REMARKABLE chap this John Sentamu, Archbishop of York.

Those of us who met him when he came to Cumbria last year in the wake of the floods saw some of that. He’s got a great facility for putting people at ease and getting to the heart of the matter. He even indulged in a bit of a song and dance act with Herald photographer Freddie Wilson.

While the Church of England has been wrestling with issues ranging from gay clergy to women bishops, which most of us could not care less about, Dr. Sentamu reminded his fellow churchmen and women about the real problems in the real world that they really ought to be devoting their energies to.

Dr. Sentamu this week launched his own charity called Acts 435, a project designed to match up people who want to give with people who are in need.

Whether or not we believe in God, and sometimes I wonder exactly how many of the clergy actually believe any more, the church remains a focal point in most communities. Numbers regularly attending CofE services have fallen dramatically in recent years, but it’s still a focal point of the community that we look to in times of happiness and sorrow.

John Sentamu is in no doubt that the Church has a key role to play in times of financial austerity. “We need to be there alongside those in pain to help them through the difficulties they face,” he says.

Spending cuts will be felt by the poorest, as usual. There is a danger in an economic downturn that sections of society are written off and forgotten. The Church has to offer more than spiritual help and internal wrangling.

Sentamu’s scheme is simple. People apply to their local church for help and the request is checked out. Then their need is posted and a donor from the congregation can respond. It’s not about big money, but about providing necessities like fridges and cookers, helping people to get to job interviews and the like.

At a time when the Church’s Synod has spent many hours wringing its hands and talking about traditions, it should count itself jolly lucky to have a man like the Archbishop of York, who is firmly rooted in the real and present world. More is the pity that some of his colleagues can’t put aside their navel-gazing prejudices and join him in looking at the needs of people they are supposed to serve.

MINISTER IN NEED OF REPAIRS

HUNDREDS of schools, the ones with leaky roofs and crumbling walls, have received the bad news that there’s going to be no money for refurbishment or rebuilding under the glorious new coalition.

Not only did Education Secretary Michael Gove have bad news to impart, he botched the announcement so badly that he’s been apologising ever since. Gove is a smart cookie. But he may have made a cardinal error here. People will grumble all day long about the different forthcoming Government spending cuts. Everybody has a pet subject they don’t want to see suffer. But when it comes to education, virtually everyone has an interest.

Agreed, Labour’s £55 billion Schools for the Future program needed reappraising. But the decision to scrap it has been, with extraordinary rapidity, the work of one minister who seems to have the power to overturn a major policy overnight without consultation with anybody in the education world. Do we really want policy that affects our children made up in such an overwhelming hurry?

Michael Gove has been hailed as a future leader of the Tory Party. But he has left the hopes and aspirations of countless teachers, parents and school pupils in ruins. Not a smart move. There are plenty of potential targets for saving money the new Government can apply itself to, but I suspect the minister has picked the wrong target here and people will not forgive or forget in a hurry, nor indeed will many of his backbenchers who have awkward explaining to do to their disappointed constituents.

MOUNTAIN SNOBBERY

LOOKING back on it I was a dreadful mountain snob. There is a certain pretentiousness about the outdoors and the necessity of preserving the fells and countryside in aspic. Mountain purists — Janet Street Porter is one outraged example — are fuming over the tarmacing of part of a miner’s path on Snowdon.

Perhaps they, like a younger me, spent too much time reading Wainwright’s curmudgeonly comments about unsuitable people like tourists and boy scouts inhabiting mountains on which he preferred to be left alone with his sketchbook and a few Herdwicks. A.W. liked sheep a lot more than he liked most humans.

When you are young and fit you tend to think of the fells as a challenge not to be sullied by anything that makes climbing them too easy. Why, I was once a member of the stuffy Ramblers’ Association, although my main reason was so that I could enter its long distance walking events.

It’s when you get older and, like Leonard Cohen says in his Tower of Song, “you ache in the places where you used to play,” that your attitudes mellow and funicular railways, tarmaced paths and Stannah stairlifts suddenly have their practical attractions if you ever want to get to the summit of Skiddaw, Scafell Pike or Helvellyn again without becoming a hospital case.

I used to be out roaming the fells virtually every day, winter and summer. Now I need to be roped to get out of bed safely on particularly arthritic mornings.

I’ve already made my pitch to Lake District National Park Authority chief Richard Leafe, a keen outdoorsman himself, for an elevator on Broad Stand and a chair lift on Skiddaw. Realistically the chances are slim. But we must never make the fells so elitist they are only the exclusive province of the hairy-kneed super fit types.

If we could just get Stannah to sponsor Fix the Fells my hopes of getting across Sharp Edge without the assistance of an RAF rescue helicopter might not yet be over.

And when it comes to being snooty about making the fells that bit more accessible, spare a thought for we oldies pottering about on places like Latrigg and Walla Crag, who wouldn’t mind a bit of extra help to get us to the summits we once ticked off with gay abandon.

MOBBED BY THREE PEAKERS

I WOULDN’T want you to think I am dissing the fells entirely. Unlike hundreds of bus loads of charity walkers who race up and down the highest peaks in Wales, England and Scotland, at weekends.

They usually arrive in the Lake District at dead of night, causing maximum disturbance. Recently Wasdale mountain rescue team, returning from an alarm in appalling weather conditions, spotted at least 20 mini-buses parked at the head of the valley and many more making their way there.

Nobody wants to sneer at people’s charitable efforts. The problem is that most of the groups come from the south of England and arrange particular weekends which they can’t change, whatever the weather. There is a major accident waiting to happen here.

Unfortunately these people, with the best of intentions, aren’t respecters of the fells. What started as a good idea has taken on a life of its own and they are now overwhelming areas like the Lake District and its valleys at weekends.

It would be interesting to know if any of the money they raise ever finds its way into the coffers of the mountain rescue teams who may one day be needed to save them.