Walking Pendle Hill’s new trail: the Two Toms

Honouring two giants of UK hiking, this 25-mile Lancashire route links to the Pennine Way – and finally frees the hill from its witchcraft associations

Pendle Hill can be a frustrating lump of rock. The most popular access route, from the village of Barley, barely skims its north-western edge, hitting the summit by means of a staircase. Another classic route, the zigzagging climb from Downham, doesn’t reveal the full scale and shape of the hill.

Then there are the time-worn witchcraft associations to be steered around. Far more than Bideford in Devon or Manningtree in Essex, or nearby Samlesbury, Pendle Hill is lodged in the national psyche as the backdrop to the unjust trials of 11 women in 1612 – a story that has been if not quite romanticised then spooked-up and broom-sticked into a dubious fiction over four centuries.