Running up that hill with founder of the anarcho-political band Chumbawamba

These Hills Are Ours at the Burton Taylor Studio, Oxford, on Tuesday, June 21, review by JON LEWIS

Postponed five times because of the pandemic, the Burton Taylor Studio finally hosted Daniel Bye and Boff Whalley’s gentle reminiscence of a long-distance run Bye undertook in March 2020 before the first lockdown. Sitting on a stage carpeted with Ordnance Survey maps of the Pennines, and in front of a couple of yards of barbed wired fencing to suggest the imprint of landowners on the countryside, the duo recall the motivations and the rigours of this feat of endurance. The politics underpinning the show, directed and lit by Katharine Williams, concerns the 1932 mass trespasses at Kinder Scout that led over time to the right to roam in the countryside.

They express cynicism at the ruling classes who seemed to pick out trespassers with Jewish heritage to be sent for trial, who are imprisoned because of their foreign-sounding surnames. Righteous anger led to greater mass trespasses. Their planned route would be from Pendle Hill, near Burnley, to Edale, near Kinder Scout, a journey that meant running along the Pennine Way at night. Sadly, Whalley broke a toe, so his role was to track Bye electronically, following a green dot on a screen, and to provide food and motivation from his van.

As the pair recount the events of the run, the adventure comes across as seriously dangerous. Nature seemed determined to throw hazards at Bye – freezing weather, fog, deep snow, rivers that appear to be the same river he crossed earlier, paths that disappear. Bye feels the loneliness of the long-distance runner as he loses his position on his devices and Whalley is left worrying in his van when Bye doesn’t make arrive at his destinations. History repeats itself over the run, with Bye back-tracking and finding alternative ways around hills.

Whalley, a founder of the anarcho-political band Chumbawamba, harmonises perfectly with Bye’s wry humour. It is a joy being in their company. Audiences who want more are invited to join them the morning after the show on a run up Cumnor Hill. They target the highest point near each venue on the tour. An audience member always joins them.