Day 2 - Edale to Crowden

The first day turned out to be not really as bad as the weather forecast had suggested. A mixture of heavy rain interspersed with brilliant sunshine and followed by hail surely makes for a more interesting walk doesn't it ? In fact the main pitfall is that heading uphill with full waterproofs on makes for uncomfortably hot walking before long. As the guide books say there's a bit of a baptism of fire at the start when only a couple of miles out of Edale you reach Jacob's Ladder, a zig-zagging cobbled path which takes you half way up from the valley to the edge of Kinder Scout.

Jonathan at the start of Jacob's Ladder

Top of Jacob's Ladder 

The marker at the top of Jacob's Ladder is deceptive, as there's another good half hour of up-up-up before reaching Edale Rocks and the eventual trig point at the summit of Kinder Low. A break in the rain gave us a wonderful view back down to the Edale Valley.

View from Edale Rocks back down Edale valley

From there the Pennine Way skirts the edge of Kinder Scout with a sharp drop to the left, until the Kinder Downfall waterfall is reached. Other walkers had told us that they had never actually seen water running over it, so that's a good reason to see the current rain as fortunate as today it was in full flight. Today it was doing its trick of spraying most of its contents upwards, so much so that from a distance all we could see was what appeared to be smoke rising up.

Kinder Downfall - in reverse mode

Eventually the water somehow finds its way downhill and onto the west, eventually emptying into Kinder Reservoir.

Kinder Downfall to the reservoir

There's still plenty of snow on the ground, with the Pennine Way official route crossing over it in numerous places. Maybe the last of the year, so make the most of it.

Snow near Kinder Downfall

One of our occasional co-walkers (he started out on the same day), Sean with his 14 month old black labrador Saffie, with whom he's walking the whole Pennine Way, including the hard-man option of the 26 mile final day's walk from Byrness to Kirk Yetholm. Poor man has found that many B&Bs don't accept dogs so he's having to carry camping gear as well.

Sean and Saffie

Just when it looked like the rain had gone for the day it heads in again from Manchester

A mere 7 miles later and now we're in Crowden (or just outside of it at the Old House). Total for the day is somewhere between 14 and 16 miles, depending on who you ask or which guide book you read. Unfortunately my GPS phone went mad and ran out of batteries a few miles before the end of the day (at 13.8 miles) so who knows for sure.

Off to the pub now to recover

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