#148: Tom Stephenson and Thomas Arthur Leonard: Footsteps to the Lakes

Countrystride

...in which we head south to Pendle Hill to explore the extraordinary lives of two campaigning outdoorsmen, who helped establish National Parks, Youth Hostels, the Ramblers and The Pennine Way – 60 years young this year.

In the company of Nick Burton and Bob Sproule from the Pendle Radicals project, we set out from the Lancashire village of Roughlee, where the scene is set for the arrival of the 'two Toms' – a time where workers in the industrial north had to fight to access the hills around them.

Striding onto Noggarth Edge, where views open over the former mill towns of Colne, Nelson and Burnley, we learn about the early life of Tom Stephenson, father of the Pennine Way, who was working in a calico works aged 13, and whose life changed forever on Pendle Hill. Jailed as a conscientious objector during World War I, we follow Tom into his campaigning years, when the concept of his 'Long Green Trail' took root.

Descending to Pendle Water, we introduce the Reverend Thomas Arthur Leonard OBE, one-time minister of Barrow-in-Furness and Colne, whose commitment to social reform – and suspicion of the boozy Wakes weeks – gifted us the Co-operative Holidays Association, and its successor the Holiday Fellowship (he is commemorated in a plaque on Cat Bells).

Arriving at the last-of-its-kind Clarion House, where working class cyclists and walkers still meet for shelter, education and fellowship, we enjoy the cheapest cup of tea in Lancashire, before reflecting on the golden age of access pioneers, and their remarkable legacy.

• Clarion House can be found here.

• For more about the Pendle Radicals, see here.

• More information about the Two Toms Trail can be found here.