A Week In Madeira

A week and a bit ago, shortly after we got back from our first outing in Colin, we popped off to Madeira for a week with Martin & Sue.

I opted not to blog as we went, but will try to string together a few words and snapshots about our outings over the next week.

If, by any chance, you should be too impatient to wait, then you can see what we got up to by reading Martin’s on-the-go posts (which contained no fiction and barely any exaggeration, honest), which are as follows:

Day 0 – Trying to meet up in Funchal

Day 1 – The deep-end introduction to exposed levada walking

Day 2 – A gentle stroll along a headland

Day 3 – Realising we’d all dressed in matching fleeces!

Day 3 – A gentle stroll around Funchal

Day 4 – The day I discovered that I have no head for walking along 15” wide parapets with sheer drops

Day 5 – The return leg from Camacha

Day 6 – Another stroll around Funchal

Day 7 – We should have come home, but stayed an extra day

Other news from the week included me meeting (and passing) my mileage target for the year (1825 miles) and our learning that we had places in the TGO Challenge next May (thanks to Louise for conveying that eagerly-awaited news!).

Introducing Colin…

There has been a new addition to our camping accommodation. Previously there was just Vera, Susie, Connie, Ellie, Midi, Maxi & Dora* (some might argue that we have more tents than necessary, and they wouldn’t be wrong). Unlike the previous collection of girls, the new addition is big and butch and is therefore most definitely male. He was christened as Colin well before he came into our possession last Wednesday.

Here he is on a campsite in Ingleton:

He’s rather luxurious compared to our other camping accommodation. In fact, he’s not really camping accommodation at all; he’s a mobile house.

We haven’t really taken any photos specifically of the interior, but Mick did snap me chopping an onion in between sips of bubbly out of a plastic mug.

Such was the novelty of his first outing that we didn’t take the proposed backpacking trip, but we did get ourselves out for a couple of good day-walks. I’ll try to get around to penning a few words about them in a couple of weeks’ time.

The other new thing for the trip was Mick’s shoes. I think he chose the colour to go with his jacket…

(For those not familiar with the names of our tent collection: ‘Vera’ is a Terra Nova Voyager; ‘Susie’ is a Terra Nova Superlite Voyager; ‘Connie’ a Terra Nova Laser Competition; ‘Ellie’ a Vango Eos; ‘Dora’ an Aztec Dura; ‘Midi’ a Blacks dome; and ‘Maxi’ an Aztec Sala 3.)

Chilli Again?!

The backpacks are packed again. There’s no guarantee that we’re going to get out for the fourth week in four, but we’ve maximised our chances by having everything* ready to go.

The downside is that no cooking and dehydrating has been done for months and the stocks are severely depleted, so for the fourth week in four the meal that I have available is a dehydrated veggie chilli. Good job we’ve not been out for a four-night trip, or it could have got a bit repetitive!

We’ve run out of dried rice too. Must get some dehydrating done before the next trip.

(*by everything I mean ‘all of our kit’. I don’t have a route up my sleeve, but I didn’t last week either, and the one two weeks before that was thrown together in ten minutes too, so there’s plenty of time yet to come up with a route.)

The photo is completely unrelated to the text, except that it was a bit chilly that night too

 

Back to Glossop (Again)

Friday 4 November

Distance: 13.25 miles

Weather: A bit of rain, a bit of sunshine but mainly just cloudy.

Friday didn’t get off to the best of starts when, within two minutes of emerging from my sleeping bag, I upset the stove and dumped a whole pot of water onto my gear inside of the tent. The water may have been inconvenient, but at least the stove landed such that it narrowly missed setting fire to anything; that really would have been a bad start to the day.

Over breakfast the rain, which had fallen for much of the night finally stopped, but camp was still a soggy, misty place when we emerged at 7.30. What you can’t see from the photo is that it was also unseasonably warm. In fact, still in my summer sleeping bag, I think it was the warmest night (out of 63) I’ve spent in a tent this year:

Having ended Thursday about a mile away from the originally planned route, and having no intention of backtracking, we started Friday with a ‘get back on track’ diversion. The diversion didn’t go entirely well either as, when we reached the point where we needed to cross the River Ashop, we found that the bridge marked on the map (and which appears to be in place on aerial photos) is now just two piers without the critical bit in between. With the water levels being high, none of us fancied the ford, so a bit of head-scratching and map-poring took place. The decision was that we would continue on the south side of the river for two miles until we could cross back just before the Snake Inn.

It turned out to be an ‘interesting’ hour or so of walking. None of the side streams proved to be difficult obstacles:

Some of those tumbling side-streams were quite pretty too:

But, of course, it wasn’t all just a simple stroll along a riverside. Some diversions up the hillside were required to find our way down to steep-sided streams, and then there were the two barbed-wire topped fences over which we had to clamber:

After the second clamber, a trod was found, which took us all the way to where we wanted to be. A trod was better than no trod, but it was deceptively strenuous walking, being very slip-slidey in its muddiness. I look happy enough to be walking it, mind:

One last stream crossing brought us to second breakfast time, which was enjoyed with a cup of tea whilst sitting on the wall-of-convenient-height that you can see on the left side of this photo:

Back on the north side of the river, into woodland we went (entering the shade at almost the exact moment that the sun finally came out). Someone had rigged up a swing in that woodland and Mick & Martin both turned to me to pose for a photo opportunity. It didn’t look the most secure swing that I’ve ever seen hanging from a tree, but they made me. That expression on my face is me trying to smile whilst being very alarmed at quite how much the string is moving along the branch.

It was as we made our way up the Snake Path (still in the sunshine, you’ll note) that we first started seeing a helicopter going back and forth between Glossop and the east end of the Kinder Plateau.

Each leg of the helicopters trip took about five minutes and it went back and forth continuously until we were out of sight of it, as we approached Glossop. On each outward leg it was carrying a skip full of something. On each return leg it was dangling the empty skip from one end. It was flying pretty low and it came quite close to us on Mill Hill – so close that we exchanged waves with the pilot. This website has lots of information as to the current regeneration project on Kinder Scout, which confirmed that the load would have either been lime or fertiliser.

A similar project on Black Hill has had very noticeable results, as shown by the ‘before’ and ‘after’ photos I posted back in June last year.

As we dropped off Mill Hill I vaguely noticed something out of the corner of my eye, but didn’t think to investigate. It was Mick who spotted that it was aircraft remains, and over we popped for a look. Given how little wreckage was at this spot, I thought that Mick was guessing when he said that it was a Liberator, but it seems that he was right. It crashed in October 1944 on a delivery flight and both of the crew on board at the time survived.

The 1:25k map had suggested that there was a path running down from the Mill Hill path to the shooting cabin on Chunal Moor, and so there was. It may have been narrow and wetter than a wet thing, but it was definitely a path and it did take us down to where we wanted to be. From there we managed to stay on footpaths until nearly the centre of Glossop, from where it was just a bit of a road-walk back to our starting point.

We were later arriving back than expected, but then we had walked further than expected and with more obstacles than anticipated. All good fun though, and the trip was rounded off nicely when Pam & Paul didn’t baulk at allowing two muddy walkers (i.e. me & Mick; somehow Martin was remarkably clean!) into their house, for us to finish the trip exactly as it had begun, with tea, cake and good chat. (If you happen to read this Pam & Paul then thank you very much for your hospitality!)

From Glossop (Take 2)

If you were standing in a pub at gone 9.30pm tonight (and not even a local pub) and someone said to you “Do you want to come on a quick backpack tomorrow morning?”, and if you hadn’t had any of your backpacking kit out of the cupboard since May, how would you react? I think that my mind would immediately spring to the negatives of how difficult it would be to get home, get enough sleep, sort out the kit, pack and get over to the Peak District in the timescales.

Martin, however, was apparently unfazed by the lateness of my announcement in Stockport on Wednesday night, that the trip that I’d hypothesized about earlier in the week was now on, and he agreed to meet us in Glossop in under 13 hours time.

And so, for the third week in three we managed to get out for a quick jaunt.

Thursday 3 November

Distance: 11.75 miles

Weather: Some rain, some dryness, some early darkness

By the time we left home at 9am on Thursday morning I had come up with a route and Martin had not only located and packed all of his kit (including new tent and rucksack) but had also arranged for parking, tea and cake at a friend’s house in Glossop.

A good time was had chatting over tea and cake with Paul, but as 11.30 approached we knew that we had to get going. Only 5.5 hours of daylight remained, and as Martin was using a tent that he’d not even looked at before, there was a certain imperative to reach our destination and find a pitch within daylight hours.

Given the very late arrangement of this trip, I hope that I can be forgiven for my lack of imagination in route choice. We headed up to Doctor’s Gate, turned left onto the Pennine Way, went down the Alport Valley, up to the trig point and down Alport Castles. In fact, the exact route Mick & I had taken in the opposite direction just five days previously. I still maintain that it’s one of my favourite bits of walking in the area, though, and so I was perfectly happy to be walking it again.

All a bit grey as we head up to Doctor’s Gate from Glossop

It was just a bit of a shame that the weather wasn’t playing ball, as, after a bit of sunshine earlier in the day, it started raining on us as we headed down the River Alport. Things had become rather more soggy underfoot in the last week too, although thanks to the freakishly warm weather I didn’t get cold feet even though I was wearing slippers without even the precaution of waterproof socks.

With the bad weather came dull light and by three o’clock it seemed like it was dusk. That light level didn’t improve as the rain stopped (at which point the bits of forest opposite started steaming nicely). My calculation of the hours of daylight didn’t prove to be misguided, and it wasn’t until gone quarter past four that the sun briefly made an appearance as it disappeared behind Kinder Scout and the sky to the west took on a certain glow.

With the light levels getting really low, we dived off the path to detour over to the last stream before where we would camp (but it seems that no photo was taken of said stream). Peaty water (but positively sparkling compared to last week’s strong-tea coloured specimen) was collected and just ten minutes or so more yomping took us to a patch of woodland with some nice lush green grass that, in the semi-darkness, looked almost flat.

Our tent was thrown up in double quick time before we went to inspect the components of Martin’s tent (a Nemo Obi 1p, on loan from Webtogs). We soon had it sorted, pitched and in a nice state of taughtness, by which time it was quarter past five, and night-time:

We did get around to pegging Vera down before bed!

I was happily and snug in the down trousers which hadn’t made it into last week’s packing list (and had been missed). It wasn’t that down trousers were required from a temperature point of view; it may be November, but the temperature was 12 degrees in our tent, and it got warmer as the night went on.

As well as tea-drinking, cooking (if you can call boiling water and adding dehydrated ingredients to it) and eating, I managed to read (and rant about) a good chunk of a Cicerone walking guide. In the meantime, Mick did what he usually does in tents in winter – he promptly fell asleep.

Thanks to the shelter of the woodland, all was quiet in our campsite, and I think that I was the last awake, not putting my book down until the exceptionally late hour of 8.30pm…

…to be continued…

The Gratuitous Graphs of October

With only 60 days left this year, it seems like a good time to review how I’m doing against my target of walking 5 miles per day (or 1825 miles for the whole year).

Here’s the graph of the miles per month so far:

 

No break from the usual trend this year; in the middle of the year the mileage collapses

If you were to tot up those monthly totals you would come up with 1748 miles, just 77 shy of my target with 60 days to go. Seems achievable, doesn’t it?

This graph shows the average miles per day throughout the year so far. I concede that it’s not very well presented (miles are up the side; the first entry is 2 January 2011, the last entry is 30 October 2011), but the important thing is that as long as the blue line doesn’t touch or go below the pink line then I will be a happy tomato.

 

What isn’t shown by the graphs is that, this year, the miles I’ve put in have been of better quality than the last few years. There haven’t been endless repetitions of my local circuits (which isn’t to say that I haven’t walked them a good few times, but always with decent gaps in between those repetitions).

I will now try to refrain from posting any more graphs until year end!

Back to Glossop

Saturday 29 October (0700-1315)

Distance: 14 miles (allegedly with 2700’ of ascent; I’d say it was less than that)

Weather: Sunny intervals but catching the edge of two showers

I slept really well considering how the wind had picked up as night fell. I had been woken by some particularly violent gusts at about 12.30am and then again at 5.45am. In the case of the latter waking, I’d already had more than my required 8 hours of shut-eye, so sprang into life with gusto. Mick accused me of being on speed as I set about making cups of tea and packing away.

Incidentally, last weekend I’d taken my down trousers with me and decided that they weren’t necessary given the mildness of the weather, so I didn’t take them this weekend. Oh, how I missed them. The weather may be mild during the day, but (as you would expect at the time of year) the temperature collapsed quite remarkably as darkness fell and, given that my walking trousers were covered in peat, some alternative leg-wear would have been good (not essential, but certainly good). Next time they will make it onto the packing list.

Anyways, after the early cup of tea and breakfast, we were all packed up and walking at 7am, at which time the moon was still up and only the slightest hint of light was appearing over the eastern horizon. For the second time ever (the first time was this rather interesting trip) our head-torches were called into action as we set out.

I concede that the route we took was a tiny bit on the steep side for tackling in the dark, but I managed to stay on my feet all the way down to the valley. Mick only missed the same boast by a count of one ass-slide.

By the time we reached the valley there was a hint of sunrise (in the absence of a tripod, I didn’t manage to hold the camera quite still enough for the long exposure, but I’m sure you get the idea):

Day broke as we made our way up to Rowlees Pasture on the other side of the valley day, from where we could clearly see where we had camped the previous night. It’s in this photo, but I won’t attempt to describe where (other than that it’s on the far slope on the left side):

Our diversion at Lockerbrook Heights to try to locate Tor & Lande didn’t bear fruit (I now know where they did spend the night and we weren’t even close), so onwards up Alport Castles we went. I’d thought that we would use the hide up there to shelter from the keen breeze whilst we had second breakfast. Alas, when we got to Alport Castles there was no trace of the hide. I guess it was a temporary thing, but it was certainly there in June (or was it a figment of my imagination?). Still, we got to admire the ‘tower’ and the cliffs as we walked by.

The boot-prints died out just after Alport Castles, so it seems that most people miss out on the glorious surroundings on the way up to the trig point. I see that I’m almost completely obscuring the trig in this photo, but it was there.

Our descent down to Upper Ashop that morning had been ridiculously steep, but even steeper (although much shorter) was our descent to pick up the trod that runs along the Alport Valley. I did have Ben Fogle’s voiceover in my head saying ‘One slip here could spell disaster for the whole expedition’. Fortunately there were no slips, trips or falls and thus we made it to the path without incident.

Yep, that’s quite steep!

Not long afterwards, we crossed a boggy bit of path and, after the peaty water of the night before, I was overly excited to realise that the boggy area housed a spring. I was almost out of water, so decided that a cup of tea would be in order at this point, using the perfectly clear water. Lovely! Just as lovely was the view across the valley to this tumbling stream:

The rest of the valley was muted browns rather than the lush greens of earlier in the year, but I was still rather taken with the unspoilt beauty:

Not a single person was seen all morning (apart from the chap in a car on the road down from Rowlees Farm, who stopped to comment that we’d got an early start), until we reached the Pennine Way, whereupon it was like we’d joined a motorway. It was as we unexpectedly bumped into Dave, Phil & John that the first edge-of-a-shower hit us, which is what led to the synchronised pack-faffing that I mentioned the other day, as all of the chaps reached for their waterproofs. Personally I was wearing Paramo, so my pack stayed on my back.

All we had to do then was to nip back down Doctor’s Gate and onwards back to Glossop, arriving at the car within 26 hours of leaving it, with 28 miles covered.

I’m pleased to say that my body didn’t revolt at all during this trip*. I can only assume that it was the violence and frequency of the ascent that caused everything to object to the effort during the previous weekend’s trip. I even managed to take myself out for a little stroll locally on Sunday. Then I had to go for a lie down. Four consecutive days of walking – phew – it’s been a while since I last did that.

This was the route we took, and I do recommend it (except that a slightly more gentle line down to Upper Ashop might be advisable – or even better, walk it clockwise so that the killer descents become ascents):

The green line is what I’d plotted in advance. The red line is what I recorded on the Garmin Gadget.

(*Not true! My feet hurt like I’d never worn walking boots before in my life. People reckon that switching to lightweight, flexible footwear can be hard on the feet, but I found out on this trip that moving back the other way can be just as painful. My feet still ache now. It was the first time I’d worn boots since our 17-mile trip onto Bleaklow at the beginning of January (the snow and ice on that trip made the boots the more sensible choice). On Sunday I reverted to trail-runners and it was bliss.)

From Glossop

Friday 28 October (11.35-1730)

Distance: 13.9 miles (the Garmin Gadget said 3100 feet of ascent; the map suggests significantly less)

Weather: Glorious!

Having left home under clear blue skies, promising a fantastic day for a walk, increasingly sizeable patches of fog were encountered as we made our way north. Was the sun going to win over the fog by the time we reached Glossop? We gave it every opportunity by being waylaid by a completely unnecessarily fat-boy fry-up of a second breakfast as we passed through Buxton. By the time we reached Glossop the sun had won, making everything look autumnally attractive as we wandered up to Doctor’s Gate:

Having followed the flags of the Pennine Way past Mill Hill there was the steep staircase to tackle to get us up onto the Kinder Plateau. I remember walking down here on our LEJOG and commenting that I was glad we weren’t heading up it. In reality it’s easier in ascent. It may cause me a bit of puffing and gasping, but climbing it is definitely gentler on the knees.

Mick thought I was really dawdling up here. What he didn’t notice was that I’d stopped to take this photo!

The north edge of Kinder Plateau was our chosen side, as Mick hadn’t been that way before. It is surely not possible to walk around this area without marvelling at the shapes of the rocks, and this was no exception:

I would have missed this ‘cosy’ little man-made bivvy site, which took advantage of the overhanging rock, if Mick hadn’t pointed it out. Fortunately no-one was in residence when I stuck my head in for a look.

A while later Mick said “That was an owl!”. I looked at him as if he was daft (well, it was mid-afternoon and not an owl-hooting time of day) and said that it was clearly a sheep. Not two minutes later what should fly across the path right in front of us, but a barn owl. Seems like Mick may not be daft after all…

Things were significantly damper underfoot than they had been in June (which is hardly surprising considering how little rain fell in March, April and May). All of the peaty, boggy wallows which now littered the path were sufficiently avoidable to avoid sinking by more than an inch or so, and the benefit of the recent rain (it had certainly rained quite a bit on Thursday) meant that the streams were flowing. Even so, the last stream of any significance that we were going to pass before finding a pitch was Blackden Brook so we stopped to fill our bladders. I drink my tea weaker than that peaty water looked!

At this point I should probably digress onto one of the purposes of this trip. Having been in correspondence with Tor and Lande about their intended trip to the Peaks this weekend, we had hoped that by walking a similar route in the opposite direction we would bump into them at some point. The plan seemed like a good one until around abouts Blackden Brook when I suddenly realised that the route that I’d plotted for our own walk was quite possibly not the route the Tor and Lande were going to take. A little detail that I should have checked in advance, particularly as the only bit of the route in doubt was the bit where we were hoping to meet them.

The best thing to do, we decided, would be to head over to Rowlee Pasture before looking for a pitch. The problem was that we didn’t have enough daylight to cover another five miles, and I didn’t want to be scouting around for a pitch in the dark. The next best option was to stick with Plan A, camp on the Kinder side of the valley and get up silly-early in the morning to try to get over to Rowlee Pasture before Tor and Lande moved on.

With the west end of Kinder being mainly a bed of heather, we dropped down off the side a bit to find a pitch. The spot we chose would have been visible to a number of farms across the valley, if it hadn’t been for a conveniently placed shooting butt.

The pitch looked perfectly reasonable as we threw the tent up about half an hour before darkness. However, crawling inside, I discovered a big lump and dip by Mick’s knees (or, more precisely, where Mick’s knees would be spending the night), so we moved the tent forward a couple of feet. On reflection, I should have kept quiet about the lump and dip as, come bedtime, I realised that by giving Mick a nice flat bed I’d gained a lump and a dip myself (harrumph!).

Being the party animals that we are, by just gone 9pm our books were away for the night and eyelids were being rested.

Four Men Faff With Their Packs

We were just on our way back to the car today, after a good little trip, when three chaps approached us along the Pennine Way.

“What sort of a knob wears a jacket that colour?” one was heard to ask as we got within earshot (with reference to Mick’s YELLOW! top), at which point I realised that these weren’t three strangers. In yet another of those incredible coincidences (which wouldn’t have occurred if we had been 90 seconds earlier or they 90 seconds later), we bumped into John, Phil and Dave.

The last time we bumped into them was less coincidental, at a campsite in Hathersage during our Kent to Cape Wrath jaunt last year:

As first exhibited in the ‘three men, three matching tents’ snap above, it seems that these are three chaps who rather like to do things in sync, as today they co-ordinated their pack faffing activities:

Unrelated to that, here’s my favourite sign of the trip (in fact, the only sign worth photographing). I think they should delegate the sign-writing to someone else…

More about the rest of the outing tomorrow…

Contrasts in October

On 2 October (which you may spot was just four weeks ago), we were out for a walk on Cannock Chase and found it to be busier than we had ever seen it. The car parks were full and, at the Visitor Centre, not only was the over-flow car park full but there were cars lining the nearby roads. More cars than we’ve seen even on a sunny summer weekend. This is a photo I took of the area outside of the Visitor Centre that weekend:

There were people picnicking all over the big grassy area, and hoards of children enjoying the play area. The reason for so many people being out was apparent. On a sunny summer’s day there will be lots of people around, but there will always be the expectation of more good weather so there’s not the imperative to get out. However, when the thermometer hits the high twenties in October you know that it’s almost certainly not going to be repeated in a week’s time, hence everyone was making the most of it. I was certainly enjoying being out in shorts and t-shirt in October!

Today was the contrast. I don’t think we’ve ever encountered so few people on the Chase! (No photos of that fact because it’s difficult to demonstrate a general lack of people in a photo (and because we didn’t take a camera).)

That it is a weekday doesn’t explain the notable lack of people. The general greyness and the forecast for a day of heavy rain is more likely the explanation. We were five miles into our walk before we passed anyone and only passed two sets of people in the whole 8 miles we walked. There were other people in the tea room at Springslade Lodge, but it was obvious that we were the only people who had walked there (we walked in and waddled out; in between times many chips were eaten).

The people who stayed at home missed out. The weather was nowhere near as bad as forecast. We did get rained on, but not heavily, and it must have been dry as much as it was wet. Moreover, it was all incredibly pretty with the autumnal colours, not just on the trees but on the heathland too.

As darkness fell this evening such was the persistence of the greyness that it’s difficult to believe that tomorrow’s going to be a nice day. Hopefully the forecast will prove to be reasonably accurate for both tomorrow and Saturday, as we’re off out for another quick backpack .

From Top Withins

Saturday – From Top Withins to Illingworth

Distance: 10 miles (1000 feet of ascent)

Time: 0750 to 1230

Weather: Fine, with increasingly blue skies

 

The sun was just peeping above the horizon as we set out on Saturday morning to demonstrate how to make a meal about navigating our way back to Halifax:

Someone had made a really early start (or had camped somewhere else nearby) as there were wet boot-prints on the slabs of the Pennine Way passing Top Withins.

Pausing on our way down towards Haworth (not that we were going down to Haworth, but we were heading in that general direction), we looked back to see that our pitch was now bathed in glorious golden morning sunshine (that tree sticking up above the hill on the horizon is next to Top Withins, and we were just above there):

The early route issues weren’t really navigation issues. It was more that I was taking us along the route that I had hastily plotted without putting any thought into whether it was sensible. As a result we (completely unnecessarily) walked three sides of a square before reaching Bronte Falls. I didn’t manage a passable shot of the falls, so I’ll make do with one of ‘Bronte Bridge’:

I was surprised that we only met one fell-runner on the walk down towards Haworth (Mick was very admiring of her running style), but once down onto flatter land we did meet plenty of dog-walkers, including three old-dears, who were most concerned that we must have been cold camping up by the ruin overnight. They were relieved when we told them that we did have a tent with us!

Having skirted Oxenhope, a bigger meal was made of navigating our way. It’s actually pretty rare that we have to backtrack, but this was one of those occasions. Our mishap was witnessed. We’d exchanged a few words with a builder shortly before I’d dug out my compass and declared that we were heading the wrong way. As we passed him again he reassured us that there was a path heading that way. There was indeed a path, but not heading in a direction that was useful for us.

A plethora of paths just past an unnamed (on my map) reservoir saw us further discombobulated, and if it hadn’t been for the position of the sun and the needle of the compass my sense of direction would have taken us off in the wrong direction. All was very pretty looking back:

Heading up past Thornton Reservoir the moorland was so desolate that it was hard to believe how close we were to civilisation. My legs (particularly knees and hips) were pleased to hear that we were now within 3.5 miles of Ma-in-Law’s house. The thoughts of sinking into a soft sofa was bliss. The thought of a steep hill was not.

Happily the climb up onto Thornton Moor wasn’t as violent as the climbs of the previous day and we both agreed that we were glad to have walked the route in a clockwise direction (although if we had done the short and gentle day first I probably wouldn’t have been so wrecked for the second day).

The meandering route I had plotted from Ogden Water to the finish was abandoned in favour of a shorter walk along roads and by lunch time we were back. Gladly I sank into the sofa and had a cup of tea put into my hands (you can always rely on Ma-in-Law to have the kettle on within 30 seconds of you walking through the front door).

The trip was just what the doctor ordered and I’d happily go and walk it again. In the meantime, I must do something about my woeful lack of fitness. It’s not in any way reasonable to hurt so much after 24 miles of walking, spread over 2 days.

Not that I’m expecting anyone else to want to start and end a walk from Ma-in-Law’s house (although she’d undoubtedly put the kettle on for you if you did), but this is (more or less) the route we took (excluding the first and last mile, which I’ve cut off the edge of the map):

To Top Withins

It was a last minute trip. As I got home at 5pm on Thursday I suggested that, as we needed to be in Halifax early the next morning, we should travel up that evening and make the most of the trip by spending Friday night on a hill somewhere. So as not to arrive on Ma-in-Law’s doorstep at an impolite hour at night that gave us 2.5 hours to cook and eat tea, wash up, pack our bags and plan a route.

Two and a half hours later we were on the road with a plan.

Halifax isn’t the obvious choice for starting a backpacking trip (I say that based on not recalling having read a single trip report that used the town as its starting point), and I can understand why. But, given that our business in the town was unlikely to see us free to set out until around noon, I thought that we would save the time and trouble of travelling anywhere by setting out from Ma-in-Law’s front door. With the benefit of hindsight I can report that to have been a good decision; it was an excellent trip on good and varied terrain!

Friday – From Illingworth to Withins Height
Distance: 14 miles (2700 feet of ascent)
Time: 1140 to 1755
Weather: overcast but mainly dry, with just the edge of a few drizzly showers threatening us

This area of West Yorkshire is notable for its steep-sided valleys. Having spent a whole fifteen minutes planning a route, I hadn’t paid much (or in fact, any) attention to the contour lines and even though I’d walked most of this route before as parts of various day-walks, I had overlooked the violence of the inclines. I’d also, perhaps, overlooked the fact that I’ve spent the last four months sitting down and thus that I boast very little fitness just now.

Here’s the profile of the route we took:

Those ups at 5.5 miles and 8 miles certainly attacked the valley-sides straight on. The one at 5.5 miles was so steep that steps had been installed, seemingly with the planners basing the step size on a walker with a 50-inch inside-leg measurement!

The route featured streams:

Interesting buildings (albeit with the sun in the wrong place for a photo):

Good views:

And, on our way to the trig point on High Brown Knoll, the view included Stoodley Pike in the distance:
The waterfalls at the head of Crimsworth Dean were a fine spectacle:

Perhaps, at this point, I should mention that I have now declared summer to be over. For the first time since spring, I was out in full Paramo, and as we reached Crimsworth Dean I was wearing gloves too. Apparently these chaps weren’t finding the weather quite as cool as I was:
As we met them again after they had jumped into the pool below, swum around a bit and had climbed back up to the path, they were asked how the water was. “Freezing!” came the response “But quite refreshing” the other added after a pause. They breed them hardy up north, you know!

By the time we joined the Pennine Way at Walshaw Dean Reservoirs, my body was feeling the effort and I was about ready to stop. Perhaps, given my complete lack of fitness, it would have been wise to take the walk at a slower pace and to have stopped occasionally. However, in my mind I can still walk 25 miles in a day without a problem – and, in any case, daylight was conspiring against us.

It looked like we were going to be caught by a heavy shower as we first left the Pennine Way to try to find a pitch for the night. Unfortunately, where we’d hoped to find a nice stream with a patch of flat grass alongside, we found a boggy wallow where I succeeded in losing one of the ferrules off my Pacerpole. I think that’s four that I’ve lost so far this year. I plunged my hands into the peat to try to retrieve it whilst Mick donned his waterproofs. I didn’t find the ferrule, but Mick’s donning of waterproofs did the trick and the rain skirted us.

Upwards we continued, even though we didn’t have enough water for the night and even though we weren’t optimistic of finding any up higher. Whilst kicking myself for not having stopped to collect some earlier, we cocked our heads at each indent in the ground that looked like it might be hiding running water, listening for a give-away tinkle. Finally, just before Top Withins, the magic sound was heard and after digging through the grasses I managed to find a hole down to the underground stream. Slowly, a mug at a time, our water bladders were filled with water that was peaty, but not as brown as expected.

What we didn’t know until Saturday morning was that if we had continued on for about 20 paces beyond Top Withins there was a perfectly clear and perfectly accessible stream…

We didn’t get that far, because when we got to Top Withins we set about finding a pitch and were pretty pleased with the one that we selected. Although very close to the Pennine Way it was completely out of sight of the path and whilst a tiny bit lumpy (fortunately, those NeoAirs are very forgiving), it was level, sheltered from the worst of the strong wind, and with a far-reaching view. By the flatness of the long grass, I suspect that we weren’t its first occupants this week.

With the darkness falling, we wasted no time in pitching Vera, making tea and settling down for the night as the street lights all lit up below us, proving quite how close we were to civilisation whilst feeling like we were properly out on the moors.