Alfred Wainwright, ‘poet guide and artist of the Lake District’, sold two million of his cute books. He was the oracle of the jerkin and Kendal mintcake fell baggers for half a century.

His religion was clear, the countryside was for calm silent reflection and romantic contemplation, he hated the swarming fell runners and cyclists that raced over the Pennines. They blasphemed against his true belief.

My devotions were conflicted. I liked a stroll up Whernside for the bucolic scenery and a chilly picnic with the faithful, but I also dreamt of a 30mph descent crashing through the bog myrtle and bracken on my cross bike.

When you’re snuck down in full aero tuck you’re not going to dink up your head to take in the play of light on distant hill. But you are there for the land, it’s simply a different denomination. The landscape is in the plummeting descent, the contour is for speed, you take on the gradient with your lungs and heart. You don’t stop to wonder, you’re caught in the burl of side wind and surface water, double hump and long drag.

Alfred was a brilliant preacher for the outdoors, but there are infinite ways to be in the landscape, it welcomes all faiths, and with good National Park signposting and the odd marshal in a fluorescent bib it can accommodate a multi faith community, lycra skin suits to folding hiking poles.

Oliver Brookes