LEJOG Day 52: Hardraw to Tan Hill

Weather: Intermittent showers with hail and then persistent rain

Distance covered today: 22.6km (14.0mi)

Last night's B&B: Green Dragon (£35)

Cumulative distance: 1028.6km (639.1mi)/ % Complete: 53.8%

GPS satellite track of today's route: Day 52 (click!)

Today was a real endurance test!  I probably deserve it for stirring up such a hornet’s nest with yesterday’s post. It seems I have managed to antagonise many of my dearest friends, for which I apologise profusely. Perhaps I had better lay low for a while, though I’m afraid this walk is unlikely to allow me to do so. That’s the trouble with thinking. It leads to conclusions!

The problem today was that I planned my assault on the Pennine Way in those Halcion days in Somerset when my lower extremities were once again in good shape and I was covering reasonable distances without difficulty. I didn’t have the Pennine Guides on me, so I was flying blind to an extent, helped only by that magnificent site “Where’s the path?” I also had a download from the official Pennine Way site offering accommodation options. So I put together my itinerary based on what I thought would be a reasonable distance with a B&B at the end of it. It seems I neglected to take into account the ups and downs of the Pennine Way and I have committed myself to segments which are considerably longer than those recommended in the official Pennine Way guides. Today was a case in point. I had to walk 7 or 8 kilometres further than the guide suggests and I was really tired when I arrived at tonight’s B&B, the Tan Hill Inn, which is advertised as the highest pub in Britain. It certainly felt like it!

On top of that, the weather was mainly foul. All day long, I got caught in intermittent showers, followed by bursts of sunshine. No sooner would I have donned full rain gear, than the shower would be over and I was overheating badly. I’d get all the gear off and back would come the rain. A violent storm blew up at one point, complete with some nasty hail, though I was fortunate to be able to shelter behind a barn for that one. Later in the day, it just started raining solidly and didn’t let up till I arrived at Tan Hill.

All this way, my feet, or more specifically my little toes, were killing me. This is a real case of déjà vu, because it is an exact repeat of my experience in Cornwall with the original boots. On that occasion, trying to compensate for painful toes led to all sorts of other minor injuries, so this time I am just trying to ignore my toes and walk properly!  I have discovered that the pain reflex is interesting. After a few steps in agony, the pain gradually goes away, and stays muted until the next time I stop. It’s as if the nerve endings become sort of “used up” and can’t keep feeding “ouch” signals to my brain. Stop for few minutes and they gang up to really let me have it!  Still, I’m convinced the blister plasters will work their magic and in few days, and I’ll be writing that all is again going well.

I have also come to the conclusion that the designers of the Pennine Way route are a bunch of sadists. If there is a big hill in the way and the choice is to go round it on a contour path or over it, they will invariably go over it. And although much of the way through boggy areas has been magnificently improved with a number of stone slabs, every now and then where there is a particularly boggy bit with lots of freestanding water, the paths just stop, so that the only choice is to wade in and take the consequences. Nature conspires to assist the designers by also ensuring that the boggy areas are not confined to the lowlands but can just as easily manifest themselves right at the top of a giant hill! And today, I had to negotiate the highest hill of my journey so far, Great Shunner Fell, all 720m (2,400ft) of it. The temperature at the top dropped alarmingly in the strong wind, but my gear was up to it and I wasn’t wearing my warmest fleece, which was still in my backpack in case of emergency, which was reassuring.

I still can’t get used to seeing wilderness in all directions in the middle of England.  The view is all the more spectacular on a day like today because the dynamic cloudscape, driven by the wind, is changing every minute. It was particularly lonely up there today. I didn’t see another soul from soon after the start until I arrived in the village of Thwaite. By the time I reached Keld, there were plenty of walkers around as this is the great confluence of the very popular Coast-to-coast walk and the Pennine Way. In theory, I should have stayed there, but my demanding schedule made me keep going all the way uphill yet again, to Tan Hill.

Regrettably, Tan Hill does not have a working broadband connection, but I have managed to conjure up a jury rig. I won’t though be able to upload photos from here. Next time I get a decent connection I will do so and they will include the most successful shot of the day, a very blurry shot of a Skylark in flight, which I have been attempting to get since I first started hearing them. A camera without a viewfinder isn’t ideal for that sort of shot.

Hardraw Force, a waterfall with the highest uninterrupted fall in Britain. It is in the private grounds of the B&B I stayed in in Hardraw, the Green Dragon

Finally, a skylark, flukally caught by my little camera

Back to the granite pavement across Great Shunner Fell

A pond near the top

Great Shunner Fell from the other side; I was relieved to be down at last and out of the cold

My B&B for the night, Tan Hill Inn. It was a delightfully chaotic place, claiming to be the highest pub in Britain. It is stuck on the top of Tan Hill all by itself, generating its own electricity, with its own water supply and telephone comms by microwave to civilisation