#158: Haystacks – How Wainwright changed our lives
About this episode
The episode explores the profound impact of Alfred Wainwright on the lives of various guests during a memorial walk to Innominate Tarn on Haystacks.
...in which we embark on a memorial walk to Innominate Tarn on Haystacks to ask the question: How did fell-walker Alfred Wainwright impact on so many lives? Closing a year of AW anniversaries – including the 70th anniversary of the publication of his first Pictorial Guide – we set out from Honister in the company of a string of guests whose lives have been touched or changed by the Blackburn-born rambler, artist and guidebook writer. Chatting as we wander – through dense clag and worsening rain – we meet walker Richard Jennings, who completed his 214 at 2:14 on the 21st of the fourth, 2014 (definitely not an obsessive!), and who credits AW with his move to the Lakes. We catch up with geographer-legend Chris Jesty – the only person authorised by AW to update his Guides – who chats about camping on Scafell Pike for six months "waiting for clear weather", about the 10-year three-month update odyssey, and why the Howgills and Outlying Fells are his backwater favourites. Arriving at Dubs Hut, we are joined by brothers Mike and Paul Duff from Kendal. who accompanied dad Percy and Betty Wainwright onto Haystacks in March '91 to scatter AW's ashes, and who recall their old family friend…
More episodes of Countrystride
- #162: The Grasmere Dialect Plays
- #161: Donald Campbell – Speed king of Coniston
- #160: Vicars of the fells
- #159: Blackwell – Arts & Crafts in Lakeland
- #157: A Cumbrian Christmas Cracker – December 2025
- #156: Kurt Schwitters – From the international avant-garde to exile in Ambleside
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