The beautiful south aims to rival National Parks

Graham Joyce remembers walking the Pennine Way as a teenager almost 40 years ago and dropping down into Hebden Bridge thinking it was a godforsaken place.

"There were lots of mills still pumping out smoke then," he remembers.

"In those days Calderdale seemed to have very little going for it."

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The bureaucrats who set up our National Parks in the 1940s obviously agreed.

They had considered giving the area – it was then known as the "Industrial Pennines" – the same hallowed status that they would confer on the Yorkshire Dales, the Peak District and 10 other wild areas of England and Wales.

But then they crossed it off the list because at that time its green uplands were interspersed with a lot of dirt, population and industry.

Now, most of the mills and factories have closed and many of the buildings have become icons in Europe's largest industrial heritage landscape, while the

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high moors and deep cloughs of the South Pennines, as the area is now known, are cherished by many visitors each year.

To complete the transformation, 40 years after that Pennine Way trek, Graham Joyce now finds himself championing the area's beauty and history.

As operations director of Pennine Prospects – a partnership of local councils, key community groups and landowners such as Yorkshire Water – he hopes to make the South Pennines "like a National Park and a World Heritage Site in all but name".

"Some people comment that they can't visualise the South Pennines," Graham says. "I reply that if you know where the Peak District and the Yorkshire Dales are, and you know Leeds and Manchester, we are the bit in between."

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The area is unique as the English uplands with the largest population living within its boundaries. It's also unique in a negative sense, as the only uplands not to be designated either a National Park or Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.

Previous efforts to raise the area's profile and provide more interpretation facilities for visitors have had mixed success, largely through lack of funding, but Pennine Prospects has succeeded in winning 4.5m towards its key aims, most recently with an award of 1.9m from the Heritage Lottery Fund.

The hope is that, with seven million people living within an hour's drive of the South Pennines, the area will increasingly be top of many people's list when planning a day in the countryside, knowing that they will get all of the value they've come to expect from a trip to a National Park.

"Indeed," Graham says, "there are many aspects of the landscape and heritage here which are even better than the National Parks on either side of us."

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Pennine Prospects is funding innovative businesses through the Leader project for rural development, managed in this region by Yorkshire Forward. The most exciting development in Pennine Prospects' work is the launch of a new venture called Watershed Landscape, which has won the huge lottery funding. Run by project officer Robin Gray, it will show how the water catchment area of the South Pennines has shaped the history of a large part of Northern England.

Just as the Yorkshire Dales National Park is identified with its ram's head logo, so the South Pennines will have its own symbol, based on some iconic weathered rocks above Todmorden known as the Bride Stones.

This month a community archaeologist and an interpretation officer have been appointed to bring the story of the watershed to life.

Anna Marshall, who has moved from interpreting Harewood House to encouraging people to understand the South Pennines, believes there are still many people who would fall in love with the area if they chose it for days out.

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"Okay, it's been quite encroached upon over the years but the landscape is absolutely amazing. So much of it is just wild moorland, but what makes it special is the huge number of elements that have been set in the landscape over the centuries, like these Victorian reservoirs and really old buildings with a lot of history.

"Mostly, the towns and villages are in the valleys and the uplands are just a backdrop to many peoples' lives. It's almost as though the landscape's not really part of their lives, but we want to tell them why it has influenced them, and also show how what happens in the valleys has influenced the moors."

Second only to Yellowstone in the US, the Peak District is the world's most visited National Park, helped by its close proximity to the M1 and M6 and cities like Sheffield and Manchester.

However, the South Pennines are also likely to be visited by huge numbers, and certainly be more popular than some of England's remoter National Parks.

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Graham Joyce says: "What we are trying to do is make it a UK, a European and a wider international destination.

"There's lots of things that can be promoted, from the fame of Ilkley Moor through its song to the writers connection in the Bronts and the poet Ted Hughes."

It is, he adds, now hard to recognise the area he first saw as a walker on the Pennine way all those years ago.

Pennine Prospects visit www.pennineprospects.co.uk

WATERSHED LANDSCAPE PROJECT

The South Pennine moors provided the waters that drove the Industrial Revolution in Yorkshire and Lancashire and brought into being the Pennine towns and cities. Until now the importance of this great catchment area has never been fully recognised.

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Branding it the Watershed Landscape, Pennine Prospects will enhance and promote the area over the next few years with six themes.

There will be better paths and "gateways" to many locations. Community archaeologist Gavin Edwards will research the history of coal mining in the Pennines from medieval times. The project will pay for one writer and artist each year to tell the story of the South Pennines. Writers from the Bronts to the poet Ted Hughes have taken their inspiration from the moors. Traditional Pennine skills will be developed by training apprentices for such work as maintaining drystone walls, restoring sheepfolds – some of which are well over a century old – and rebuilding former shooting lodges.

www.pennineprospects.co.uk/watershed-landscape