Day 41 - Hebden Bridge to Lothersdale

25 May
Distance: 18 miles
Number of other end-to-enders met: 1

Ma-in-Law set us up well during our rest day for the next leg of our trip. She'd bought in every food that she knows that we like and she cooked us one of her legendary roast dinners.

This morning younger step-son, who had journeyed up to Halifax (with girlfriend (hello Nick & Holli!)) to see us, dragged himself out of bed at an unearthly hour to drive us back to Hebden Bridge. It was just gone 7am as we set out from the point we had got to on Friday.

Considering that we detoured to Edale to ensure that we got the start of the Pennine Way, and that we will take the more significant detour to Kirk Yetholm at the end of the Pennine Way, we're not being particularly faithful to the Way. We detoured to go via Marsden, we detoured to Hebden Bridge, then this morning rather than going staight back to the Way from Hebden Bridge we decided to go via Hardcastle Crags. It's a scenic route and in that we've been to both Heptonstall and Hardcastle Crags before we didn't feel too bad at choosing the latter route.

The main point of note on today's route was Top Withins above Haworth, and it was in the mile after that landmark that we met four different sets of people out walking. After that we met no-one until our walk in to Lothersdale.

This is a sunny bank holiday weekend. Okay, so the wind was conspiring against us today and making the going hard, but did that really put off all of the walkers? Where was everyone?

It was on the walk into Lothersdale that we met two chaps. They wondered if we'd seen their friend who they were meeting. You see, he was walking from Land's End to John O'Groats.

Thanks to the chat we had with them we came to meet this end-to-ender, Doug, in the Hare and Hounds in Lothersdale after we'd found our patch of grass for the night and put the tent up.

He set out from Land's End on 29 March but had a 2 week lay up with infected blisters. He's now ditched the tent and is going well. His schedule is the same as ours for the next few days so there's a chance that we may bump into him again.

So, that's four people we've now met doing the same walk as us. News has it that Conrad is still going well and is now about 5 days ahead of us.

News of Mick's new boots is that everything went well for the first 13 or so miles of the day. Then we stopped for lunch and he took them off for a while. Thereafter he had a problem with the ankle cuff and a tendon, which caused quite a few adjustments (some accompanied by a positive flinging down of the walking poles with a big harrumph).

I'm sure that sometime in the next four or five days the boots will lose their battle with the shape of his feet and decide that their easiest option is to conform.

Even if they do trouble him again tomorrow, there will be a distraction. Friends of Mick, who he's not seen for quite some years, are heading for Malham to walk back to meet us. It's always nice to have someone to walk with for a while, so we're looking forward to that. And it's a short day too.