Day two Pennine Way
Distance: 32km
Cumulative distance: 72km
There was a smattering of rain hitting my tent as I woke up early this morning, but by the time I’d forced myself up and out into the freezing cold it had subsided. It meant a wet tent, but the rest of me was dry so I was happy to take it.
Before leaving Al’s on Friday I bought a 1kg bag of oats to fire me up at breakfast each morning, but that became one of the first casualties when I started packing my bag. Too bulky, too heavy, and to be frank too much effort to cook up in the morning anyway. So it was more hiker bars and we were on the road for 7am into the bitingly cold mist that had descended upon us overnight. At least no ranger had tried to break up our party, so we had no blood on our hands.
We had to haul ourselves over Marsden Moor and to the turnoff for Standedge where Al was to (hopefully) find his boots sitting in a plastic bag behind a skip. So gangster. But before all that we had another reservoir to pass, and then a river to climb down to and over. It was at this point Jimmy, running very low on water, decided to try out one of his water purification tablets. He scooped some of the slowly running water into his bottle then dropped in a few tablets which promised to make even the most fetid liquid drinkable in just 30 short minutes. The water fizzed around a little and turned a slight shade of yellow. Grim.
It was back up the other side of the river and over the misty moor where we bumped into a cyclist who was moving much quicker than us in the opposite direction. He told us about the time he rode from Land’s End to John O’Groats then Al piped up and said “I know someone who walked from Land’s End to John O’Groats.”
“Who was that?”, the cyclist quizzed.
“Him,” Al said and pointed in my direction.
“How many girls did you pull along the way?? Some of those girls up in the remote parts of Scotland would’ve been pretty wild,” he offered before laughing his head off and leaving us to it before even waiting for an answer to his enquiry.
Al and Jimmy set the tempo again, although they also seemed to be feeling the effects of yesterday’s monstrous effort. It wasn’t my legs bothering me at this point but the bitter cold, and the fact I hadn’t bothered bringing any gloves. This moor was horrifically bleak too, just yellow grass stretching in all directions. Well as far as I could tell anyway, my visibility was no more than about 10 metres.
Upon arriving at the Standedge turnoff, Al dropped his gear and started running down the road, facing a two or three mile round trip at the end of which he should finally have his hiking boots. His sneakers had held up pretty well, but they were soaking wet and probably ready to be replaced. Jimmy and I meanwhile had to just hang around in the biting wind waiting for Al to return. Jimmy told me a story about the time he’d been cycling through here and had to stop and fix a puncture. It was during the winter, there were several feet of snow around and it was much, much colder than it was now. I couldn’t even comprehend what that would’ve been like since right now I lacked the fine motor skills to simply relieve myself at the edge of yet another reservoir. Instead I curled up low to the ground on the grass and behind a small mound to try and hide from the wind, and shut my eyes hoping that when I woke up it’d be next to an open fire and I’d be surrounded by an all-you-can-eat banquet and endless gallons of porter.
Al was back, his boots had been found and we were off again. Before long we were trekking through more mundane moorland, Saddleworth Moor, and at one point slid into Lancashire which delivered a tiny feeling of progress. The fog was finally lifting, although that did nothing to alter the view. I spun 360 degrees and could see endless moor in every direction. Al and Jimmy told me this was moorland murder territory, where a couple of sickos targeted kids in the 1960s and dumped their bodies in the vast yellow expanse we were now traversing. Most of the bodies have since been found but there are still believed to be a few undiscovered, and I would imagine that’s how things will remain. For this is just moorland – heather stretching on forever atop boggy, spongy ground which would swallow anything that dare stray from the flagstones.
We came back into Yorkshire and found a rusty car which offered an excuse to pose for a few photographs before pressing on to the M62 which was crossed by a pretty impressive single-span suspension bridge – the biggest in Yorkshire or England or the Milky Way, I can’t quite remember the specifics of its claim to fame. Cars beeped far beneath us as we went past – it was slightly disconcerting looking down the motorway at the endless lanes of traffic bisecting the moors.
Luckily we made haste towards Blackstone Edge and soon enough the rumble of cars, trucks and buses was a distant memory. For we were now confronted with a superb smattering of black stone stretching the length of a long cliff face overlooking Littleborough. This was where we were meant to camp last night if we had followed one of Jimmy’s more truncated itineraries, some 30-plus miles from Edale. It would’ve been a nice, if slightly exposed spot but fortunately sanity had prevailed and we hadn’t attempted to walk that far. We stopped for a short while to soak up the views and examine the exquisite boulders, but hunger was gnawing away at us and we knew the White House Inn was drawing nearer. After clambering down one last hill, and up a road of only a couple of hundred metres which felt like it went forever, we came to the pub and collapsed on a vacant table.
Roast dinners were had (it was a Sunday after all) and I discovered a sensationally refreshing drink – green cordial mixed with soda water. After an hour’s rest we decided it was time to press on. There were still another 10 miles to be had before we could consider pitching up. As we waited outside for Al to tie his boots back up, a couple of elderly ladies came over for a quick chat and were thoroughly impressed to hear we planned on walking all the way to Scotland. After a bit more small talk on the logistics before us over the next 10 and a half days, the more elderly of the two spontaneously threw out the quote of the day when she looked at me and enquired:
“Have you got any black in ya?”
Dumbfounded, I wondered if she was referring to the tan I was still carrying from the Aussie summer and mumbled “What?” before she repeated the question and then decided not to wait for an answer.
“You’re teeth are perfect they are,” said with a thick Yorkshire twang.
“I stopped donating to all those African countries. You watch all the ads and they’ve all got perfect teeth, so it looks like they’re spending all my money on fixing their teeth and not feeding themselves.
“You boys got any girlfriends?” she continued with a twinkle in her eye.
This was slightly more civil. Jimmy told her about his long-term missus and I explained I used to be spoken for before the lady’s friend yanked her away and left us to contemplate the next 10 miles and the bizarre conversation we’d just been a part of. Needless to say, whenever there was a break in chat over the next 10 miles, one of us would pipe up with “You got any black in ya?”
We made good, flat ground along yet more reservoirs and then hit some moorland which wound us all the way up Stoodley Pike, upon which stands a 37m memorial to the Crimean War – a fetching monument which replaced a previous structure celebrating the defeat of Napoleon. We sat in its shadow helping ourselves to a few nips out of Jimmy’s hip flasks and admiring the sensational views over towards Hebden Bridge, and across to another series of hills upon which we would be camping that evening. Jimmy started telling us about some ankle pain he’d been having, but we thought nothing of it. He spoke to his Dad on the phone while Al and I scaled the pitch-dark spiral staircase of the monument to take in the view from its balcony. Al posed for a dangerous photo over the edge of the balcony as is his custom, then we navigated the dark stairs once again before we were on our way down to Hebden Bridge – the lesbian capital of the UK according to Jimmy.
There was one more hill to climb and it proved a right pain but I managed to pick up a second wind and for once I left the other two in my wake. Most the way up the hill a local farmer stopped and asked us to help him place a picnic table in a little clearing. He’d carried the thing up on his tractor after his wife decided it was time to get rid of it. Instead of throwing it out he thought why not insert it adjacent to the Pennine Way and give weary hikers a chance to sit down and take in the views back to Stoodley Pike. Just to confirm his legendary bloke status, the farmer then thrust the tractor into reverse, flicked his head over his shoulder and proceeded to navigate all the way back down the steep, rocky hill at a furious rate of knots.
Eventually we came to the New Delight Inn at about 15 minutes to six, and were told they stopped serving food at the top of the hour. We ordered in the nick of time, ate our tea then set up camp and decided some much needed showers were in order before returning to the pub for a couple of swift pints. Al unfortunately had misplaced his towel, and was unable to source one for the pub with the bargirl telling him she didn’t happen to have one on hand. As resourceful as ever, he solved the problem simply by drying himself with a pair of socks. I can only presume he wore them on his hands like a couple of puppets and rubbed himself down.
Back at the pub we discussed a plan which involved walking 16 miles before lunch tomorrow – a pub in Lothersdale would feed us so Jimmy was hoping. This was a huge undertaking in my books, and we were still in the process of biting off more than we could chew but I figured we’d just go for it and see what happened. If the others weren’t hurting now, they definitely would be by lunchtime tomorrow and surely after that the rushed itinerary would finally be modified so we tacked on a few more days and slowed the pace down a fraction.