PARK LIFE IN THE PENNINES

Moves are underway to create a people’s park for the 21st century in the South Pennines, writes Richard Darn

- Richard Darn

‘We've had quiet advocates for a long time – now we need noisy champions.’ So says Pam Warhurst, a proud and passionate Lancashire woman who is spearheading a campaign to put the South Pennines on the map.

If you can’t quite pinpoint where the 460 square mile region starts and finishes, you are not alone and you’ve hit on one of its major problems.

Despite lofty moors, breathtaking views and “higgledy-piggledy” towns and villages brimming with character, it has been described as a Cinderella area, a vista on the horizon to tourists on the way to distant honeypots like the Dales and Lakes.

But plans are now afoot to create a South Pennines Park, allowing it to punch its weight as one of England’s great landscapes.

‘Because it spans the Lancashire and Yorkshire border no-one has been entirely sure how to promote it,’ explains Pam, who is the chair of Pennine Prospects, a multi-agency partnership set up in 2005 to promote the area, comprising local authority and private sector members.

‘When people think of the Cotswolds an image springs into their mind and we want the South Pennines to evoke a similar instant evocation of what this landscape and its people are all about’