DAY 1 - Edale -> Laddow Rocks, 33.09km
Wednesday 14th August, the day I intended to set off on the Pennine Way, didn’t exactly start off as planned. A power cut in the middle of the night left my phone on 40%, the only thing I’d be taking to navigate the unforgiving barren wasteland that is rural England. On top of this, it was refusing to charge, so at 7am (less than an hour before my train) I was sat there at the kitchen table waggling a toothpick in the charging port trying to get dust out. Ideal. Luckily, no dust can stand in the way of me and a stupid amount of walking, so I got my train in time.
I arrived at Edale, the starting point for the Pennine Way, around 8.30am. As I took on the first kilometre of what would eventually be upwards of 400, I had one thought on my mind: “what am I doing? Like, why am I trying to punish myself?” Thing is, the idea of saying you’ve completed the Pennine Way and walked from the outskirts of Manchester to the border of Scotland sounds great, but then you remember the small detail you actually need to walk it. For over 400km. Damn.
After about half an hour of walking I had begun to accept what I had embarked on and it began to become a little more effortless as I built up a rhythm. That is until I reached Jacob’s Ladder. No more merrily strolling over relatively flat ground. Within an hour of starting I had come to one of the steepest climbs of the entire Pennine Way. After a bit of a push I had made it to the top. “That wasn’t so bad, maybe this trek is going to be relatively easy”.
Oh silly naive Joe.
I pushed on along the kinder scout ridge until I dropped down across a valley and begun following another winding stone path, stretching off to the distance endlessly surrounded by vast green swathes of grass that blanketed the hill.
An hour or so further and I found myself careening down the edge of a valley that was entirely painted purple by a sea of flowers. I wish I could say what flowers they were, but I forgot to read up on my botany while preparing for this trek. Lavender maybe? Oh well, the point was they looked (and smelled) nice.
I pushed on down to Crowden and decided to carry on up the trail a bit further to find somewhere to wild camp. I also wanted to try and cut a bit of the distance off my planned walk the following day, as I had intentions to make it to Hebden Bridge which was a delightful 40km+ further on.
I reached the top of Laddow Rocks and tried finding a suitable spot to setup but found myself gradually making my way back down to the river that passed through the valley, eventually deciding to pitch up at a spot right beside it. This I heavily came to regret, as I spent the next 20 minutes shouting obscenities at all the bugs attacking me before I could hide in my tent where I would cower in fear until the next morning.
Good thing I’d remembered to bring my bug spray…. oh never mind, I had decided it was just unnecessary weight.
Idiot.
DAY 2 - Laddow Rocks -> Hebden Bridge, 39.45km
In preparing for this hike I was equally planning ahead for New Zealand. 4 months of continuous walking meant I wanted to pack as light as possible, so I opted to purchase an ultra lightweight tent with just a single skin. This meant it was prone to some condensation inside, but reviews suggested this was fairly minimal and nonetheless manageable. What the reviews didn’t mention was the issues that arise if you throw strong wind along with the forgetting to attach the optional extra lines to the side of the tent for extra sturdiness.
Cue me lying in my sleeping bag at 4am, the winds causing the damp walls of my tent to continuously whack me in the face as they simultaneously flicked condensation droplets off the roof to give my tent its own rather impressive micro climate as I got rained down on.
“Sod this. I’ll just start walking.”
So after a very short attempt at trying to go back to sleep and the packing up of my soggy tent, I set off for a long journey to Hebden Bridge around 6.30am.
The walk started off very nicely with a long stroll across the moors until I eventually reached the edge and was met with the view of an endless span of fields and hills rolling off into the distance, with Hebden Bridge nowhere to be seen. This was going to be a long day.
After a few hours walking I was making my way along the top of some more hills as I got battered by sideways rain and wind when I passed a bloke with his dog doing the Pennine Way from the opposite direction. Had a quick chat then went on our way, thought nothing of it.
An hour later I caught up to an old couple who asked me if I’d bumped into that same man. They then said he had started the Pennine Way southbound on the Sunday just gone. It was Thursday. Over 350km (200 miles) in 5 days. Almost 2 marathons a day.
Show off.
Pushing on, I eventually reached the M62. It’s weird, the amount of times I’ve driven down that road with the hills that line it and paths that spread through them nothing but a fleeting temporary sight. Doing this trek, the rules were reversed with one of the busiest roads in the north being a minor landmark as I pushed beyond the hilltops with what lay behind them being nothing but a myth up until now.
The weather was certainly no myth, though.
After walking around 25km, the wind and rain seriously picked up. Around this time, still over 10km from Hebden Bridge, I passed a pub that I’m sure would have been more than happy to provide me with a pint and a proper meal. Yet, I carried on, opting to follow a monotonous road along the edge of a hill with fog obscuring my view of anything over 20m away from me and in classically dire British weather.
Eventually pushing through more moorland, up and past Stoodley Pike, and down into another valley, I finally found myself at Hebden Bridge looking like a drowned rat, almost 10 hours after I had left my camp that morning.
After a desperate attempt to find an airbnb I finally fell upon the blessed angel that is Shirley, who provided me a room and happily dried off the contents of my bag that had become soaking wet over the course of the day.
We love you Shirley.
I had two main feelings after today. One: why did I just walk a marathon in the pouring rain and gale force winds when I could have been sat at home warm with my feet up. Two: I feel amazing for just walking a marathon in the pouring rain and gale force winds when I could have been at home warm with my feet up.
DAY 3 - Hebden Bridge -> Ickornshaw, 26.93km
On the third day this experience finally started to properly feel like routine. Get up, have a quick breakfast and a coffee, pack my gear and set off for another day of walking. To be honest, I’d say this is the first day that I genuinely started to really enjoy the experience rather than think of it as just fulfilling the need to eventually reach the end point and complete the Pennine Way.
You hear plenty of people say that exercise is the best form of therapy, but I suppose I’d never truly understood it before embarking on this trek. When your only focus and worry for the day is getting from A to B, there’s very little to worry about when B rolls around.
I found myself making my way through landscapes I’d only ever really seen through a car window from a distance. It felt great to actually appreciate those hilltops and valleys from their perspective.
The day cruised by, a pretty easy stroll with a few sections of pushing up and down hills with the odd blip of sticking my leg in a hole I hadn’t noticed and tripping and whacking myself in the face with a trekking pole. But eventually, I reached Ickornshaw.
On the face of it, a relatively easy and uneventful day. As a whole, the first day I properly began to appreciate the process of this 2-week-long A to B.
DAY 4 - Ickornshaw -> Malham, 30.91km
Today I had the pleasure of being joined by my mum, my cousin and his fiance. I had quite grown used to walking alone with just the company of various podcasts and audiobooks and was not averse to the idea of taking on the entire 2 week journey on my own. But on the other hand it was nice to have other people tagging along that made me feel better about my abilities by them having to give up at Galgrave whilst I pushed on for another 2 hours to Malham (sorry mum you did great).
This was one of the first days that seemed to be mostly made up of farm track and roads rather than thin paths across moors and hilltops, but it was nonetheless an enjoyable walk.
After a deserved pub lunch in Galgrave I carried on solo to reach Malham. A relatively easy journey across fields and over a few small hills eventually brought me to following a river. It’s weird, I remember thinking at the time “this seems too nice to be England”: a well kept path lined by flowers and perfectly healthy green grass, yet completely natural; a gentle stream flowing beside an inconsistent line of Idealistic white houses… I could go on.
Following this landscape I eventually reached Malham. If you’ve ever seen Hot Fuzz, for some reason as I walked into the village I kept thinking of Sandford. Not that it gave a vibe that someone was about to jump out and stab me with gardening shears or that a there was a runaway swan, but more because it seemed pretty idealistic and near perfect.
DAY 5 - Malham -> Horton in Ribblesdale, 24.65km
The day started off making my way up to a Harry Potter landmark, of course the only thing Malham Cove is known for. A pretty easy walk up through a valley and around Malham Tarn had me chatting with a girl I met who had just began a journey to take on part of the Pennine Way.
Doing this walk I didn’t realise the amount of people I’d meet doing the Pennine Way, thus instantly having something in common. Even if they weren’t doing the whole trek and were maybe just having a day out, everyone’s focus is seemingly just making it from A to B so you instantly have something in common with with them. I don’t know, I suppose it just helps create a very positive atmosphere.
After moving on solo and making my way to the peak of another very large hill (I can’t find the name), I found myself staring at what I now know was Pen-y-ghent, a rather intimidating looking towering hill with a very sharp ridge on one side. “Thank god I won’t need to climb up that, Horton In Ribblesdale is in a different direction and lies just over that small hill next to it” *looks down at map on phone and sees that the route goes directly over said ridge*.
“Bollocks”.
After making my way across the valley and up to the foot of Pen-y-ghent I was passed by someone saying “proper scramble going up there, not going to be fun in this wind”. Nice one mate, good afternoon to you too.
Indeed, this was the first time I had to use my hands as well as my feet to make it up a steep climb. Being someone that doesn’t have the best centre of gravity and around 15kg on my back, I didn’t feel particularly elegant as the wind tried to batter me off the rocks and send me tumbling down. (Mum, I know you’re reading this, I’m only saying this for dramatic effect. Dont worry, I only pretended to nearly falloff). After reaching the top, the rest of the walk to Horton was a breeze. In the sense it was stupidly windy and kept trying to blow my hat down the side of the cliff. Nevertheless, I eventually made my way down the winding path and reached Horton with much of the evening to spare. Day 5, done and dusted.
DAY 6 - Horton in Ribblesdale -> Hawes, 22.44km
Day 6 was by far the easiest day of the whole trip so far.
The entire trip was pretty much a straight line. An easy start with a gradual incline until I was eventually raised up with stunning views of the surrounding hills, valleys and forests after a few hours walking. At a point I’m pretty sure I saw the train track from Harry Potter and the chamber of secrets (this trek quickly turning into a Harry Potter sightseeing tour).
Disappointing but not a huge amount to report from this walk. I arrived at Hawes before it had even gone 2pm… I would probably have carried on but my uncle was joining me the next day from Hawes so I found myself with an unholy amount of time I wasn’t used to following a day of walking to wander about a village I had never been to.
Like any responsible adult, I went to the pub.
DAY 7 - Hawes -> Tan Hill Inn, 26.91km
After securing myself a morning sausage roll I went to meet my uncle with his dog and set off on our days walking. Today, our destination was the ultimate goal.
The pub.
But not just any pub - apparently the highest pub in the UK. Which also meant we had to climb up to reach it.
Damn.
The initial climb up to the peak of Great Shunner Fell was long but perfectly manageable. I had reached the point of the Pennine Way just before the path began to loop back on itself before continuing north, so it was weird stood at the peak able to see a point in the distance that I would be reaching in 2 days time. I had become very used to not even being able to see the destination of the current day of hiking from the start point.
We gradually weaved our way down the side of the hill, made our way around and along another ridge before reaching Keld, another potential ending point for the days walking.
But we had our priorities right.
Less than 2 hours and a gradual climb later we had our sights on the pub, where we were ready to settle in for a few well deserved pints after a solid day of hiking along with the most outrageous Yorkshire pudding I’d ever seen.
It’s weird that the end of today marked the halfway point of my hike from the outskirts of Manchester to the border of Scotland (given I stick to my planned destinations per day). It feels like the time between starting the trek and the end of day 2 is the exact same as the time between day 3 and day 7. The time seems to pass a lot quicker once it becomes routine, which I suppose is what you want.
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