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The Ramblers - Derbyshire Dales Group |
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The Pennine WayWhen we said that we were going to walk the Pennine Way this summer the comments divided between “haven’t you done it before” and mild interest along the lines of - “well OK if you want to but it’s not on my list”.
Most people know the route of the Pennine Way. It starts at The Nag’s Head Edale and finishes at the Border Hotel Kirk Yetholm. We managed to visit a fair number of pubs in the evenings and a good variety of micro- brewery beers were available so you could say it was a glorified pub-crawl. Teashops were less of a feature but when we found them they were welcome. There was a nasty moment at Horton-in-Ribblesdale when, as we approached the cafe at 5 pm, we watched in horror the sign turned from OPEN to CLOSED as we crossed the car park. We went in anyway and managed to procure the tea and cake we had been looking forward to since the top of Pen-y-ghent. Essentially the route follows the high ground up the centre of northern England. The scenery is very varied, sometimes spectacular, sometimes more gentle in the few valley sections and often wild and remote but everyday was varied and brought something new. Gradually the houses and villages changed character, the sheep changed too till we finally reached the Cheviot and flocks of Scottish blackfaces. The company along the way was one of the great pleasures of the trip. On the first couple of days we got to know all those who started on the same day as us. Some folks went ahead more quickly and others caught us up. We sometimes walked parts of the day together but more often we would meet people stopped and in the evenings. The nature of this ‘company of walkers’ was very special. There were shared experiences, lots of help, support and fun. We gave each other nicknames; apparently we were ‘The Youlgrave Two’. There were many highlights, including a peregrine over Malham Cove, and the showy yellow flowers of shrubby cinquefoil along the river Tees. The crossing of Black Hill was a special day. This has been infamously described by Wainwright as the only hill with no redeeming feature. Well it isn’t black any more! Slabs have been put down to bring the path back to a narrow strip and recent work to regenerate the vegetation has worked and it is green. As we walked down the other side we found cranberries, the first we have ever seen in fruit. and the excitement of photographing this phenomenon made us just too late for a cuppa at the tea van on the A635- it closed just as we approached over the moor. Paving slabs now cover many of the moorland sections of the route. They are a real feature of the walk and mean that the erosion caused by generations of walkers widening the path to avoid bare peat and bog has largely gone though there are still some bad bits for the purist to enjoy. Our worst day was the section from Once Brewed on Hadrian’s Wall to Bellingham. Rob and Ruth had joined us for the weekend and Sunday found all four of us arriving at the bunkhouse in Bellingham in the pouring rain after a wet and boggy walk. Our worst weather was on the last day. We crossed the Cheviot from Uswayford to Kirk Yetholm in mist and torrential rain driven by gale force winds. Fortunately conditions improved as we dropped down into Scotland and as we reached the end of our journey the rain stopped. Our best day? Well that is more difficult: there are a lot to chose from. We had rain, sun, mist, wind, bog and wonderful company. We had the complete Pennine Way experience. And believe me the whole Pennine Way is much, much greater than the sum of its parts. It’s a great walk. Sue Weatherley |
The Pennine Way suffers from something of a bad press. It is too long to comfortably fit in a fortnight, and the image is of a long upland boggy walk, needing a time commitment of three weeks. The approach of my bus pass was a seminal event; if we were going to do it at all it had better be soon. A visit to Northumberland last year, where we discovered some of the bits we did not know already whetted my appetite for the more remote stretches of the route. Never mind the three weeks walking, the planning took a lot longer than that. The result was a 21 day itinerary, with a few shorter days, using as many hostels as possible and having our bags carried. All this puts us in the wimp category but was a wonderful indulgence. Other walkers who were made of sterner stuff, carrying rucksacks and camping gear, still overtook us on a regular basis. However we were the ones who took in the diversion to the top of Fountains Fell and off route to see God’s Bridge as we went into Bowes.