When in the Pennines, do as the Romans did
It is believed that the Romans never settled in the area covered by the Pennines. They certainly built roads to navigate the mountainous terrain. In order to link the Legionary forts at Chester and York, they built fortresses in Castleshaw and Slack. The current A62 is part of the road the Romans built in AD80.
We start our walk on the northern side of the Standedge Tunnel. Ahead of us cloughs await. These are narrow upland valleys with streams and waterfalls that provide a shelter for wildlife. Before peat became the dominant feature around here, the moors were covered with thick forests of pine, birch and oak.
On Packhorse Road, as we keep on climbing up and the landscape opens up, I think of how far I’ve come to loving a view like this one. Almost twenty-five years to be exact. From a boy born and raised in Havana’s concrete jungle to a nature enthusiast here in the UK. The transition has not been swift, it’s taken time, but it’s finally happened.
As an immigrant, I feel I’ve made two journeys in my life. The first one was the geographical one. I washed up in London straight from Havana. The second one has been a mental one, although it’s also involved physical movement. It’s a journey on which I’ve learnt to internalise and appreciate my surroundings. It’s the process whereby I’ve ended up falling head over heels with the British countryside.
Most of the parks and green areas when I was a young lad in Cuba had “Keep off the grass” signs on them. It’s true that as a child I’d sometimes go to visit my family in the countryside (I was the first member of my family to be born in Havana City). But the visits were short and infrequent. Real love for fauna and flora was not encouraged.
That changed when I had my own children. Through my two little ones the transformation into a nature lover began when they started attending the local branch of the Woodcraft Trust. There followed camping trips to Epping Forest and Dorset. I volunteered for those. We used to have a guy who was a biology lecturer at Middlesex University join us on our trips. Learning became fun.
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We keep on going for another mile and a bit until we see a stone post with PH carved on it. A path leads off to the right beside a catchwater. We follow it to the March Haigh reservoir.
It’s been more than fifteen years now since my children were members of the Woodcraft Folk. The latest stage of my journey towards identifying with this landscape has found me here, in the Pennines, just like the Romans did centuries ago.
After almost eight miles, we finally make it to the junction with Old Mount Road. We take the leftmost stony track and continue on it until we come across the old house on the right. The house is still here as it was two years ago when I first came upon it. This is also part of my other journey: recognising what’s been here before. As if it were waiting for me. For this immigrant who’s fallen, slowly but surely, for a landscape like this.
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Cuban, Immigrant, and Londoner, on sale now.