Tommy Ogden

Not having visited any of the small towns and villages listed in the Pennine Way itinerary, I read out the pleasing-sounding name of each mysterious destination with equal weight.

‘Crowden, Gargrave, Horton-in-Ribblesdale, Forest-in-Teesdale, Twice Brewed, Steel Rigg, Kirk Yetholm…’

On reaching and exploring each of these settlements, however, I discovered that some places are, well, less of a place than others. As I reported back by telephone ‘well, it’s not really anything. There’s F all here.’, I started to think about a criteria I would use in my ignorant, townie way to define a ‘place’.

I’m so obviously townie, of course. I’m used to living in the city centre of Manchester, with 24-hour shops, pubs, cloud WiFi and the security of never being more than 100m from a café and a newspaper. Two weeks in the remotest parts of England was always going to feel a bit different. Those more used to living in the countryside will scoff at how mollycoddled I am—and they’d be right to. But there’s some things I think a ‘place’ should have as well as a name, and it’s the absence of these things that has helped me decide what they are. For example, I rocked up to Dufton only to discover that the friendly-sounding Stag Inn was closed (presumably because it was a Monday), as was the Village Stores (reasons unknown) so that my only option that evening was to lie in my tent listening to the rain.

So here’s my criteria: to be a real place, I should be able to buy basic groceries like bread, milk and eggs until 10 O’clo— no, let’s make it easier, 8 O’clock in the evening; and there should be a public house in which I can sit somewhere warm and drink beer. Does that seem reasonable? This means that Crowden, Ponden, Dufton and Byrness are not places. Malham, Horton-in-Ribblesdale, Middleton-in-Teesdale, Gargrave, Bellingham and Alston are all places. The latter three get extra points as their shops were lovely Co-ops.