The Pennine Way: Anna-Maria's campaign
Posted on Thursday 9 January 2014 . Permalink
(Anna-Maria writes about her trip in July 2013, the first of a series of 5 posts to brighten up the Winter months:) I have walked numerous long distance footpaths across the UK, often to review them for Alpine Exploratory, but for some reason have always avoided the Pennine Way. Perhaps because I have heard more bad than good about the route, thanks to its sometimes-bleak terrain and the direction of the route which cuts a line up England through some of the wettest parts of the country.
Not entirely a serious photo, but such moorland scenes exist on the Pennine Way!
This year I decided that I couldn’t leave it any longer, influenced by the team at Alpine Exploratory who were keen for me to review the route during 2013. However, to ease my journey I am breaking the route up into five sections: four of these will require four days of walking while one of them is a mere three days.
The split of the route is very much controlled by the availability of buses, trains and other transport possibilities to get to the start and home from the end. This is a problem that faces any long-distance walker who tackles the linear routes and can take quite a bit of planning. Thankfully, the Alpine Exploratory division of the route ensures that days usually start or end in places where some transport is available, even if it is very infrequent, making my initial planning that little bit easier.
Last week saw me tackling my first section of the Pennine Way from Haworth to Hawes (days 5 to 8 of the full trek).
Overview of the route
This was a beautiful section to start on as it marks the watershed between leaving the Southern Pennines and entering the Yorkshire Dales National Park. I have never been to the moorland area between the Peak District National Park and the Yorkshire Dales and I found it to be charming. It contained all the wildness of the bigger moors but on a smaller scale, with a little less height or distance to cross as I moved between each section of moor.
Haworth, my starting point, is in the heart of Bronte country, having been home to the Bronte sisters. The quick access to desolate moor makes their bleak plots about wild and lonely areas and people instantly come to life. Moments of overcast skies, when teamed with a stretch of empty moorland easily made me feel quite alone and unhappy, but the times when the sun shone could instantly soar my spirits too. It proved to be a tough day in exciting weather conditions and was a really exciting start to the trip for me.
That first day of climbing over the final stretches of Southern Pennine moorland had left me ready, as many Pennine Way walkers are by this stage, for a day of rest. Fortunately the terrain provides this with an easy day of low-lying fields and flat floodplain walking. It was a real treat as I made my way from Elslack up to Malham, a suitably scenic point to enter the moors of the Yorkshire Dales. This is a sociable day and I found myself frequently stopping to chat to walkers who were tackling the route in the opposite direction or joining up with those walking in the same direction as me for a short while. The walking is simple, taking in canal towpaths, riverside paths, lanes and fields giving a sense of relaxation an calm to the day.
The Pennine Way takes to the Leeds & Liverpool canal towpath shortly before East Marton
My third day, from Malham to Horton-in-Ribblesdale, was a spectacular day. The day gives a true introduction to the Yorkshire Dales with all the history and geology that it includes. I started in glorious sunshine approaching Malham Cove with grand views opening up of this former glacial waterfall before climbing steps to reach the limestone pavement at its top. Limestone pavements are expanses of limestone where a flat layer of limestone has been revealed by thousands of years of geological movement and erosion. However, the rain then carves away at this soft stone, cutting channels through until it is left in pieces with deep gaps cut through it. From here the day took me down narrow limestone gullies and around Malham Tarn before taking in two summits – first Fountains Fell and then the well-known, rocky summit of Pen-y-Ghent, one of Yorkshire’s famous Three Peaks.
The fourth section of this route finally took me through one of my favourite parts of the Dales. After walking north between the neighbouring summits of Ingleborough and Pen-y-Ghent the route skirts around the edge of Dodd Fell and finally drops down into Hawes. It is an uncomplicated day with only one main climb up and then plenty of level walking for the second half of the day, giving it a sense of walking through passes between high summits. In reality the summits here are not particularly high, but in this relatively flat terrain each summit stands out, proudly dominating its surroundings and providing walkers with long expansive views of grand, old scenery, formed by the geological movements in this area tens of thousands of years ago.
The unpredictable Pennine Way weather
I had been warned in advance to expect poor weather on the Pennine Way. It is a watershed up the country and subsequently suffers from a lot of rain along the route, capturing rain as it passes over the country. As a result I had prepared for plenty of wet weather and was pleasantly surprised to find that only my first day was particularly bad.
While the skies opened on me on the third day, just as I reached the summit of Pen-y-Ghent (second time to ever climb that summit and still no views) after a day of threatening and overcast skies, my fourth day was only a little overcast and the second day was baking hot in brilliant sunshine under a mostly-cloudless sky. Quite unusual for the route!
However, my first day was an adventure. As I made my way from Haworth and up into the moorland the weather was frequently changeable from glorious sunshine to instant torrential rain and rolling thunderstorms with no warning of the switch from one to the other. Within the first two hours I had already donned and removed my waterproofs several times, unable to survive through the heavy rain without but quickly cooking to a crisp within minutes of it drying out again.
Climbing the steady moorland slopes on the well-paved surfaces typical of the PW's early stages
On reaching the summit of the day, a trig point in the middle of open moorland at Pinhaw Beacon, a loud crash accompanied a bolt of lightening hitting the neighbouring rounded summit. It wasn’t the place to be at a time like that and I quickly got myself off the summit and found a spot among some lower heather bushes to crouch out 20 minutes of heavy hail as the thunderstorm passed overhead.
My advice would be that if you choose to walk the Pennine Way, prepare for any (and every) weather condition. That way you should keep fairly dry and very happy as you head up the country on foot through this frequently-wet scenery.
The lush fields on the way to Gargrave
Looking forward
I still have four more weeks of Pennine Way to cover and I’m interested to see how the scenery changes as I travel. This was certainly an interesting start, both because of Monday’s thunderstorm but also because it took me through some scenery that I think will be hard to beat. However, I am really looking forward to my proper stint In Bronte countryside at the end of October and exploring Northumberland, which is an area I’ve not been to before.
Have you walked the Pennine Way before? If so, what is your favourite section? What were the pitfalls I should be looking out for? Let me know through the Alpine Exploratory Facebook page!
WHAT WE DO
