Walking 42 miles in one day: tackling North Yorkshire’s Lyke Wake route on its 70th anniversary

The walk across the North York Moors – which has to be completed in 24 hours – is a mix of trudging and wild beauty. I experienced both as I joined one of the first people to do it in 1955 One August evening in 1955, members of York Mountaineering Club had convened in the city’s Olde Starre Inne. They were, perhaps, lamenting the shortage of mountains (or indeed hills) in York, when club chair David Laughton turned up waving a copy of that month’s Dalesman magazine.It con