England’s great divide walk

Several years ago, I read Stephen Pern’s excellent book, The Great Divide. This described his walk along the watershed between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans in the USA. He began in the Mexican desert, and followed the crest (or as close to it as he could manage) of the Rocky Mountains to the Canadian border. If he had continued North, passing West of Banff, he would have come to the Columbia Icefield. This glacier is the origin of rivers that flow into three oceans - not just to the West and the East, but also to the North. The main Northbound river is the Athabasca, and you can follow it along a road called The Icefield Parkway, as it descends from a mountain torrent to a wide sweeping river between meadows near the town of Jasper. After Jasper, the river travels hundreds of kilometres North to become part of the River Mackenzie, flowing through tundra into the Arctic Ocean.

The courses of rivers and their watersheds are easy to follow on the maps of a vast empty country like Canada, but much harder in a crowded one like England. So what would be the route of a great divide walk in England? Most people would guess that the Northern section would be close to the Pennine Way. This is generally true, although the watershed actually crosses the Scottish border several miles West of the Pennine Way, near Kielder. From there, it heads South along the boundary between Cumbria and Northumberland, towards Once Brewed near Hadrian’s Wall. The great divide walk would then follow the Pennine Way South to Edale, close to the crest line of the Pennines, across Saddleworth Moor and the High Peak. But what happens after you reach Edale?

Following the map, you can trace a strange circuitous route around the heads of lowland rivers systems. First, you would walk South around the Western edge of the Peak District, near the Roaches, and then across Staffordshire to the West of Stoke and Stafford. From then on, my imaginary long distance path is difficult to trace, as it passes through the Black Country over Frankley Beeches to the Lickey Hills South of Birmingham. From then on, it would swing East and then South in a long arc around the catchment of the Warwickshire Avon, eventually reaching the Cotswold escarpment and the Cotswold Way. You would follow this lovely scenic long distance path for most of its way until a few miles North of Bath. The great divide path would then need to head East around the watershed between the Gloucestershire Avon and the Thames until you reach an area called the North Down near Devizes. This is England’s equivalent to the Columbia Icefield, albeit a low-lying hill without ice. From it, rivers head West to the Atlantic, East to the North Sea, and South to the English Channel.

As human beings moved back into Britain after the end of the last Ice Age, they would have travelled along the dry watersheds to avoid the marshy and tree-clogged valleys. The North Down and the nearby Salisbury Plain would then have been the great junction of this Stone Age transport system. Early inhabitants have marked this busy place with rings of standing stones, white horses carved into chalk hills, barrows and mounds. This is a kind of commercial, political and religious city, but dispersed over several hillsides and occupied seasonally. It would be a superb end to my Great Divide Walk. While I walk it in my imagination, others may do so on foot.