DAY ONE
Day one Pennine Way
Distance: 40km
Cumulative distance: 40km
Just before we strode out the door yesterday afternoon, I made a passing comment to Al as he was jamming the last of his supplies into a heaving backpack.
“Just bring your boots and your sleeping bag…everything else is simply a luxury.”
Adequate footwear is absolutely necessary, obviously. You could do the Pennine Way naked as long as you had a decent pair of boots propping you up (and perhaps a floating layer of blubber for the top of each hill). Likewise, a sleeping bag would at least go some way to staving off the worst of the cold at night and it ranks above a tent in that you can always find a roof in bad weather – be it under a dense tree, in a small rocky cave or even within a bus shelter. Alas, my hasty advice fell on deaf ears. Just as we were packing down our tents and about to set off for Edale to meet Jimmy, Al realised he had left his trusty walking boots at home. We were yet to take a single step of the 250 plus miles stretching before us and we’d arrived at a significant hurdle. Siblings were frantically called, as was Al’s delightful mother Jackie, but at that early hour phones either rang out to voicemail, or were answered with a response along the lines of “No, I’m not willing to drive two and a half hours to drop off a pair of boots”. Al was left with one option – to ring the patriarch of the family, the man with a Yorkshire Rose tattoo on one forearm, and some Guiseley AFC ink on the other – the great Neil Matthews.
“Ohh sure I can bring your boots, I actually fancied a bit of a day out anyway,” Neil responded much to Al’s delight.
“Joost give me a few hours, I had a pretty heavy one last night.”
Upon termination of the phone call Al turned to Andrew and I, and somberly remarked “He’ll have that over me forever now.”
But that was the price to pay. Neil was going to drop the boots off in a town where would be passing close by on the morning of day two. That would mean Al would be wearing sneakers for day one, which tends to be one of the hardest on the entire route. Fortunately it was 2019 and not the 1970s and 1980s, decades during which Kinder Scout had not been paved with flagstones and hiking across it often meant wading through miles of waist-deep bog.
Jimmy was waiting patiently outside the Old Nag’s Head when we finally arrived some 45 minutes later than scheduled. He was in a cheery mood despite the delayed start, and heaving a backpack even heftier than Al’s but it seemed to fit snugly enough behind his roughly 10 foot nine inch frame. More importantly he was a top bloke and very eager to get going after months of methodical planning. There was still some murmuring that we should try and complete the entire journey in 10 days rather than 12 but I just hung back quietly without contributing – yet – to that particular conversation. Simple maths would tell you that required a 25-mile-a-day average and that was simply out of the question.
We took the obligatory selfie (which seems to have been misplaced) out the front of the Old Nag’s Head, and then the three of us and Andrew were off. Andrew was going to walk with us up and over Kinder Scout before heading back down on a circular route and driving home that afternoon. As it turned out he seemed to be carrying the worst of the hangovers. After charging up Jacob’s Ladder we found some jagged rocks which provided a beautiful spot for a first stop. But Andrew’s headache was becoming unbearable, so it was time to crack out the pain relief medication and Al was only too happy to provide one of his recently acquired period pain tablets. He’d noticed in the chemist yesterday while doing a last-minute supply run that period pain tablets carried more milligrams of Ibuprofen than the more unisex of the over-the-counter pain-relief offerings, so that’s what he purchased. It certainly seemed to do the trick for Andrew, and after 15 minutes there was still some light stubble on his chin so we figured there were to be no emasculating side effects.
Over the almost indistinguishable top of Kinder Scout we pressed on, and then bowled along across flagstones which kept us out of the bog they were marching us through. Occasionally one of the flagstones was a little loose, and the weight of a human and their backpack would cause it to wobble in the bog before sinking momentarily to collect a little puddle of the brown goo beneath. I couldn’t imagine doing this walk without flagstones, but I guess they were much tougher back in the day.
By the time we said goodbye to Andrew we would’ve racked up a good five or six miles already, but we were just getting started. And starting to get hungry – Al discovered a trail of lollies that had been spilled by someone up ahead and didn’t hesitate to collect and distribute this haul among the group. They tasted sensational and gave us the required glucose to make it through to lunch.
Before sharply descending Kinder Scout, we ran into a South Yorkshireman who greeted us with a friendly:
“You boys doing t’Pennine Waaay?”
Ten minutes of directions and instruction followed in his thick Doncaster or Sheffield or Rotherham or Barnsley twang before he bid us good luck and farewell. Our knees received their first proper hammering as we climbed down a series of deep stone steps which took us off Kinder Scout and to more flagstoned bog land, about three miles worth in fact, across which Al and Jimmy both cranked it up a notch to a pace required to nail 25 miles in a single day. I lagged several minutes behind but took care not to force myself into keeping up. Just over the road we sat down beside the trail and enjoyed lunch, servicing our appetites which had already become monstrous after barely half a day’s hiking. Jimmy showed off the full extent of his backpack while we dined, pulling out sausages, endless bags of cous cous, three flasks of whisky and a host of other energy suppliers – no wonder his backpack was so heavy.
Next up was something called Bleaklow and we went headlong into that, quickly clearing off from the day hikers who had parked up near the road. Jimmy found a 2B pencil which we christened Shakespeare (2B or not 2B) and vowed to take our new friend to the end. Among the yellow moorland of Bleaklow Al took his first wild poo, and excitedly reported on return that he’d seen his first lizard of the walk. And so we continued across the already monotonous moorland, Al and Jimmy skipping ahead again while I ambled along at my own pace. From the top of Bleaklow we spied a reservoir and the village of Crowden, roughly 16 miles from the starting point and what is usually the first stop for Pennine Way hikers. Our knees creaked and strained on the way down to the reservoir and we stopped in at Crowden for 15 minutes to refill our water bottles and empty bladders and bowels before turning our attention to Black Hill.
Mid afternoon blended into the late of day as we slogged up another punishing hill aiming for the highest point in West Yorkshire. Al was flying and bolted up the hill in sensational time, while Jimmy lagged back under that giant encumbrance on his back. At the top of the climb Al was chatting to a couple of girls, one of which greeted me with a “Keep going Jimbo” as I neared the top. Classic Al.
“Ahh I haven’t seen you for ages!” I replied, finally stopping for a rest as we said goodbye to Al’s new pals and waited for Jimmy. We rested for 10 minutes or so as the temperature began to cool along with our enthusiasm for hiking. We were still miles from where we were aiming for that night – a couple of reservoirs beyond the next A road and just before Marsden. A man of about 40 appeared and began chatting to us, telling us of the time he’d done the Pennine Way with an older sibling and beginning every sentence with “My brother and I”. He was a friendly chap and by the end of our little rest we’d been furnished with almost every detail of the walk he embarked on with his brother some 20 years ago.
Not too far beyond our new friend we came to the highest point in West Yorkshire, and soon after I hit a wall, to an extent I’d never before experienced. I became light-headed, and felt completely sapped of energy like I’d just stumbled into a horrific hangover. I dug into my pockets and retrieved an Aldi hiker bar which sorted me out, although I realised I was fast running out of miles in my legs for the day. I’d done one hike since landing in the UK less than a week ago to prepare for this, a stroll of barely eight miles from Otley to Ilkey over Ilkley Moor. That was an absolute walk in the park compared to whatever this was. I was dragging a long way behind the lads, but we eventually reunited on the down slope of Black Hill. Off in the distance we spied the A road, and all convinced ourselves that we’d find a shiny campsite just on the other side.
There were still some testing downhills and uphills to navigate before then, but we managed and even started to perk up a little until taking a slightly wrong turn after crossing the road. Upon recovering to higher ground Jimmy found himself knee-deep in some bog land while Al and I did our best to stay vertical. We were closing in on the 24 mile mark and those ravenous appetites were swiftly returning. Then we stumbled across a stroke of excellent fortune. Underneath the first reservoir was a downhill slope and at the base of it was a 50m long stretch of perfectly flat grass. Not only was it perfect for camping, but it offered some shelter from the wind and even hid us from any passing rangers walking along the reservoir shore above. In any event we’d decided as a group after setting up camp in the setting sun that if any ranger did decide to come down and tell us to move on, we would simply murder him and toss his remains in the reservoir. There was no way we were going anywhere until 7am the next morning. Food was cooked, whisky was passed around and legs were rested. Day one was taken care of an we all drifted off to sleep in our respective tents dreaming of the pub we’d be having lunch at tomorrow.
