I’ve started walking the Pennine Way – a 268 mile tour through some of the finest bog England has to offer. This has been a long time coming, and it’s great to be on the way at last, a week of food in my pack, no deadlines, out into the wind and the wilds. I mean, wilder than London anyway.
Postscript, January 2021: Heavier days. I would get weight-shamed for carrying a Kindle and wearing proper boots by ultra-lighters. Luckily there weren’t any on the Pennine Way, so I was able to walk less than 20 miles a day and then just sit around enjoying myself, guilt-free.
The Pennine Way has its priorities clear. There’s no messing about starting at a sea or a border – we’re going to start at a pub and we’re going to end at a pub.
This is the expression of someone who, on the one hand, has a beer, but on the other, is being rained on and has just been told to expect 50 mile an hour winds on Kinder Scout
Day 1: It begins – looking back at Edale. This counts as good weather, because you can see sunshine somewhere.
20th August 2016
I’ve reached Dufton, 150 miles along the Pennine way. It’s been a lot of fun so far, using a carefully constructed definition of ‘fun’ – i.e. one that involves a certain amount of bleeding. I had the great idea of switching the in-soles in my boots just before starting the trail and had lost the ability to walk, and some blood, by Malham.
Massive thanks to the amazing Anna who took time out of her busy schedule to post me the right in-soles for my boots, and also to intellectual powerhouse Tim, who doesn’t have a busy schedule, but did bring me new socks.
Tim joined me for the section from Hawes to Dufton. This was a good excuse to stay in pubs rather than camp, which was a very pleasant and civilised experience – including a night at the remote Tan Hill Inn (‘Britain’s highest inn). The luxury gave me such a sense of entitlement that we left the pub in Dufton without paying for dinner. I had to take a few days off to visit family, and when I returned I went back to the pub to pay. I don’t know if this says more about me or them, but I’m not sure anyone has ever been more pleased to see me. I don’t think it was just the money – I think we’d damaged their confidence in the fundamental goodness of mankind, and then restored it by turning back up to pay for pie and chips.
I walked with another thru-hiker for a while on this day. I decided to go to the same youth hostel, which meant a 27 mile day – further than I’d planned. The youth hostel felt semantically strained, with everyone in my 8 bed dorm over 30.
Not 100% sure why I stopped in the rain on the way up Kinder Scout to take this photo of me drinking milk. But I seem quite pleased with myself.
Malham cove.
A man with a dog had walked to Gargrave with me and then bought me a pint. And it stopped raining. It is hard to imagine a more successful day than ones that ends with dry socks and free beer.
I had been in quite a lot of pain at this point, but this man was so excited and impressed to meet someone walking the whole Pennine way that I thought I better act the part rather than complain about my feet hurting. And that worked, because they stopped hurting (and then were anaesthetised by beer).
Pen-y-ghent. Postscript, January 2021: lots of walkers here as always, but remember passing some thru-hikers on the way up and we immediately recognised each other as such. Same way you do it on the Pacific Crest Trail – grubbier than a normal walker in a way that is otherwise inexplicable.
These ducks are about to carry out a surprisingly well orchestrated pincer movement to steal some of my cheese. I lost cheese but gained something greater – the knowledge that ducks really like cheese.
Postscript, January 2021: This was at the campsite in Malham where I was first inspired to walk the whole Way some years earlier, because of a sign that said something like ‘Campsite fully booked – except for Pennine Way walkers’. I always thought the normal rules shouldn’t apply to me, and now here was a way of making that a reality…
Sanity, and Tim Fowler, were on the side of not trying to walk up Great Shunner when I could only hop to get around in the morning. This photo at the top shows just how wrong sanity can be sometimes…
Nick having a cup of tea, high up on ‘high cup Nick’, as seemed appropriate (if slightly laboured)
High Force and Low Force.
High Cup Nick. With Tim.
30th August 2016
I completed the Pennine Way today when I reached the Border hotel in Kirk Yetholm – a place that gives some cold clarity to the phrase ‘there’s no such thing as a free lunch’ by giving you a free pint for walking 268 miles.
I’m now in Scotland, for the first time in my life. This might have been the end of the journey. But now, due to inspiration (by which I mean taunting) from Ian Thurman. I’m going to walk to Edinburgh to get my mileage up to something more respectable (i.e. higher than his).
And it’s probably a nice place as well.
If you’re lucky, the bog is paved. If you’re unlucky, the paving is a foot underwater.
I stayed at an odd campsite in Alston. It had no gate, but the entrance was made of sea containers, with a lorry that could be driven across the gap in between them to.. close it? Basically, exactly like the oil refinery in Mad Max 2. And to get to the toilets you went through a rusty cylindrical tunnel, like going into a nuclear bunker from the 60s. Still, can’t complain for £5 a night.
The Pennine Way joins Hadrian’s wall for a bit. A particularly good bit, with some actual wall. And in the sun.
Fun to be amongst the Hadrian’s wall thru-hikers for a bit, though they all looked very overloaded. I went through one guy’s pack who was struggling. His friend had given up and this guy was very proud that he’d remembered to take his friend’s gas cannister off him. It seemed mean to point out that he had about 3 days walking left but now enough gas for amount 3 months.
Back to rain and bog. To enjoy the Pennine way you have to embrace the bog. Probably a number of times, in an unpleasantly physical way.
Wild camping in the Cheviot hills as the wind gets stronger and stronger and having a tent made of a material thinner than a bin bag starts to seem like a bad idea (although was actually totally fine)
Postscript, January 2021: This tent has a long and exciting life ahead of it, and this storm will barely register in its memory, though at the time it did seem like a thing. High winds in Scotland will totally eclipse this, and much later a snowstorm in the desert near Tehachapi, which will snap the next door Big Agnes Copper Spur in half.
The Cheviot Hills. One of a few ‘last’ wildernesses of England, but one of the greatest.
Plus it has feral/wild goats. Don’t think the other last wildernesses have those.
So ends the Pennine Way.
