The Pennine Way will celebrate its 50th anniversary next month.

But Mike Shaw of Linthwaite, former Examiner journalist and editor of the Colne Valley Guardian, remembers the day 14 years earlier when the Ramblers Association secretary, Tom Stephenson, led a group of local government officials across three miles of a projected route to try to sell them on the idea of supporting Britain’s first long distance footpath.

Mike says Tom was an outstanding campaigner and ardent advocate of the 268 mile long Pennine Way. He had proposed it before the Second World War and it eventually opened on April 24, 1965. It was on a misty August morning in 1951, that Tom led the party of officials across the moors, with Mike among them.

“We met on the Isle of Skye road in the shadow of Meltham’s West Nab,” says Mike.

The intention was to hike the three miles to Standedge Cutting.

“Bureaucrats and council planners said this rugged terrain was impossible to trudge across. But Tom said he would prove it by taking them on what he described as a morning’s stroll along the route.

“The stroll turned out to be worse than any route march for everyone except Tom. Walking along the backbone of England with him, was like trying to keep upwith a mountain goat.

“For me, a cub reporter aged 18 - 40 years younger than Tom - it was the experience of a lifetime.

“They encountered many ravines of peat and soggy bogs and the first victim was the Area Planning Officer.

“He was a genial fellow, who was a cross between Robert Morley and Charles Laughton,with a build to match. One minute he was there, tramping confidently along in his Wellingons, the next he had disappeared almost up to his waist in a bog.

“Luckily he had a sense of humour as big as his girth and he was quick to hold out a helping hand as others became stuck in a battle of the bogs.

“It took us three hours to cover the three miles to the Floating Light pub where, over sandwiches and a pint, Tom, as fresh as a daisy, declared it had been a piece of cake. The rest of us agreed to differ.

“Tom lived to seehis brain child of the Pennine Way come true. He was 94 when he diedi n 1987. And his legacy lives on.”(A four part BBC1documentary called The Pennine Way starts on April 10).