Day five Pennine Way
Distance: 22.5km
Cumulative distance: 162.5km
For those who care, we found a pub last night which was heavily adorned with all things Burnley (as you would’ve seen at the end of the previous post). It seems to me we’re in Clarets territory for the moment, and I for one reveled in the novelty of it being something different to Manchester United or Liverpool, who illogically seem to dominate as the most supported clubs in Australia. The barman wasn’t a football man however, although was only more than happy to fire up the cathode ray tubes in the corner and show us the Spurs v Man City match. More importantly we had a visitor as we were halfway through our tea – local lad Josh, who Al and I had both worked with in Iceland, popped his head in the door for an hour or so. And he came bearing gifts…Al, as resourceful as ever, had asked Josh to bring some more Compeed for his blisters and he wasn’t disappointed. Josh works as a ranger and a firefighter around these parts, and was delighted to hear we were doing the Pennine Way. He also told us we were in for a nice ridge walk tomorrow which instantly lifted our spirits. Both of us were in the mood for a lighter day after we’d managed to relegate a series of crushing hills to the rear-view mirror.
We awoke at our carefully selected campsites with our tents in slightly different conditions. Mine was catching all of the morning sun and the dew had just about melted away by the time I’d packed everything down. Al, meanwhile, had pitched up in front of some tall hay bales to shield himself from the wind, but it also meant he woke up shrouded in shade and with little icicles all over his outer canvas. After the tent had partially dried out on the fence, and Al had put Josh’s Compeed to good use, we finally hauled ourselves back to the road and aimed for the ridge which would ultimately take us into Hawes.
We’d luxuriously booked a hostel dorm for the night, and promised ourselves a shorter day which we were both crying out for. Only 14 miles separated us from our destination, and our calculations had us arriving in town around about mid afternoon affording us the opportunity to do a load of washing and hopefully rest our weary legs a fraction more than we had been. Both of us were struggling with knee pain, Al’s blisters were seemingly expanding with every footstep and the chicken I had at the pub last night was sitting particularly poorly in the lower reaches of my digestive system.
Day five would prove to be our shortest, but strangely it was the toughest mentally throughout the entire walk. That was partially due to my upset stomach, but also partially due to the brevity of the day ahead. Fourteen miles is still a decent stretch by anyone’s reckoning, but because it was so much shorter than the four days previous, I automatically started thinking this would just be a stroll in the park. And it absolutely was not. We suffered an early blow when the only café in Horton was still closed at 8.45am just as we were strolling past. Instead we climbed on out of town to a delightful spot called Ling Gill and brewed our own coffee instead. I forced down a hiker bar for some energy, but if anything that only made me feel even more ordinary. Al went off for a bit of an explore down to the creek to check out a series of cascading waterfalls, but I couldn’t muster the energy. There was still 11 or 12 miles to go today and I wanted to conserve juice for that.
We continued on, lost the path for a little while which left us doing a few circles in a field then finally picked it back up as we were carried over some more moorland and onto the ridge. The views were spectacular up at this vantage point, but I didn’t enjoy them too well. I couldn’t believe how much I was battling! Al distracted me by reading out a stack of his romantic novellas which were absolutely brilliant, and that burned a good couple of miles. The path continued to wind uphill and eventually seemed to turn a corner which had us perched high above another beautiful valley. By this stage Al had gone ahead and I was gritting my teeth with every step trying to keep my insides in one piece.
High above Hawes we stopped for some lunch and figured there were only a few miles left into town. As always they were the longest miles of the day, made worse by the fact they were all downhill. As the descent began we met a bloke sat in the grass who had started from John O’Groats, and who was walking all the way down to Edale. We chatted for awhile as I pined for Hawes, then continued walking down until Hawes came into view. But it wasn’t Hawes! It was Gayle, a little village about half a mile away from Hawes. When we finally arrived in town we aimed straight for a pub and ordered a couple of refreshing beers while I availed myself of the facilities in a moment of desperate urgency. That quelled the problem temporarily, but that dodgy chicken continued to cause me problems for the rest of the day.
They make Wensleydale cheese in Hawes, but the place was just closing up by the time we finally walked down to it. We went for an early dinner instead then headed for a pub showing the football. We also managed to get the guy at the hostel to do our washing for us, even though that’s not usually a facility offered to guests. I suspect he saw the state of us and was showing an immense degree of compassion. It all felt like a mini reset, and hopefully by morning with our washing dried and our stomachs healthy once more, we’d be good to carry on.
