Get your anorak on and bag some signs!
AND now a new game for anoraks out in the hills. You've ticked off trig posts, aircraft crash sites and, if you're on Dartmoor, those secret little postboxes in the heather.
Now the Peak and Northern Footpaths Society is running a competition for people to be the first to visit all their signposts across northern Britain from Derbyshire and South Yorkshire to Merseyside.
There are 243 to find!
"It seems to be the thing to do these days," says John Harker, the group area officer.
"They are really scattered. You would have to be a real anorak to get around them all."
The competition lasts until next April next year and, although it will involve more than 1,000 miles of travel, the prize is nothing more than a bottle of champagne. "It ought to be an anorak," says John.
The society, previously the Peak District and Northern Counties Footpaths Preservation Society, has been going for over a century and is the oldest organisation of its type.
Its job is to keep our footpaths open and footpaths need signs.
The society has erected more than 300 but only 243 are in existence, although some are being replaced and new ones put up.
A few have gone AWOL but they are surprisingly heavy. The earliest cast iron ones weigh a ton.
The one at the top of the page, number 50, erected in 1925 above Langsett, has been repainted by John's pal Bill McGuinness of Dodworth in its original green and white.
Bill, aged 72, says: "It's a very windy edge. I had to hang on to the post like mad. I was being buffeted all over the place."
He had to walk three miles with a pot of paint to do the job. He wasn't happy with the result first time, so he did it again!
The embossed sign points to the Flouch inn and Hazlehead Station but you can't catch the train home. It was on the Woodhead line which closed in 1981.
For 150 you can have a sign erected as a memorial. Our picture shows the unveiling of a sign to the memory of rambler Ted Spencer at Green Moor, near Stocksbridge.
"It's quite an occasion when a new one is unveiled, like a royal visit," says John.
n To find out where the signs are, go to www.peakandnorth ern.org.uk
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Friday 25 May 2012
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