Thornton-in-Craven to Malham

 Four days of fine weather were followed by a return to wind, rain and overcast skies for the last stretch of peaty moorland before the transition to limestone. The change in the weather had a curious consequence: it revealed to me the particular appeal of the wild and lonely moors which warmth and sunshine had masked. I found Mendelssohn's Scottish symphony on my iplayer and gorged myself on its lush melodies and plangent brass, my head down against the elements.  
The approach to Malham is through pasture land and water meadows. Farm fields are my least favourite walking terrain. Guidebooks blithely issue instructions such as "proceed diagonally to a gap in the hedge opposite" which is infuriating when neither the shape of the field nor the target boundary is discernible. Fields are also apt to harbour livestock and while I have no objection to sheep, which I enjoy taunting with cries of "mint sauce", cows are another matter. Every year, several walkers are injured by cattle and I avoid them where possible. When mingling with the bovine is unavoidable, I check my exits carefully and give them a wide berth. For a long time, I shunned red clothing in the belief that it might antagonise them, until one day I realised that the facing of my rucksack is pillar box red, specially chosen to maximise visibility in the event of an accident. Last year while walking a section of the magnificent Coast to Coast I approached a field patrolled by a herd of bullocks with several of them comfortably ensconced across the path. There was no alternative route so I screwed my courage to the sticking point and climbed the stile. As one, they rose to greet me. Resorting to my only source of agricultural knowledge I bellowed "Garn" at a volume which would have made Ruth Archer proud. The beasts were obviously intimidated by my masterful behaviour and backed off, allowing me to pass. I scuttled down the path towards the safety of the next field. Nearly at the gate, I looked back gingerly and to my horror saw the entire herd following a few paces behind. Clearly "Garn" had a more complex meaning than I had appreciated and it was with great relief that I wrestled the gate open and closed it behind me. I fancied the bullocks looked crestfallen, but maybe they were just missing their feed.
 My main objection to traversing fields is mud. Blindfold I could tell you which part of the country I'm in by the texture of the stuff. Kent favours an especially claggy variety which seems predominantly composed of glue and treacle. Hereabouts mud has a gloopier consistency which means you sink further but at least it's easier to wash off. Farmers, anxious to ensure that walkers are not deprived of one of the defining experiences of country life, take great pains to ensure that gates and stiles are protected by generous quantities of the best local vintage. These sludgy moats are often furnished with stepping stones, which are either deceptively slippery or tantalisingly separated by a fraction more than an easy stride, in either case guaranteeing a bootful of slimy mud laced with pungent dung.
I started my walk on a Wednesday but most people set out on a Saturday or Sunday to fit the whole enterprise neatly into three weeks. So being out of synch with the usual calendar partly explains why I have encountered so few other PW walkers. Also B&B proprietors have told me that occupancy is down this year, which they ascribe partly to the miserable weather and partly to the recession. So it was refreshing to spot Davinder during the approach to Malham. He had completed the 300 mile Irish Coast to Coast last year and recently breezed through Offa's Dyke as a warm up for the Pennine Way. I was reassured to hear that despite this impressive pedigree he was as terrified of cows as me. We stumbled along the route together, conclusively disproving the theory that two heads are better then one when it comes to finding the way. Two day-walkers joined us and we all trooped into Malham like old friends. Davinder and I met for dinner later and he regaled me with stories about life in Oman, where he teaches English, while we ate homemade steak and ale pies. At the only other pub in the village we came across Lee, who had invested in a pair of insoles to remedy a pain in his legs (successful apparently) and a couple, Mel and Simon, also PW walkers. None of them were taking a rest day in Malham, so it's unlikely I'll see them again, but the unpredictability of encounters on the trail is part of its appeal.

© David Thompson 2012

Ponden to Thornton-in-Craven

As my walking feet slowly rotate treadmill Earth, I start to reflect on why I am here on these windswept and, today, rainy, moors. Is this simply the point to which my life has been leading? It is true that all the previous events in my life have, somehow, conspired to culminate in this odyssey. But was it inevitable? I defer to my friend Richard for a properly informed philosophical analysis of that question and ponder instead how my experiences might have shaped me to this destiny. But I attempt even this modest account conscious of the lessons of Julian Barnes' elegaic novel The Sense of an Ending, which explores the limitations of memories and their faultlines with history.  
When I learned, after his death, that my father had enjoyed walking in the Lake District, I recalled finding his old rucksack many years earlier in the loft of our family house. A thing of stiff canvas and metal buckles, its empty weight alone would have exceeded the cabin baggage allowance of a budget airline. Tramping the Lakes in nailed boots and woollen clothes while burdened by this behemoth must have required dedication much exceeding my Gortex-pampered efforts. The pincer movement of career and marriage ended his serious expeditions but he continued to be a dogged urban walker into old age. A dedicated Londoner, after retirement a favourite occupation was to take the Tube to an unknown destination and walk, more or less at random, in fresh territory. I can relate to that.  
My own formative walking was the result of necessity not choice. I walked to and from bus stops and train stations as unavoidable components of the journey to various schools. Even kindergarten involved walking with my mother half a mile each way across Blackheath, which is almost as windswept as the Yorkshire moors. The notion of walking for its own sake did not arise until teenage years. My best friend had enjoyed activity holidays with an organisation called Forest School Camps and I eventually persuaded my parents to entrust me to their tender care. FSC was essentially a variant of the Scouts where religious zealotry and patriotic fervour were replaced by a hippyish, soft-left ideology. Also they admitted girls.  It attracted a relentlessly middle-class clientele, including the daughter of a cabinet minister towards whom I developed fervent but unconsummated desires. FSC holidays always included several days of trekking, complete with camping gear, up to 20 miles a day and I can date my embryonic obsession with walking from the satisfaction that achievement produced. Competitive sports were never my strong suit but school visits to a Welsh outdoor pursuit centre where trekking also featured enabled me to accrue some of the status foregone through lack of sporting prowess.   As a diversion from A-level studies, I took to evening wanders in the distant reaches of Blackheath and gazed into lamplit windows wondering and speculating about the lives contained within. Later this dubious activity transmogrified into the game of cosiness rating, the rules of which, like Mornington Crescent, were never entirely clear but which entertained my children as we paced the streets of Moseley. During my working life, lone evening walks helped me to organise my thoughts and devise increasingly fiendish schemes to inflict on my clients.  
Nowadays walking offers the perfect combination of exercise and, crucially, mental relaxation. While I can't claim to achieve total mindfulness through walking, it's probably as close as I can manage, and is certainly more effective than yoga. So while many people regard leisure walking as a means to achieve another object - time with friends, opportunities for photography, uplifting scenery - for me the primary attraction is simply the rhythm of walking. But wait, if this is true, why not walk in the comfort and security of the gym? No need for rain gear, hot showers on hand and home for dinner. Perhaps there lurks within even the least competitive of us a desire to prove ourselves.  For me to be able to justify the label "walker" I need to namedrop routes I have conquered, and none is more iconic than the Pennine Way.   So for the moment that serves as the explanation for haunting the moors. But Barnes' protagonist goes further and speculates on the challenge of imagining how he will perceive the present from the vantage point of some future date. That requires mental agility which is beyond me, so discovering how I view today and its precursors from the perspective of the end of the PW will need to wait until I reach Kirk Yetholm.

© David Thompson 2012

Hebden Bridge to Ponden

Connoisseurs of paradox like to remind us that the world is divided into two sorts of people: those who believe the world is divided into two sorts of people and those who don't. Rereading some earlier posts I notice my inclination to categorize.  Walkers versus non-walkers and city dwellers versus country folk, for example. Neat pigeon holing is a valid way of makingq sense of the world provided it doesn't degenerate into generalisation or, worse, lead to prejudice. Binary allocation can operate across different sets of characteristics and produce a personal Venn diagram mapping our preferences and idiosyncrasies. You can be a smoker and a believer or a non-smoking atheist or any other such combination. Of course, the boundaries are not always so well-defined. I occasionally drink tea but would not call myself a tea drinker. Classifications of this type are the province of diverse professions; the actuary employs them to predict our lifespan and the dating agency to locate our ideal partner. I cannot comment on the effectiveness of this approach for life expectancy calculation but it is patently inappropriate for matchmaking. The old adage claims that opposites attract, another generalisation certainly but one which if only partially correct undermines a methodology rooted in identifying similarities. And while on that subject, have you noticed how earnestly introduction agencies trumpet their successes without revealing what proportion of total participants they comprise?
If you think about it, staying in B&Bs is a curious concept. They are not purely commercial enterprises, like hotels, nor are they the homes of friends. Surrendering oneself to the mercies of a stranger, in a stranger's lair, militates against all we have been told about prudent behaviour. Of course, when set against the hazards of hitchhiking, the students' preferred mode of transport until the 1970s, or that progeny of the internet, couchsurfing (a term which conjures an image of someone who can't choose among psychiatrists) the B&B dangers seem tame.  Nevertheless for anyone prepared to experiment with this form of accommodation, a myriad of different encounters awaits. My B&Bs were prebooked by MACS Adventures and while they have, to date, all been entirely satisfactory they have varied in flavour. I have sampled B&Bs along a number of walking trails and there is remarkable diversity, largely arising from the motivation of the owners.  For some, running a B&B is the culmination of a long-held ambition or a retirement indulgence. The coordinated colours, matching soft furnishings and artfully arranged knick-knacks suggest a childhood deprived of dolls' houses. As a grubby walker, one is careful to levitate two inches above the floor to avoid soiling the pale carpets. Such chi-chi establishments rejoice in carefully chosen names and normally style themselves as guest houses. But they invariably offer the softest beds and the fluffiest towels, so I'm not complaining. Not surprisingly, the proprietors of these candyfloss manifestations are attentive and solicitous towards their guests. Depressingly the bleakest contrast comes from farmers who have fallen on hard times.  Agribusiness has forced hitherto  independent farmers and proud smallholders to diversify. Increasingly that means becoming an unsung, and poorly rewarded, adjunct to the tourist industry. Understandably they resent the necessity of pandering to the vagaries of urban guests. Hard pressed and hard bitten, they can be indifferent or surly towards walkers who view the working countryside as no more than a recreation ground. A sheep farmer turned B&B proprietor ruefully informed me that it was no longer economical to pay for his sheep to be professionally sheared, so low was the price of wool. Spending a night under these roofs is to be reminded of the remorseless decline of rural life. In the early twentieth century, 40% of labour was employed on the land, now it is less than 1%. It is too facile to propose a wholesale return to rural life as a solution to all societies woes, but tempting at least to divide B&Bs into two sorts: those that exist because of the owner's lifestyle choice and those that are manifested through harsh necessity.

© David Thompson 2012

Standedge to Hebden Bridge

I woke up feeling chipper, increasingly confident that I'd nailed this long distance walk caper.  The previous evening I'd trudged the extra couple of miles to my lodgings, but after breakfast in a rather flyblown conservatory, my host offered to drive me to the start of the day's section. He appeared in a great bruiser of a 4x4 of the type whose proper calling, I thought, was ferrying middle class children to and from school. He deposited me by a small reservoir with the stern injunction to set off in the right direction. Having read that this section of the PW is well-marked and feeling buoyant in the crisp morning, I decided to dispense with the GPS. After a mile, I found myself following a gentle downhill lane when I was pretty certain I should have been ascending to the ridge. I resorted to the GPS only to discover that the wretched device did not relish being ignored. In its vengeful cruelty, it would display either the map or my carefully downloaded PW route, but not both together. No amount of cursing and rebooting would coax it to obedience, so I was reliant on my rudimentary map and compass skills, plus the guidebook. Eventually I regained the path, which was thankfully reasonably straightforward for the rest of the day.  
The photo below, taken near Stoodley Pike (also pictured, with a daredevil hang glider ) shows an abandoned Land Rover which is such a permanent feature of the landscape that it is mentioned in my guidebook.  This set me thinking about the differences between city and country behaviours. In the city, neighbours will complain and officials intercede if people leave piles of rubbish about, although some art galleries appear to have a special dispensation. In the countryside, the convention is different. In one field, I counted five tractors in various stages of decay or cannibalisation, and no farm feels secure without an encircling armory of rusting agricultural machinery. But the greatest contrast is to be found in the treatment of buildings. Barring bomb sites and the like, towns and cities minutely monitor and account for their allocation of real estate.  The very term "built-up area" is a synonym for a town.  In the back country, order and audit are trumped by the combined forces of  individualism and clannishness. If I want to add an extension here or demolish a barn there, I'll just do it, or get my brother-in-law to fix it. The result is a melee of buildings which are either collapsing through neglect or erected without consent. In contrast, the rural social mesh is finer, so that what might pass without comment in a city attracts attention in a village. Not normally self-conscious, as a stranger I am aware of baleful glances when I go to the local pub for dinner. And of course, one senses in remoter parts the throb of a parallel economy, not the illegal workers and drug dealers which are an established part of the cityscape, but the marginal activities exemplified by the Grundys of Ambridge.  Maybe, in a strange way, it is these differences which account for the appeal of the countryside to the city dweller. Or maybe my prejudices will be dispelled by the time I reach the end of the PW.




© David Thompson 2012

Torside to Standedge

Time for some prehistory. As a founder member of the exclusive "Olympics, what Olympics?" sect, my flight from London 2012 was architected well in advance of Boris Johnson's exhortations to walk to work during the Games.
"So where are you going to escape the Olympics ?"
"I'm walking the Pennine Way."
"Oh. Right." Pause. "Who with?"
"On my own. But I expect I'll meet some people along the way," I add quickly to soften the impact.
Solitaryness is viewed at best as wilful, as worst as aberrant.Biographers of the essayist Michel de Montaigne observe that it was unusual for anyone to spend time alone in the sixteenth century. Fortunately, in his case, as there were many servants in attendance to assist him when he suffered his near-fatal riding accident. But curiously even in the twentyfirst century when a quarter of the UK population lives alone, elective solitude has a kind of stigma. So far, more than half the people I've encountered on the PW are singletons and appear as content as those in couples or groups, though I admit it's hard to be certain on the basis of a gruff "Hi". And that leads neatly to a question that has always perplexed me during country walks. Under what circumstances is it acceptable, or even required, to greet oncoming walkers? In the wilderness, the rules are simple: Hi or Morning or Howdy (strictly reserved for Americans) is mandatory. Conversely, once within the confines of a town, certainly in the presence of streetlights, acknowledging passersby becomes a hanging offence. The twilight zone is in the precincts of a beauty spot intersected by a footpath, where walkers and sightseers mingle and can sometimes be indistinguishable but have different expectations. Any thoughts on this knotty piece of etiquette gratefully received.
But I digress.  I wasn't about to make the same mistake as yesterday so politely but firmly declined the proffered full English breakfast, and resolved to make this the pattern for the rest of the trip. Later, I found that my host had had her revenge: two rolls the size of frizbees crouched in my lunch pack.
The route from Torside first crosses a reservoir via an impressive dam then weaves though a wood, following the line of the water. There's something comforting about being surrounded by tall trees and I was disappointed when the path emerged into the bald moors. A steep climb was followed by more slabs which, although unsightly, enable one to fairly scamper along and I made good time.   My first encounter with another PW walker was at a road junction where a dejected looking fellow stared at a map.  Beside him was the largest rucksack I've ever seen, positively bristling with every sort of walking and camping accessory. Clearly he hadn't read Bill Bryson. His name was Lee and after only one night of camping was envious of my B&B arrangements.  He was waiting for a friend so I pressed on. They caught me up later as I was dithering over an almost unambiguous fork in the path and we leapfrogged one another along the route for the rest of the day. At least I had justified my prediction about finding companionship along the way.



© David Thompson 2012

Edale to Torside

After showing me to my room (adequate, if a little chinzy for my taste) my host in Edale announced that she had front of house duties to attend to at the ballet. It seemed an unlikely obligation in a High Peak village and I thought no more of it until I went to the local pub for dinner. Settled with my Kindle, I was disturbed by the start of some kind of country dance performance entailing much stamping and yelping. So animated was the audience's reception that I began to wonder whether the whole community was in the grip of an obscure terpsichorean obsession.  
That night I dreamed of snow and declared I wouldn't undertake the Pennine Way in that weather and went home. In the event, the day dawned clear and bright with a stillness that presaged either a scorcher or thunder. Travelling northwards the PW has a ruse to eliminate the unworthy on Day 1. It's called Jacob's Ladder and comprises a near vertical ascent to the ridge. Hauling myself up this obstacle was always going to be a challenge and was made more difficult by the gargantuan breakfast I had been inveigled into eating by the good folk of Stonehouse. Finally cresting the summit an unexpected sight lies ahead. Instead of tussocky moorland the plateau has apparently been hijacked by a film director remaking a 1960s sci-.fi movie. An endless expanse of white dust is interrupted by cushions of brown peat and decorated with gritstone boulders, scoured by wind and weather into fantastic forms. The scene is framed by pale mist, which no doubt conceals the actors' winnebagos. Never one to be intimidated by theatrical effects, I strode purposefully though the carefully crafted illusion, only to find myself utterly lost in the meserising wasteland. My GPS reluctantly stuttered into life and eventually I rejoined the path which was reproachfully clear.
Long stretches of the PW here are slabbed with stones recycled from defunct cotton mills. They're twice the size of urban paving stones and many display shallow rectangular slots, where girders or spars perhaps once fitted. The day grew warmer and slabs were replaced by a rocky path. A steep downhill trudge led to my second night's accommodation and relief at completing the first day, reputedly one of the most arduous of the entire route.



© David Thompson 2012

The Off

For two decades, Heathrow was my second home. I felt as comfortable sauntering the capilliaries of its sprawling tentacles as making tea at home. Business consultants are defined by their clients but ranked by their destinations. An urgent summons to a meeting in Madrid carries more kudos than a visit to a metalbasher in the Midlands. Or as someone wryly remarked, a consultant is just an ordinary person a long way from home. And conversely, no man is a hero to his valet. In any case, for me, hopping on a plane to Frankfurt or New York was as commonplace as the daily commute on the tube for most Londoners and I felt a reassuring superiority to the bewildered vacationers who clogged the airport during school holidays. So packing and preparing for those  trips was merely a matter of routine. My passport resided permanently in my laptop bag and everything else was ticked off a list, a well-honed routine executed in a few minutes. But holiday preparations have always been different. In business travel, you are cradled in corporate efficiency: if you miss a scheduled flight, an assistant will find you another. In the supposed relaxation of vacation time, you're on your own. If that train, booked months ago at a super-saver rate, leaves without you, it's an expensive mistake. My two brushes with petty theft also occurred during leisure travel, when inconvenience was exceeded only by embarrassment: here was the suave business traveller conned  by a common fraudster.
Having left St Pancras on time, the East Midlands train rocked up at Sheffield tantalisingly just too late for my connection, so the two hours waiting for the next lumpen diesel was enough time to finish Michael Frayn's Skios, an amusing diversion blending the farce of Tom Sharpe with the astutness of  David Lodge.
As the train shuddered through the Hope Valley and the hedges peeled back to reveal the hills beyond, the realisation of hubris seeped in. What task have I set myself and am I equal to it? Tomorrow will tell.

© David Thompson 2012

Traumas of preparation

My approach to packing for long distance walks passes through several phases.  Bill Bryson describes them in his account of walking the Appalachian Trail 'A Walk in the Woods' (which he reads with trenchant humour on CD - highly recommended).  The first stage involves identifying and buying every conceivable item of equipment, almost beggaring oneself in the process.  Attempting to pack it all into the chosen receptacle - suitcase or rucksack - and realising that it won't all fit and that most of it is unnecessary anyway is the next stage. The final pruning stage is the most stressful: what if there are wild boar in Derbyshire and I didn't pack that pheromone repellent?  I'm consoled by remembering my decluttering guideline: if, within a week after a big clearout, you don't find that an indispensable or irreplaceable object was culled, you didn't do a thorough enough job.

Days like this have a particular quality. You're not going to work, nor are you yet on holiday and the usual weekend activities have been supplanted by a mixture of excitement and trepidation.  This transitory feeling mounts as the piles of clothes, equipment and just-in-case fancies gradually migrate from the bed to the floor to the suitcase.  It is a sense of waiting, of imminence, of expectation - a pause between two realities - which is more associated with the tedium of childhood than the tessellated timetabling of adulthood.   

Now the packing is done. So after this enforced hiatus, what lies ahead over the next three weeks? The Pennine Way is 250 miles of uplifting pastoral and rugged scenery, interrupted only by idyllic villages.  Or not. One guidebook entices the walker with a description of 'treacherous moorland wildernesses where slimy quagmires wait eagerly to suck in not only your boots but most of the lower half of your body.'  Charming.  Although it is a recognised and signposted path, the distance I walk, provided I escape the voracious bogs, is likely to be rather more than 250 miles.  Despite my map, compass, guidebook and GPS, I rarely manage a day on even a well-marked trail without going astray at least once.  And the overnight stops are usually located off the route, typically adding another mile or so to each day's trek. Plus I have intercalated two rest days, during which I will no doubt accumulate a few extra miles.   

© David Thompson 2012

In the beginning

Back in February, leaving London for the Olympics seemed like a great idea. Prescient even, as friends to whom I disclosed my plan expressed envy. But now, a few days away from starting the 250 mile Pennine Way, the reality is a trifle daunting. Continuous heavy rain, starting predictably on the day the water companies declared a drought, have ensured a 'green and pleasant' welcome for Games visitors but left the countryside a boggy mire. Oh well, back to the packing - now where did I put those waterproof overtrousers?