Yorkshire-born freelance journalist John Manning reckons he has the best job in the world: walking, and writing about walking!
|
He’s enjoyed both since his childhood, when he spent his spare time drawing and writing for home-spun magazines as well as school and church publications, and hiking in the Yorkshire Dales and in the Lake District, both with his family and with a local youth group. In 1986, after journalism training at Darlington College of Technology, he completed his first long distance walk – the Pennine Way – then promptly started his professional journalism career among the South Pennine hills, as a cub reporter with the Todmorden News and the Hebden Bridge Times. Within a couple of years he’d risen to assistant editor and, after a brief spell on the Brighouse Echo, he moved to the Halifax Evening Courier to begin a five-year stint as senior sub-editor.
|
While there he wrote the paper’s fortnightly outdoor column Best Foot Forward. Based on his love of walking and on his weekend duties as a countryside ranger in west Calderdale and as a warden at the National Trust’s countryside property of Hardcastle Crags, near Hebden Bridge, the column won him the Yorkshire Newspaper Society’s Columnist of the Year award for three successive years.
|
In 1994 he was appointed deputy editor of TGO (The Great Outdoors) Magazine, the UK’s foremost monthly hill-walking magazine, where he went on to win two more awards, both for technical (outdoor gear) features.
|
John’s chosen line of work has enabled him to walk and write about places across the globe, from North America – where, in 2004, he thru’ hiked the 2700-mile Pacific Crest Trail – and India, to Nepal, New Zealand, Peru, Finland, Slovenia… you get the picture!
|
He contributed a chapter about the trek to Everest Base Camp for the book Classic Treks: The 30 Most Spectacular Hikes in the World (edited by Bill Birkett; David & Charles, 2000) and demand for his only guidebook, 25 Walks in the South Pennines, is still high – despite the fact that it’s been out of print for a decade. Keep an eye for a new edition in the coming months.
|
John recently left TGO to live among the hills and moors of the Yorkshire Dales with his partner Steph, and has embarked on a new career as a freelance outdoor writer. He’ll still be writing for TGO – and taking part in the annual two-week TGO Challenge walk across Scotland – as well as contributing to other publications and focusing on a number of non-print projects.
|
Of all the many varied and multifarious ventures he has lined up, there’s one constant: the combination of walking and writing will continue for many years to come.
|
|
