1932-2024
Tom Waghorn Obituary Roly Smith
Tom Waghorn
1932-2024
Guild Vice-President Roly Smith remembers the life and adventures of Tom Waghorn.
Tom Waghorn, one of the founding members of the Outdoor Writers’ Guild and an outstanding and highly respected outdoor journalist for over 60 years, died in November last year, just a week before what would have been his 92nd birthday.
Tom was the consummate professional journalist, the chief subeditor and later a feature writer for the Manchester Evening News. He was always ready with his notebook, keen to dig out a story, especially if there was a Manchester angle – which he usually managed to find.
Tom was born within shouting distance of Manchester United’ s ground at Old Trafford, Stretford – and, never a football fan, he was proud to say he never set foot inside. The eldest of four children, he moved to Glossop as a young child, where the family lived above an ironmonger’ s shop, and he was educated at Glossop Grammar School.
above Tom and his wife Barbara
His first newspaper was across the Pennines at the Sheffield Star, and he later moved back over the Snake Pass to join the Manchester Evening Chronicle as a reporter. When the Chronicle folded in 1963, he joined on the Manchester Evening News.
Tom spent nearly half a century working for the MEN, working initially as postbag editor then spending 12 years as chief subeditor before moving into what he called his“ dream job” as a feature writer and outdoor columnist. Despite officially retiring from the paper, he continued to write a weekly outdoors column for many years and travelled widely around the world with his late wife Barbara on travel features.
The then-MEN editor Maria McGeoghan said at his retirement:“ Tom has been a fixture in the MEN newsroom for nearly 50 years and throughout that time he has been a great journalist and a true gent. Now he has decided to hang up his notebook for good we wish him well – but I’ m sure he won’ t be able to resist ringing the newsdesk with tips for stories.”
Outside his job, Tom was part of the great post-war Mancunian working class revolution in rock climbing and partnered routes in the Peak District and Snowdonia with such aces as Joe Brown and Don Whillans. He was a long-standing member of Manchester’ s famous Rucksack Club and a regular contributor to its journal.
One of the great adventures in which he took part in those
above Tom reporting from Pakistan in 1968( Credit: Rucksack Club website)
days was the Manchester Karakoram Expedition of 1968. Tom persuaded the Manchester Evening News to part-sponsor a group of Manchester climbers to plant the MEN flag on the summit of the unclimbed Malubiting( 24,451 feet / 7,458 m), in return for him providing exclusive reports for the trip.
The hard-up climbers couldn’ t afford the flight, so they commandeered an ex-Army Bedford truck and decided to drive the 4,000 miles to get there, which gave rise to one of Tom’ s favourite stories which he often delighted in retelling.
“ We were stopped at the border crossing into Pakistan after we had accidentally demolished the crossing point with the truck,” he recounted.“ We were arrested, and things were looking bad until I produced my passport. The border guard said:‘ Oh, you’ re from Manchester. Manchester United. Do you know Bobby Charlton?’”
“ Bobby Charlton? Yes, he’ s a personal friend of mine, I lied. And with that he let us through!”
The expedition eventually reached about 19,000 feet on Malubiting but was aborted after a climber died following a rock fall.
Tom was one of the last surviving original members of the Guild, which was founded in the bar of the Old Swan Hotel in Harrogate in 1980. He was a life member and served on the committee and as my loyal and supportive vice chairman for 12 years. I was introduced to Tom as a fellow daily paper journalist at the Outdoor Leisure Show at Harrogate by Walt Unsworth, our late president. I was immediately impressed, because that day he grabbed an interview with Sir Edmund Hillary and typically asked him the question that nobody had dared to ask: who, between him and Tensing Norgay, had reached the summit of Everest in 1953 first?
Tom was a regular participant in facility trips organised by Terry Marsh and later by Stan Abbott. We enjoyed many memorable adventures together, including trips to Arctic Norway and Svalbard, Iceland, and the Faroe Islands, in addition to regular trips to Ireland, Shetland and the Scottish Highlands and Islands.
Tom was a great ambassador for the Guild, always popular with our hosts, unfailingly polite and grateful and producing good, tight copy. He was a keen birdwatcher but a slow, if steady, walker. Many were the times we reached a summit with Tom nowhere in sight. Our guides would express their concern, but we knew Tom was a mountain man through and through, and sure enough, he’ d appear a few minutes later.
He survived Covid, but hadn’ t enjoyed good health in recent years and died on November 30 last year after a fall in which he fractured his hip. There was no memorial service to Tom, but the family, led by his daughter Helen and grandson Matthew, scattered his ashes at a favourite spot at Calf Close Bay, Derwentwater, to join those of his late wife, Barbara. Tom Waghorn’ s legacy will always be his unfailing professionalism, his tremendous back catalogue of journalistic work, and his lovable, if at times curmudgeonly, nature.
right Tom survived Covid
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