Rombald’s Stride came about because the scout leaders at the time set out to do the Six Dales walk from Settle to Skipton on Swale. The Six Dales is a Scout-organised event in September, and we kept being pulled on time, as there is a 12-hour limit.

Because I had been involved in the late ’50s and early ’60s, when they were sorting out the route, I was asked what it required of you to walk 42 miles in 12 hours. The group involved was Brian Gill, Mike Hardaker, Cedric Wilks, Keith Braddick, Stuart Rooney, and myself. I said they needed to walk at 4 miles an hour, and take no longer than 5 minutes at any checkpoint. I also said that they needed to enter at least one challenge walk a month to get used to the pace and pressures. That was in March of 1982, by September we had completed 6 challenge walks and completed the Six Dales walk just within 12 hours.

Everyone had thoroughly enjoyed the year, and it was Brian Gill’s suggestion that we should try to put something back into the walking system and try and raise money as well. We decided it would be a Rolls Royce event, catering for all Scouts, and hopefully making some money for the scout group from non-scouting people. This led to the original Rombald’s Stride.

The format we decided upon was a summer walk with a 21mile distance for scouts and golden oldies, a 29-mile event for the fit walkers and a 35-mile event for the ultra-fit runners. It never worked out like that, most of the runners did the 21-mile route, and the rest fitted in where they wanted. We ran 10 summer events, always in profit but not very good, the walking calendar became very crowded in summer, so for the 10th year, we ran both a winter and summer event, making the winter one a short route. The winter one was a sell-out success, and so we scrapped the summer one.

We had all the normal early alarms and frustrations. In a Time before Raynet we were spending 2 or 3 hours scouring the moors for bodies, only to find out when we could get communication that they were home, usually in the bath. Permissions to run the event, or courtesy calls to clear the way for the masses, caused a lot of hassle, and strained the necessary diplomatic utterances to the limit at times. Perhaps the most memorable was dealing with one local land owner who lived near Ripon but was involved with the Bingley and Baildon moors syndicate. He could not understand why anyone should want to walk those distances let alone pay for the privilege of doing so! The only other outstanding event to me personally, was when a group of Marines decided they were going to do the 35-mile event in full Kit, to be fair to them it was very hot and all bar one did the event superbly, one lad was definitely struggling, and at the checkpoint at Dob Park bridge called me, and wanted me to refuse to let him go on. I went and spoke to him, and allowed myself to be persuaded to let him go on if I walked with him. He did finish very much on autopilot, but what I think at least partly kept him going was the fact that we arranged for some beers to be kept back for him. We had had a barn dance the night before, and there was a barrel to finish off!!

– Tony Denton (Founding member of Rombalds Stride)