Day 6.
We awoke feeling refreshed and ready to tackle Malham Cove. I was quite excited for this bit; I’d seen the videos online and it looked absolutely spectacular. As you get closer into the cove, you notice a staircase on your left – the uneven, natural stone-step kind. Chris went ahead so he could count the steps and I walked behind so I could occasionally stop and take photos. It’s a gorgeous climb, giving Jacob’s Ladder vibes. Amusingly, as we neared the top, the unmistakable sound of Elvis Presley singing A Little Less Conversation started echoing across the rock face. A young guy was heading down, holding his phone aloft like a radio. ‘Great tune,’ I shouted. ‘Everyone loves Elvis!’ He beamed back.
At the top however, the trail gets a lot harder. The plateau is a grid of massive limestone blocks with deep, ankle-snapping gaps between them. You hop from one rock to the next, making progress a little slower than your average hike. The route also becomes confusing. I had a different path planned to Chris; his was the official Pennine Way and mine was a cheeky shortcut. We weren’t sure at the time and followed my route up away from the plateau, across another ledge and then made our way back onto the correct path around the corner. This meant scrambling down another set of boulders just as the heavens opened. Wet limestone is basically ice and Chris took a nasty tumble and hit the ground. I thought his back was done for. He slipped a disc a couple of years ago, so that worry is always there. He got back up and soldiered on, though his facial expression strictly forbade any sympathy. I donned my poncho, drowning in a wave of spousal guilt that my ‘shortcut’ nearly broke my husband.
Setting off, another flight of steps appeared, and Chris pulled ahead as I got in my head about the slippy surface I was walking on. Suddenly, a guy came flying past both of us, defying the laws of friction. As he hit the top, he casually sprinted off across the jagged terrain. I remember thinking, I bet he is training for the spine race. Sure enough, when we caught up with Kate and Maren later, they confirmed it: amazingly Kate had met him in France earlier this year! What a coincidence and small world we live in.
The day continued on gentler grassy paths climbing ever higher until we allegedly reached Fountains Fell. The weather was atrocious and there were sadly no views to enjoy. We blindly patted the trig point, mutually agreeing to Google what it actually looked like later.
As we descended into the valley, the mist finally lifted offering a tentative glance at Pen-y-Ghent. In a spectacular display of irony, we couldn’t see the top of it as it was covered in cloud.
I had already decided I wasn’t climbing. My back was bad every afternoon and all I wanted was to get to the campsite and rest up. The Pennine Way is not a direct route: it twists and turns, at times feeling like you are going back on yourself, before you go forwards again. This section was like this. If you follow the PW strictly, it takes you north, west then south again, just so it can shove you up the big rocky scramble of Pen-y-Ghent. The direct route to the west cuts out three kilometres.
Up until the last minute, Chris was still considering doing the climb but as walked the last kilometre up to the decision point, it started to rain again. He decided against it and we both turned left and started making our way down the hill into Horton in Ribblesdale. Naturally ten minutes after we started on our way down, the sun came out and the clouds finally lifted off the top of Pen-y-Ghent. Typical!
We wrapped up the day at a brilliant campsite and headed to the pub with Bethan, Kate and Maren, who confirmed they did brave the summit and managed to climb up, despite the horizontal-rain-in-the-face weather.
Someone once said to me that its good to leave one bit undone as it gives you a reason to go back. We intend to return and climb this fell.
Day 7.
Today was supposed to be a breeze: a relatively short 22km stroll to Hawes without a lot of insane hills on the way. We had also made a last minute tactical booking at the YHA in Hawes after Kate and Maren tipped us off about a bad weather forecast the following night.
Unbeknownst to me Chris woke up in agony with his back. He later confessed it took him a full, painful 20 minutes just to negotiate the mechanics of crawling out of his sleeping bag, putting on his trousers and escaping his tent into a standing position. Meanwhile, I was blissfully dead to the world in my own tent, completely oblivous to his distress. When I finally emerged to join him for a coffee, he dropped the bombshell: he had genuinely thought his adventure was over. Apparently, he’d spent the early hours googling train times to get back home from Horton-in-Ribblesdale. Thankfully, once he was upright, his locked-up muscles began to release. Moving a lot better and fueled by sheer bloody mindedness, he decided he would carry on, praying his back would continue to get better as the day wore on.
The path to Hawes seemed to have no lefts and rights as we made our way along the same stony trail for hours and hours. Any climbing was gradual and although we came across the occasional boglet (as Chris nicknamed the smaller bogs) the day was generally easy going.
The only real event of any note on our trek to Hawes was a highly amusing standoff between a sheepdog and a couple of woolly delinquents. We spotted a large flock of sheep heading towards us on the track before they veered off onto the grass on our right. Hot on their heels was the sheepdog, head low, chasing them into position. Unfortunately, at the back of the pack, two wayward sheep decided to fight the system. They bolted in the opposite direction and staged a sit-in next to a fence corner.
The dog repeatedly circled back to reason with them, but these two were absolutely stubborn and entirely unmoved by his tactics. We stood at a distance for a while, feeling like our presence was complicating the logistics, plus the rebels were now cowering right in front of our gate into the next field. Eventually, we gave up on being polite. We carefully navigated around the standoff and pushed ahead, leaving the poor dog to figure out how to bring the sheep rebellion to a halt.
Finally at Hawes, we got to the YHA nice and early and found it was closed. Although, technically they give you your rooms at 5pm, our experience was that they were generally open for you to walk into. We started walking into the town to go and find a cafe to hunker down, when Kate and Maren came towards us having bumped into the lady that worked at the YHA. They said ‘they are on their way to let us in’ so we about turned and went into queue up for our room. A number of fellow hikers were there also. Some had a room and some were camping outside.
Once we had thrown everything into both the drying room and our room we went back out to find a cafe and get Lorna some coffee and cake. I had been craving it for days and this was a very important. mission.
The evening at the YHA was pure bliss. We joined Kate and Maren around a table, cradling steaming mugs of tea they had kindly made for us. As we all cooked our respective dinners, the kitchen filled with that wonderful, hostel energy. Sitting together to eat, the conversation flowed effortlessly. We laughed and swapped stories about our days on the Pennine Way, but then the trail talk melted away and we found ourselves sharing pieces of our real lives – our jobs, homes and families. in that cozy room, surrounded by kindred spirits, the physical aches vanished, replaced by that comforting glow of shared adventure.
Day 8 .
This was a longer, hillier day, culminating in a climb up to Tan Hill, where we would now be bunking down in a communal dormitory. With more high winds forecast, a warm indoor bed suddenly looked a lot more appealing than camping out next to the highest pub in England.
The day started with a trek to Hardraw before the uphill climb began. As usual, there were multiple false summits while Kate and Maren effortlessly caught up and vanished into the distance.
We were picking our way through a long, tricky stretch of bog and intermittently useful flagstones when a passing hiker struck up a conversation with Chris. Because the man was setting a brisk pace, Chris sped up, leaving me jogging just to keep contact. A while later, we finally crested the ridge, only for me to realise it was actually Hearne Edge; the true summit of Great Shunner Fell another kilometre and few false brows ahead. Still the encounter paid off: before he carried on ahead, he left us with some fantastic alternative path suggestions for sections just after Tan Hill and Alston, in order to avoid some really bad boggy areas.
The weather was comical. Drizzly rain came and went but the wind was a force to be reckoned with – it felt like trying to swim against a current whilst carrying a heavy rucksack. As we began our descent, faces flushed and boots soaked, we were relieved when the downpour ceased and the valley offered shelter from the wind. At the bottom, we found a gorgeous little village called Thwaite. Sadly, the cute cafe that promised scones and tea was closed, but a perfectly placed bench in the square allowed us to park our sorry behinds, break out the stove, and enjoy lunch with a fresh cup of tea.
The climb out of Thwaite followed a narrow path swallowed by bracken. The route hugged the hillside, slowly winding higher as we carefully watched our footing through the dense overgrowth obscuring the rocks beneath.
Once we reached the top, the rain returned. Donning our ponchos, we peered out at the views – at least the bits we could see – and agreed that the walk so far today had been one of the finest of the journey.
Around the next bend, the trail disappeared. It started with a few rocks strewn over the ground, then turned into the kind of terrain that doesn’t look like a path at all – more just a pile of rocks. Somewhere along here Kate and Maren shot past us. They had been ahead of us earlier so this was a surprise, but it turned out they had added some miles to go to Muker for lunch. Being the speedsters they are, we couldn’t keep up and let them go ahead.
At the bottom of the hill lay a beautiful riverside spot where Kate and Maren were enjoying a quiet moment of contemplation. They recognised the place from their previous Coast to Coast trek. We pushed ahead, tackling the steep climb that marked our final miles to Tan Hill.
The last kilometre was classic, boggy moorland, though we’d certainly seen worse on the Way. The trudge felt endless until, suddenly, there it was: the Tan Hill Inn standing proud in the distance. It is the strangest sensation to look out for miles in every direction, see absolutely nothing, and then – right in the middle of the emptiness – spot a pub.
Once in our communal room, we got to know some of our fellow roommates. This is where we first met Leuan, who was walking with a day pack, his lovely wife transporting his bags from place to place whilst having her own scenic walking adventure. Kate and Maren were there along with two more guys who were walking a section of the Pennine Way each year. With all the bunks full we all had to stuff our belongings under our beds and try to navigate sorting stuff, queuing for the showers (which were gorgeous) and finding somewhere to hang sodden clothes, shoes and jackets. In the end I put some socks on the heated radiator in the bathroom and tucked my boots underneath.
The bunkhouse crew teamed up with the brave souls camping outside – Bethan and ‘the girl from Utrecht’ (I still feel terrible for not catching her name) – and gathered for dinner in the main pub. The place was absolutely heaving, which blew my mind. Where on earth did all these people come from? It turned out to be a brilliant night. The food was spectacular, in the comforting, starchy, insane-portion-size kind of way. We all sampled the local ales and traded trail stories, leaving us with that warm, fuzzy feeling that comes from making friends on an incredible adventure.
