Guild vice-president interviewed on BBC TV’ s Travel Show
Dee Anna Roly Smith trespassers on the tele’
Trespassers will be celebrated!
Guild vice-president interviewed on BBC TV’ s Travel Show
Guild vice-president Roly Smith appeared on BBC TV’ s Travel Show in October, interviewed by presenter Roma Wells on his“ specialist subject” – the 1932 Mass Trespass on Kinder Scout.
The programme was celebrating the upcoming 75th anniversary of the creation of the Peak District National Park, where Roly was Head of Information Services for the Park authority for 13 years in the 1980s, when he became known as“ Mr Peak District” to the local media.
The 1932 Trespass, after which five“ ramblers from Manchester way”( to use the words of Ewan MacColl’ s famous song about trespassing) were arrested and later imprisoned for exercising their right to roam on what was then Kinder’ s forbidden moorland. It has become an iconic event in the history of public access in this country, celebrated annually by an event now held at Hayfield, but which Roly had organised for about 20 years.
Roly recalled his fond memories of Benny Rothman, the diminutive leader of the trespass, who was imprisoned for four months for his part in the incident.“ I was
privileged to know Benny as a friend and was always a great admirer of his principled stance on access and the conservation of the countryside in general,” said Roly.“ The trespassers were not actually campaigning for the creation of National Parks – that would take another nearly 20 years. But it undoubtedly served as a great catalyst toward that ambition, and the Peak, designated in April 1951, was of course the
first in Britain.”
Roly described the route followed by the trespassers from Bowden Bridge quarry – now a car park – where a plaque celebrating the event was unveiled by Benny Rothman on the 50th anniversary in 1982.“ That’ s when I first met Benny,” Roly explained.“ I was a feature writer on the Birmingham Post & Mail at the time, and I was desperate to find a local angle so I could cover the event. Imagine my delight when I discovered that Benny’ s son Harry was a professor at Aston University!”
Much later Roly became friends with Benny through the Kinder and High Peak Advisory Committee, and he later walked the trespass route up by the Kinder River up White Brow into William Clough with Benny and his wife Lily – a walk he says he’ ll never forget.“ Benny was in his seventies at the time, and still walking like a train – I could hardly keep up with him.”
In the interview, Roly paid warm tribute to the lads and lasses who were on the Trespass in 1932, claiming that all modern ramblers who enjoyed the right to roam on mountain and moorland owed them a great debt of gratitude that should never be forgotten( not likely while Roly’ s alive anyway!).
At the end of the interview, Roly was reluctantly persuaded by Roma to sing the chorus of MacColl’ s Manchester Rambler, which always concludes Trespass celebrations. But he claims he was mightily relieved when the Beeb’ s producer decided to spare the nation’ s musical sensibilities when that section mercifully hit the cutting room floor.
The BBC film crew later went with National Trust ranger Chris Lockyer to inspect some of the conservation and re-wetting work the Trust has been doing in recent years to restore Kinder’ s valuable carbon sink of blanket bog peat. The Trust has been the owner of Kinder since1982. It also went on the Matlock Bath bikers and cable cars; the hen races at Bonsall and, inevitably, the Bakewell Pudding Shop, but making the cardinal sin of buying Bakewell tarts instead of the genuine puddings!
Winter 2025 OUTDOOR FOCUS 5