Rain and wind
Even taking into account that the British are famous around the world for talking about the weather it's hard to ignore the rain, wind, and even the snow which stuck with us for the whole of the Pennine Way.Snow
From the first day walking out on Kinder Scout to the last day on The Cheviot we were crossing patches of snow. These were the remnants of the blizzard which crossed the north of the country the week before we set out, but the fact that these remained frozen 4 weeks later says something about the low temperatures which are still the norm well into May. The fact that we again saw snow falling most of the last day of walking suggests that snow may be a fixture of the Pennine Way into June.Wind
Cold crisp spring wind can be a pleasant thing. Even when it meant wearing 4 layers of clothing on a day of full sunshine and sheltering in a shake hole just to keep warm enough to eat lunch, it's OK. We were high up in the hills, and far up in the north of England, so we expected and were prepared for it.The crisp/danger line was crossed just once, on the day we first attempted to walk over Cross Fell. The day felt threatening from the outset; the warnings from the landlady over breakfast, the press clippings on the wall about walkers being blown to their death, the trees pulled up with their roots, the massive branches snapped from their hosts and discarded across the path, and meeting the other walkers returning to Dufton in a daze. The last straw was being forced to crawl on our hands and knees when walking upright became impossible. Discretion is the better part of valour.
Rain
In three weeks of hill walking it's inevitable that there would be plenty of rain, but it seems that our walking coincided with the wettest April in the UK since records began. Tell-tale signs early on in the walk were that reservoirs were full to the brim, and overflow sluices were running. Several days we set out in the morning in heavy rain, and arrived in the evening in heavy rain. In those conditions it was inevitable that we would be pretty much wet through, with only our waterproof outer-trousers keeping our legs mostly dry. Thankfully most hotels and B&Bs along the Pennine Way are used to dealing with soaked walkers, and have drying rooms and boxes of old newspapers to stuff wet boots with.The real problem with the persistent rain was the effect on the land rather than on us. Most days we were walking over moorland which was more water than land, the underlying peat being saturated to the point where it could absorb no more. On Bowes Moor the path of the Pennine Way became an item of faith, with any tracks that might normally be visible being submerged under 6 inches of water. Even on drier days these saturated bogs become slow going, requiring constant hopping from grass tussock to tussock, and heading up and down each oozing stream to find a possible crossing point. On steeply sloping hillsides gentle babbling brooks quickly become raging torrents, sometimes impassible. The Pennine Way along the slope of Stonesdale valley near Keld was cut in two by Lad Gill, swollen by the heavy rain to an 8 foot wide whitewater run.
With time a philosophical appreciation of the rain might be possible. Without this rain the land along the Pennine Way would not look like this; wild peat moorland covered with heather might instead be tame arable fields, or housing estates, or industrial estates; rocky hillsides carved by thousands of years of constant erosion by fast running streams would lose their distinctive features; roaring waterfalls would instead become an occasional trickle of water over a dry cliff face.
Carved into an overhanging rock face near Warland Reservoir in West Yorkshire is the following poem addressed to the countless soaking Pennine Way walkers passing by.
Be glad of these freshwater tears,each pearled droplet some salty old sea-bulletair lifted out of the waves, then laundered and sieved, recast as a soft bead and returned.And no matter how much it strafes or sheets, it is no mean feat to catch one raindrop clean in the mouth,to take one drop on the tongue, tasting cloud pollen, grain of the heavens, raw sky.Let it teem, up here where the front of the mind distils the brunt of the world.
 |
| Rain |
Postscript: just heard a Radio 4 program about this; the 'SA' tag is of course Simon Armitage, and this is one of several poems he has written which are inscribed around the Pennines.
Flora and fauna
Day by day the living scenery of the Pennine Way sometimes seems to change little, with some plants and animals present from the first day to the last. There's much more to it than this though.Sheep and lambs
I don't think a day passed without us walking through fields of sheep and lambs. Looking through the very first few photographs I took are some of tiny lambs with their mothers. Maybe I foolishly thought those might be the only lambs we would see. As we headed north the lambs were generally younger than those further south. Spring takes time to make its way over 200 miles. By the time we reached County Durham it was more common to see newborn lambs, sometimes still with their umbilical cords attached, and with no identifying ear-tag yet. Many fields were littered with evidence of lambs recently born, and lambs which could barely stand yet.Curlews, lapwings, and Red Grouse
Curlews most days, not surprising since they enjoy feeding on wet land. In Cornwall we have curlews on the muddy tidal estuaries, probing the sticky mud for small invertebrates to eat. Clearly curlews are versatile though, and are happy to wade through boggy peaty moorland, dipping into the dark peaty soup for a different set of insects.Lapwings are at their most entertaining when they are encountered singly or in small numbers. In large flocks, which are sometimes seen in the south of the country, they tend to panic when disturbed and fly off silently. Along the Pennine Way a single lapwing would often be seen performing aerobatics, swooping and diving in the fields, with an accompanying soundtrack something like tuning a shortwave radio, or maybe an avant garde theremin composition.
Everywhere we were on moorland there were Red Grouse, most visibly the males with bright orange double combs on their head. Maps of the moors often show "grouse butts", the hides where hunters with shotguns will hide in wait for the grouse. Since we were walking outside of the shooting season the birds were much more confident, to the point where on day 20 we received a full territorial song and dance from an outraged male.
Heather, moss, peat
The rule seems to be that the wetter moorlands are thick with sphagnum mosses, and the drier moorlands with heathers. At this time of year the heathers are still dormant and grey, and it will be August before the moors become flushed with purple. Until then the rich green sphagnum mosses provide the dominant colours in much of the boggy moorland. |
| Sphagnum moss macro |
Whether it's heathers, mosses, or grasses, the end result in wet conditions is peat. From the first day on Kinder Scout to the top of The Cheviot we were walking through peat bog of some sort, and the streams ran from a thin whisky yellow to a thick brown Windsor soup.
Juniper
This was one of the big surprises for me, that the upper reaches of the Tees valley play host to such a huge number of juniper bushes, apparently the largest juniper forest in England. I hope that the juniper berries from here are used in making gin. If they're not then I sense a business opportunity. |
| Upper Tees Juniper berries |
Spring Gentians
Another surprise of the Upper Tees Valley is the profusion of alpine flowers, such as the Spring Gentian which was at its peak when we were there. |
| Upper Tees Spring Gentian |
Hotels vs B&Bs vs Inns
Since we were staying in a different place each night - 19 different B&Bs, hotels, and inns, in 21 days - we played a game of trying to guess what the accommodation would be like each night. Regardless of whether it was a B&B, a "hotel", or an inn, we were usually wrong, and it was hard to predict the quality of the place based only on the accommodation name and the location. With hindsight I think our experience is something like this:- A "hotel" rather than a B&B is no guarantee of quality. In fact generally we found that B&Bs were rather better than hotels. I suppose this might be because the cost of renovating a hotel with 10 or 20 rooms is prohibitive compared to redecorating just 2 or 3 rooms in a B&B, so unless the hotel has recently changed hands and been revamped it's often rather run down. Likewise the effort involved in cleaning a 10 room hotel is beyond an individual, and the staff employed to do this are working to a budget and timescale. On the other hand the owner of a 3 room B&B can easily clean all the bedrooms, and would usually do so to the same standard as their own rooms.
- Even a tatty old hotel or inn can be a welcoming place with the right staff. We stayed in a couple of slightly tired inns where the owners and staff were helpful and chatty, and everything worked, and everything was clean. As an alternative to spending hundreds of thousands of pounds revamping the place for an unknown return this seems like an obvious thing to do, but it's surprisingly uncommon.
- Notices posted everywhere telling people "DON'T DO THIS" and "NONE OF THAT" might as well say "go away", making it clear that the comfort of the owners is more important than that of the guests.
- En-suite is not necessarily better than shared facilities. Often en-suite showers and toilets are cheaply fitted, which isn't surprising if you have to fit 20 of them. On the other hand,one or two shared bathrooms can be bigger, have larger baths or better showers (rather than the ubiquitous Mira electric shower), be more expensively decorated, and better cleaned.
- Pub food : no great revelation, but pubs can't really make curries. They are usually a lot better at things with chips, and thing pies. No gasto pubs on this trip, so no "thing on a big white plate" experiences.
People
Some people were permanent or semi-permanent fixtures. My old university friend Jonathan walked the whole Pennine Way with me, and if you've looked through more than a couple of daily postings you will have seen him in a picture, although sometimes he may only be the red blob half way down the hill. Although some may prefer to walk a long distance trail alone, it makes for a much more pleasant journey if there's someone to commiserate about the thoroughly miserable wet day you've just had, or to enthuse about something wonderful you've seen that day.
Sean and Saffie started on the same as us in Edale, and for the first week they walked alongside us every day. Although things appeared touch&go with Saffie after a few desperately cold and rainy days (see day 6 for an example) they finished the Pennine Way 4 days before we did, both alive and unscarred.
Eric also started on the same day in Edale, although he initially professed to prefer walking on his own. When his mobile phone drowned in the heavy rain on day 3 his wife insisted he walk along with us until he received the posted replacement, but this enforced sociability didn't seem to be difficult for him to bear, and he was a very entertaining walking companion for the following days. We last bumped into him in Garigill on day 16, when we found out that he had twisted his ankle a few days previously and had reluctantly decided he wouldn't be able to complete the walk after 170 miles completed. Something tells me that he might try again before he reaches the age of 75.
What is surprising is how easily we struck up lengthy conversations with so many people along the way, fellow long distance walkers, passing tourists and locals in pubs, B&B owners, or just bystanders who happened to be on the path at the right, or wrong, time. From the first B&B in Edale (owner's daughter had flu so the owner was having to do most of the work of running a childcare business) to the last day on The Cheviot (where we met a couple who where walking all the peaks over 2000 feet in England, and were rather disappointed that Cairn Hill was just a small cairn on the slopes of The Cheviot) not a day passed when there wasn't a series of memorable conversations.
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