Distance: 13.25 miles
No. of other people seen out walking: just 2
It was a day involving a lot of nothingness. Soon after leaving the campsite we were out on the moors and that set the scene for the day. There were no houses, just 2 roads and barely even any sheep.
I like nothingness, so with yet more fair weather upon us, I was happy.
Although we could have taken a lower level route around the first lump of the day, Laddow Rocks, we opted for the route across the top edge (a route made more interesting by the exposure and wind combination). It was a good choice: the views were well worth the pull up there.
Dropping back down to the stream we rued the fact that it was the beginning not the end of the day as we spied a couple of excellent wild camping spots, but regretfully we passed them by, danced through the only bog obstacle we found all day and made our way up the paved trail to Black Hill.
The man-eating bogs on Black Hill appeared to have been tamed out of existence by the recent dry spell. I'm only going by appearances there - I wasn't foolish enough to test the issue by venturing off the path.
We'd passed Black Hill and swung around the hillside when I spotted the snack van, quite a distance away from us, up on the road. Pointing it out to Mick he took on a gleeful glint in his eye. When I confirmed that they would sell bacon baps and that it was on our route he almost put a sprint on.
Finally reaching it an excellent third breakfast was had. It was an unexpected bonus in an already good day.
Continuing the other side of the snack-van road we were then alongside reservoirs for quite a while; it made for some very good views that I will no doubt have failed miserably to capture with my 'point and click' photography.
Needing to get to a shop today, so that we have some lunch for tomorrow, caused our diversion from the Pennine Way to drop down to Marsden. As my lunchtime post said, it was rather nice sitting there in the sun, but eventually, even with the short day, we had to move on.
We moved on slowly, but not just because of our reluctance to leave the town. A little navigational confusion came in trying to avoid the main road route to our night stop (for which confusion I'll take the blame). We did, of course, find our way in the end (although not before I came perilously close to losing my hat; I'm very grateful to Mick for noticing so promptly that it was missing (so why is it he doesn't notice a new hair style with such speed?))
Having found our campsite for the night it was evident that we weren't going to be using the Bushbuddy tonight. We may be adjacent to the A62, but we're still on the moors. There are no trees or obvious burning materials around.
It also soon became evident that the ground is a little stony - when I managed to bend quite impressively one of our titanium v stake tent pegs. Good job Mick's been carrying spares all this time.
Tomorrow we're off to Ma-in-Law's via Stoodley Pike, where we'll come to the first bit of the route so far that we've both walked before.
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