Day 11 Pennine Way
Distance: 41km
Cumulative distance: 380.5km
What was the time? Surely we must be getting close to this mountain hut…
I shoved my numb hand into the pocket of my walking pants and deperately tried to retrieve my phone. The wind was buffetting me from every angle, all I could see was bare yellow hills in every direction and Al had walked up over the horizon and long since escaped my field of vision. This wasn’t going to work, so I sat down instead, removed my backpack and fished out a muesli bar. My phone said it was about 6pm, and I figured there was probably no more than 90 minutes of daylight left. Since leaving Byrness we’d been slowly climbing up into the lifeless Cheviots, edging closer and closer to the Scottish border. Only scarce smatterings of flora and fauna thrived in these conditions, yellow grass clearly the dominant entity. I had no way of knowing how far there was left to go for the afternoon, but I calculated I must have done at least 20 miles by now. But this mountain hut wouldn’t come, and I had no way of contacting Al who I hadn’t seen in more than an hour. For once in my hiking life, I was actually concerned about the situation. We were less than 24 hours from the finish now, but it felt as if that would never materialise.
We’d slept in a bit last this morning in the comfort of our dorm room, and indulged in a morning coffee before heading out of Bellingham and towards the final bleak stretch of the Pennine Way. It was a later start than normal, but we made up time with Al setting a cracking tempo as always. Initially we trudged over heather, and then progressed into forestry land. The trail was wide and easy to follow, and we were in superb spirits by the time we stopped for lunch at a campsite near the A68. My stove wouldn’t spark, but Al’s lighter alleviated the problem and soon enough we were indulging in another tasty little cook-up.
Steve had mentioned there were a couple of mountain huts up in the Cheviots that we could use for lodging – one was about seven miles from the finish, and the other 14 miles. The latter was positioned perfectly for us, given we’d planned on busting out almost 25 miles today, to give ourselves a half day tomorrow. The plan was we’d arrive at Kirk Yetholm for lunch, then Al’s dad Neil and his brother Liam would come and collect us, and whisk us home to Otley merely three hours down the road by car. Before heading into the Cheviots, we planned to stop in Byrness for a beer at the only pub in town. That would leave us with about nine miles to finish off the day.
Spirits were high and with 24 hours left we both allowed ourselves to dream of the half pint waiting for us at the Border Hotel in Kirk Yetholm, the pub’s offering to weary Pennine Way finishers. But our luck started to turn pretty soon after lunch. We had to waltz about half a mile off track into Byrness, but figured it was worth the extra distance if it meant a soothing pint before tackling the terrifying topography of the Cheviots. We found the pub in the tiny town, but copped a pretty forthright rebuttal. Posted on the door was a note saying “Closed due to illness”. Well that was that, all we could do was haul our way back to the Pennine Way, cross the A68 and head up into the hills.
The first hill was an absolute belter and left us both staggering around with wobbly knees as we thrust ourselves upwards into the Cheviots of the Northumberland National Park. This took me back to my little stretch on Scotland’s Southern Upland Way last year when I walked from Moffat to Wanlockhead – arguably my toughest day on the entire Land’s End to John O’Groats walk. The A68 was soon a distant memory, and all you could see in every direction was yellow hills. Al was traveling better than me and surged ahead. For about half an hour I could see the dot of his backpack lumbering through the hills, but he eventually disappeared. I was physically exhausted and caught in that horrible hiking limbo of not knowing how far there was left for the day.
I sat down for about 10 minutes, trying to muster the mental strength to tackle another monstrous looking yellow hill that loomed up ahead. I stood up, heaved the backpack back onto my shoulders, strapped myself in and strode headlong towards the hill. Surely, SURELY, the mountain hut must be just over its other side. Unfortunately it wasn’t, and from the top all I could see was more yellow. The path painfully wended down again, and I followed it forlornly starting to convince myself that I’d somehow missed the hut, where Al was probably curled up next to a fireplace cradling a hot chocolate. I was getting delusional. Al had suggested earlier today that we carry some firewood into the hut in case there was a fireplace, but I’d shot him down immediately telling him this thing would be equipped with absolutely no luxury at all. I no longer had the energy for optimism.
The path continued winding through the hills, at one stage threatening to take me all the way down to the bottom of a steep valley before it changed direction at the last moment. I saw a little farm building off in the distance and momentarily hope it was our salvation, but it wasn’t in the right direction. Burying myself into a podcast, all I could do was keep plugging away ignoring the appetite which had quickly starting roaring at me from the depths of my hollow stomach. Could I set up camp out here? I started looking for some flat ground but there was nothing, just more uneven yellow grass. Then the mountain hut appeared. And as I approached, so did Al, waving at me frantically to come in out of this relentless wind. It was absolutely tiny, but resembled a five star palatial suite from my vantage point.
Within minutes I was in and we were cooking up pasta. We recycled the excess water to make hot chocolates – not the sweetest we’d ever had but they warmed us up and provided the perfect accompaniment to the block of chocolate I produced for dessert. There was no fireplace, no discernible warmth and no beds, just three raised platforms boasting about 12 inches of width. No doubt someone would roll off onto the cold, hard floor during the night but we were both too exhausted to care. All that mattered was we were inside and protected from the elements. We just needed to survive one more night and we’d be done.
