rubies and diamonds perhaps,

but they certainly make an impressive collection.

Yeah, most of the minerals here seem to have been thrown away, things that got in the way of lead mining.

Elizabeth Taylor would go mad for some of this stuff.

'But as time went on, most of the minerals were found to have more practical uses.'

Put into toothpaste, in aerosol propellants, in etching glass, in glazes

It's as if the Pennines yielded up every conceivable form of mineral.

'Which somebody eventually found a use for.

'Jimmy Craggs was one of the last of the Weardale miners.

'He remembers the way they'd discover a hollow in the face.'

-Suddenly, the drill would go into a hole and you'd think "Oops, there's a hole!"

-Yeah.

-Right.

There's some goodies in there.

-Right.

-Unbelievable, just...

-And then...

-You could walk in it!

-Could you?

-You could walk in it, yeah.

And inside, was it all covered in crystal?

Yep, staggering, the size of it, the amount of crystals.

I think most people would just be thinking of the pound notes

they could get in their back pocket, really, like, you know.

-Were all the crystals all shiny or where they covered in..?

-Oh, yeah. No, no they were nice and clean.

Right.

Have you discovered other things down in the mine, gold?

-No, and if I had I wouldn't tell you, would I?

-OK!

The miners did often illicitly pocketed the goodies, but it wasn't necessarily for profit.

These fabulous creations, works of folk art, are called spar boxes.

They're the miners' equivalent of the sailor's ship in a bottle.

These spar boxes take their name from the spar minerals like

calcite and fluorspar they are decorated with.

They are an ornate way for a miner to show off his collection and his craftsmanship.

The most famous one of all depicts a fantasy mineral-encrusted Victorian street scene.

This is the Bernini of spar boxes, the Egglestone box.

It's an absolute masterpiece of construction.

Local miner Joseph Egglestone completed this fluorite, calcite and quartz decorated box in 1904.

It is the largest of these spar boxes ever constructed.

Looking inside, the dim lights reproduce the feel of being right inside the mountain.

The rise and fall of mining left deep scars all over this northern

Pennine landscape, but slowly they're healing.

The spoil heaps are getting overgrown,

the tips are gently blending into the hillside.

But look closely and you can still find the evidence not just of the industry, but also of the commerce

and the way that the Pennine range, such a huge obstacle in itself, was crossed by ancient paths.

These are packhorse trails, trade routes, and the HGVs of that period ran on just a single horsepower.

I need to get closer to that old industrial landscape... Yippee-kyay!

..To understand how trade and industry first saddled up in this mountain region.

It's time to ride the packhorse trail.

But first, I have to choose my steed.

Essentially a horse is a very large quadruped with excessively big teeth.

They're nervous things,

I always think. They always look to me, horses, like they are not quite happy about something.

I don't know what it is. Every time I come up to a horse, all the horse ever does is go.

Look at this, this is the most placid horse in the history of horses.

For some reason it's called Tyson,

but I'm sure that's just a misnomer of some kind.

Want to stroke him on his neck?

Ah, that's it Tyson, you're a monster.

Look at you rolling your eyes at me already. How many hands is he?

-He's about 16 one hands.

-And how many legs?

-Four.

-Four legs.

Come on, come on, come on!

'You might have gathered I'm not a natural horseman. Tyson has too.'

Ho, go on, that's it.

You can see now we're moving off along the track.

Sometimes, it would take them years to get the goods delivered.

Ho, off we go, go on, walk on.

Oh, no. Oh, come on, Tyson.

It would take them centuries, in fact, to get this stuff across the Pennines.

Oh, all right, we'll go this way, I don't mind.

I don't mind, it makes no odds to me.

Whoa!

Accompanying me is Christine Peat, who uses these routes regularly.

Go on, Tyson.

This is the Pennine Bridleway.

-Right.

-You can go all the way down to Derbyshire that way and all the way up to Hexham this way.

-So...

-Some of the busy routes would have a thousand horses a day passing along them.

'Before the canals and the railways came here,

'these giant convoys of ponies would ferry not only industrial products,

'but also everyday goods, like salt, milk and coal,

'up and over the Pennines.'

Chris, we're up here, this is literally the high road, isn't it?

-Yes, it is.

-Why didn't they go down in the valley?

Bottom of the valleys was usually very wet and waterlogged, and the other reason is said to be that

there were more hiding places for the nasty robbers down there.

Whereas up here, you could see anybody that was going to ambush you and steal your valuable cargo.

Tyson is not very interested in our conversation. He's going home backwards!

Don't pull him back.

He's a concern, he's going backwards. This is not very clever. We're not in a circus, Tyson.

'Each horse could carry over 16 stone of goods and still be strong enough

'to get up the very steepest bits of the mountain.'

A lot of lime went down to Cheshire and the salt came up, and that's where you get the

-typical old-fashioned names for these routes, like Limesgate, Limesway, the Salt Way, the Salt Road.

-Yes.

It was used for lime going out, and salt coming in.

These once busy trails were ridden right up until the early 1900s, but now they are largely neglected.

Trains, lorries and cars use the easier routes along the valley floors.

It wasn't until the 1960s, though, that the highest reaches of

the Pennines were finally bridged and on an unimaginable scale.

Six lanes of tarmac tearing through the heart of the high moorland.

The M62 is Britain's mountain motorway.

It's the highest in the country, and a marvel of civil engineering.

They even built a footbridge to let walkers on the Pennine Way ramble on, uninterrupted.

Inspector Phil Bromley of the Yorkshire Traffic Police took me out on patrol.

-This is a really major artery now, isn't it?

-Yeah, that's right, yeah.

-The amount of traffic coming.

-Oh, it's somewhere in the region of 110,000 plus vehicles a day.

And what sort of height do we get to here?

Um, you're looking at around 1,400 feet at the summit of the motorway.

Wintertime we have a lot of problems with snow and ice on the motorway.

People do get a very terrible sort of confidence on motorways, and, so,

however bad the weather comes in, I'm always startled by how people won't slow down at all.

That's right, yeah, and even if we have signs up they will actually

get out, stop, remove the cones and signs and drive, through.

-Will they?

-Yeah.

The M62 was built to help get industrial and manufactured products

between the great industrial counties of Yorkshire and Lancashire.

Here, as it rises over the Pennines, the motorway crosses an invisible line between the two counties.

Once, that line was taken rather seriously and separated more than police traffic zones.

600 years ago, in the War of the Roses, the rival

houses of Yorkshire and Lancashire fought a bitter Civil War.

Much blood was shed in these hills, but up here now in search of

a night out on a crisp, clear evening, it all seems serenely peaceful, if a little cold.

Well, that's a very welcome sight, that's the highest pub in England at 1,732 feet. Just up there,

a mile away, is the border between Yorkshire and Lancashire.

In fact, the Pennines have acted as a division between these very forceful counties.

Certainly, it did in the late 1400s, but those Wars of the Roses, they're all behind us now, aren't they?

Yes, of course, they are. They must be.

Come on, Dawn.

'Unbeknownst to the local constabulary, here in the Tann Hill Inn

'hostilities have been resumed at the oche.

'Tonight, the Yorkshire and Lancashire ladies darts teams,

'resplendent in traditional colours, are competing for the pride

'of their respective counties. Confidence is high in the red corner.'

-You are all Lancashire ladies?

-Yes.

When you play Yorkshire...

-Whatever sport...

-We want to beat them.

-Do you?

-Oh, yes.

We want to beat everybody, but Dawn, she's the one that we really want to, you know,

definitely The War of the Roses. INDISTINCT CHATTER

What are the great things about Lancashire?

-Yeah, we're people people, we're friendly.

-Yeah.

This thing about Yorkshire, cos they say that Yorkshire are a bit,

they're a bit, er, close with their money, kind of, bit, bit careful?

A bit tight, aye.

We'll buy a drink now, won't we?

'The White Roses in the Yorkshire camp were not entirely impressed by that argument.'

They said over there that the Yorkshire people have a bit of a reputation,

amongst the Lancashire people, of being a bit tight.

Is that true?

The Yorkshire people lived within their means

because they've got the money they have, and they live within that means.

-Right.

-We're careful, we're not tight.

What do Yorkshire people say about Lancastrians?

We don't talk about them at all.

You don't talk about them at all? Oh, quite right, too!

'It was time to let the darts do the talking.'

Good darts.

'Honours were even after the first exchanges.'

OK, next time.

'But, gradually, Lancashire eased in front.'

This is quite close. Quite close these two.

'Lancashire were now just two good darts away from victory.

'Thankfully, in this particular battle, nobody lost their head, their crown

'or their horse, but with Lancashire triumphant, it was time for a healing sing-song.'

ALL: # Whatever they do in London We did it yesterday

# Lancashire, Lancashire Lancashire leads the way, hey! #

SINGING CONTINUES

My evening of darts had introduced me to some lovely ladies,

the real people, who live in the shadow of the Pennines.

It's time to come down off the mountain and plunge into the great cities that encircle it.

So, for the last leg of my journey, I'm going back to the densely populated

southern end of this region, to Sheffield,

a town that owes its very existence to these mountains.

How do they get on - these working men and women and the high moors that rise above them?

What is the relationship between the hills and the city?

Like Rome, Sheffield is built on seven hills.

Well, it's quite like Rome.

# Listen to the voice of Buddha... #

Now, the Pennines are away somewhere, they're just over there.

They're full of iron ore, and coal, and fluorspar, limestone -

the essential ingredients for making steel.

The water runs down off the Pennines, and there are five rivers that come together here.

So, there was power, and there was transport,

and all this conspired to make Sheffield itself, thanks to the mountains, a crucible.

As Britain industrialized, cities like Sheffield became noisy, polluted and crowded places.

The mountains that gave their power to industry

also had the potential to sustain the people who worked there,

in a different way, by providing sanctuary.

Generations of factory workers would flee Sheffield in their free time and head up into the Peak District,

which is only 20 minutes away from the city centre.

I'm taking a well-trodden path towards the famous Stanage Edge.

Stanage Edge is a three-and-a-half mile long cliff face that runs down the Hope Valley.

It's made of gritstone, a surface so popular with rock-climbers

that they found nearly a thousand different routes to climb up it.

Goliath's Groove, Marble Wall, Flying Buttress.

Just the names would be enough to excite the would-be climber.

I was anxious to get a look at it, but as I got closer, I thought I might have picked the wrong day.

I was lucky, I suppose, to spot the Sheffield City School bus that was coming to pick me up.

Heh-heh!

Eh, 'ello.

Hello, everyone. Have you all had lunch?

I'm joining these schoolchildren for a day's climbing at Stanage Edge.

Not ever before today have you ever climbed?

I've never properly rock climbed, like.

Not gone up a cliff, like.

Are you all limber? That's the secret to be a little bit, not too on the heavy side, isn't it?

-Cos there's a lot of dragging your own body after you.

-Yeah, yeah, we've got no problem, don't we?

That's nice(!) He's obviously judging me, I'm fatter than I look.

Like me, these schoolchildren are novices.

For many of them, it's the first time and it'll be a new experience.

But our leader is an expert. Andy Cave is one of Britain's greatest mountaineers

and a local lad as well.

A real monumental quality.

It looks like there's quite a lot of handholds to get you going. Girls, what do you think?

Is this the easiest route to get up there or can you walk round the back there and go up?

First time ever climbing? Nice one!

Main thing is trust your feet.

There... A bit lower. Small steps.

Andy Cave has pioneered some of the hardest routes in the world.

He climbed the North Face of the Eiger by the time he was 20.

But his remarkable story actually began 3,000 feet below ground, down a Yorkshire coal pit.

The first time I ever did a new route was during the miners' strike of 1984 and I called it

The Lucky Strike, cos in a way, the strike was a bad thing, but,

for me, it opened my eyes to the outdoors, and I realised there was more to life than money.

Did you start like this originally?

I think I was a bit reckless when I started. I wasn't from an outdoor family.

Great Granddad, Granddad, Dad, worked at the pits. That's what you did locally.

And you worked as a miner?

I worked as a miner at Grimethorpe pit - Grimey, as featured in Brassed Off.

That was where I worked, yeah.

Keep going. Keep going.

He now wants to encourage a new generation of young people

to open their eyes to the adventure available right here on their doorstep.

Too far. They're doing it. They're helping each other and giving each other support. Well done.

Unlike something like football, it'll take you outside of the housing estate or wherever you live.

It's a feeling you get. It's wonderful, the focus, shutting everything else out.

You're a different person,

you just feel great.

All the small stuff, the gas bills, and the bum-fluff of life that's just, that's gone, that's gone.

Now, if a bunch of kids can get up there, it shouldn't be a problem for me, should it?

Well, apparently, we're off.

Christ!

-Go on.

-Oops.

Just small steps, small steps, that's it.

-I don't know where I'm going next.

-Can you walk across a bit?

Halfway there.

Right, you need to use your real upper body strength now...

(if he's got any.)

Right, now you need to go back a little bit more.

Go on! Go on!

Is this legal? Are you sure this is the correct way of doing it?

'Yeah, well, maybe not the day's most graceful ascent,

'but I did manage to reach the top.'

CHEERING

Do you just wanna turn around, Griff?

I can't.

'Now, all I needed to do was lean back

'and trust that someone had remembered to hold on to the other end of the rope.'

This is the bit that always gets me, I just have to sort of...

find wherever... I lost me courage somewhere on the way up. Coming back! Right,

Oh... Argh... Oh, no... Oh, no...

Oh...

Oh, lad, it all feels most unusual and peculiar,

and unnatural in a funny sort of way for something which is close to nature. Know what I mean?

I had me foot down there, and me arm up there, and then they say, "Now, pull yourself up on your arm",

and I say, "Well, that's, that's not physically possible for me to do."

It is like being a kid again cos your sitting there watching them all do it,

and thinking, "Yeah, let me at it, I'm gonna go. I'll show them how easy it is." And then,

you're cramming your fingers in, pushing against the flesh of your thumbs

and ending up with sort of numb fingers almost immediately.

I've got six 14-year-olds who just leapt up there, watching me do it.

It's not fair!

Andy Cave found sanctuary from industrial life by climbing on Stanage Edge.

Others have broken away to trek all over the 555 square miles of the Peak District.

And we should all pay respect to an unlikely sort of local hero who helped to make that possible.

These days the thousands of ramblers who come here are a fairly law-abiding bunch,

but not so many years ago,

they were as likely to be looking forward to a jail sentence

as the arrival of the latest breathable anorak.

In the past, only a tiny part of our countryside was open to the public.

Then the Ramblers began a 100-year campaign for the right to roam.

I've brought my campervan to commemorate the 75th anniversary of a key moment in the struggle.

In 1932, nearly 300 local activists met up in this disused quarry.

They were here to take part in a legendary mass trespass

out onto the forbidden mountain of Kinder Scout,

which was then part of the private property of the Duke of Devonshire.

And the gamekeepers were pretty violent in those days, too.

If you encountered a gamekeeper, you know, you would be evicted fairly forcibly.

This group of lads were turned off Bleaklow by a threatening gamekeeper.

They came back down and they said, "If there were enough of us,

"they wouldn't stop us." So, they arranged this mass trespass, which started here in this quarry.

Organising the protest was a local Communist campaigner called Benny Rothman.

The aim of the group was to gain access to forbidden countryside.

There were rights of way, but they were strictly limited.

So the protestors were intending to do little more than break away

from the official footpath over Kinder Scout

and register their belief in their right to roam.

When I look at those pictures of them,

there were quite a lot of very young people. There was, in a sort of sense, a lot of 16, 17-year-olds.

It's thanks to these guys back in the '30s, really,

that we've got this, because they started the battle.

The argument from these landowners was, "How would you like someone walking across your backyard?"

Well, if my backyard was the size of Yorkshire I probably wouldn't mind.

ALL: # I'm a rambler, I'm a rambler From Manchester way

# I get all me pleasures The high moorland way

# I may be a wage-slave on Monday

# But I am a freeman come Sunday. #

So, I'm off with a group of local ramblers and walkers

to retrace that historic route of 1932.

The trespass had been well publicized, so Derbyshire police

drafted in reinforcements and local gamekeepers

got themselves ready for a fight.

The narrow path the protesters were on was a legitimate right of way,

but the walkers wanted to stake a claim to the hillside as well.

Is this where they went up?

They stepped off this right of way,

stepped off to do their trespass, and that's where they encountered the gamekeepers.

-So, the gamekeepers were...

-Waiting for them.

-Organised?

-Oh, yes.

The mass trespassers never got to see the top of Kinder Scout that day.

There was a violent scuffle with the gamekeepers, which led to four of the protesters being jailed.

But their struggle inspired a generation of campaigners.

Finally, in 2000, nearly 70 years after that pioneering event,

the Labour Government introduced an Act of Parliament that gave all of us the right to roam.

There's been a struggle for generations, for people

to try and get back onto what they considered was their land. Surely, it is our land.

You've got to compare it with their everyday lives

in a factory and seeing these blue hills on the horizon

and knowing that they couldn't get there. It used to be theirs, but they couldn't get there.

With us on the walk today are members of the group called 100 Black Men Walking for Health.

These guys feel their access to the countryside has been limited, too, not by the law,

but because they live largely in towns and have never felt at home in Britain's hills and mountains.

Has this been a success, are you 100?

Well, 100 in spirit. People look around and think there must be 100 of us out there.

When we go walking, we tend to be the largest group.

People just look at us and say, "How come there's six or seven black men walking?" that kind of thing.

Often, as a black male, you're the only person and it's not that people are not allowed to.

Sometimes, it's about access in a different sense -

access in terms of people feeling as if it's somewhere where they can go as well.

-It's pretty good fun as well, isn't it?

-Well, it is, because

Fitz, how did you find today?

Part of the experience is, you need to get out, you need to be active,

and that's the whole thing cos when you get out here, it just changes your perspective.

Your consciousness changes as well.

You know, we're middle-aged men as such and just talking about what middle-aged men of any community

talk about which is, you know, trials and tribulations, frustrations and, you know...

-And women.

-I used to be good at football, and women!

I agree, and when we switch the camera off we'll have a good old talk about women.

And in the meantime, we're going to make the most of our hard-won liberty.

So, we're carrying on up the hill.

Thankfully, the only resistance we're meeting is from the wind,

nothing has prevented us from getting to the top of Kinder Scout.

It's a bit of a blasted heath up here but, in fact, all the time

we've been passing ordinary punters, who have been using these paths to walk about the hills.

In a way, the argument is about the spirit

of mass trespass and access, but the real problem today is inertia.

There may be millions of people living within

half an hour of here, but millions of them never come up here at all.

On a day like today, I suppose you can see why.

It's windy, cold, wet, and there's every reason

for sitting on a couch, looking out the window and saying, "I'm not going up there."

But when you do come up here, it's absolutely bloody fantastic!

These mountains are at the very centre of our nation.

They have kick-started our industrial development, they have created great manufacturing cities,

and they have served as a sanctuary and refuge for the people of this region.

They are the Pennines.

Next time on Mountain,

I'll explore the mythical peaks of Snowdonia in Wales,

encounter a landscape more fragile than we think

and find out who is winning in the battle between the mountains and us.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd

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