Pennine Way Blog 2: Day 17

…in which I’m irrationally miffed by clean trousers, I get one up on an eminent poet and my knee only just holds out.

Bleaklow to Edale, 12 miles. Jump to journal.

Resources.

Absolutely none until Edale, where I stayed at the lovely Ollerbrook Barn BnB. Reasonably priced, a proper bath, lovely people, magnificent breakfast. I had supper at The Old Nag’s Head; a nice pub with friendly staff and good beer, and where else are you going to finish a Pennine Way? My meal here was possibly an unlucky choice on an out of season evening.

Navigation.

I thought I’d cracked Kinder but it had one more trick up its sleeve. As everyone knows, from Kinder Downfall you contour south-southwest along the edge. I made the mistake of following this line too far. You need to change direction at about 078 875 (NTG p. 32) to slightly east of south, in order to then pass east (to the left, if southbound) of Edale Rocks.

Looking back northwards from Swine’s Back to Edale Rocks, the Way passes close to the latter on their east side. The right fork seen here is not the Pennine Way but the path northeast to the Noe Stool.

If you contour along the top of the edge too far, it’s all too easy to pick up another flagstoned path which is not the Pennine Way. This takes you to some rocks, for sure, but they look worryingly unlike Edale Rocks. If you find yourself passing a small and mysterious fenced-off tumulus on your right you’ve taken this wrong track. Either gamble on finding the path back east via Edale Cross down in the saddle (which I didn’t fancy as I’d strayed way off the map) or turn back. Otherwise you’ll come down in completely the wrong valley much too far west, and face an interminable walk back to Edale along the road.

The Way passes over the east (left if southbound) shoulder of the Swine’s Back, then turns left down in the saddle towards Jacob’s Ladder. There’s a fingerpost at the junction where the path back from Edale Cross joins from the right but, as shown on the NTG map, a short cut turns off left slightly before this.

Passing over the east shoulder of Swine’s Back, the Way then heads down and in the saddle below turns left (east) towards Jacob’s Ladder.

Journal.

Bleaklow waymarker.

I woke before dawn, the inner tent pouring with condensation as usual and all my stuff in dirty, damp disarray. My hands were filthy from trying to get the pegs to hold in the peat. I nosed out, the darkness was profound and infinite all around me but the air was bizarrely still and it wasn’t raining. Although I was lying in a bog, the atmosphere was dry and light, like laughing gas. All my animal senses, at least all those re-awakened by two weeks’ sleeping in the hills, told me of a change in the weather. All I had to do was stuff everything randomly in my pack. Nothing would need airing, in fact nothing mattered any more, for tonight I’d be in a hot bath and then in a dry bed, under a solid roof. It would be exaggerating to say I leapt from the tent and jogged up Bleaklow, but I didn’t hang around. It was my last day on The Way and I was demob happy.

At the top of Wildboar Grain the sun rose, illuminating several more sustainable campsites of firm grass just below the summit plateau, which itself is flat and extensive although stony and completely exposed. In summer you could not so much camp as have a small festival up there, if it wasn’t for the Peak Park Rangers quite rightly throwing you off this sensitive landscape. They don’t seem to be around in October though; I had the place to myself as the fog started to lift. This was the first time I’ve ever passed by Bleaklow’s cairn without meeting another person. I felt no need to hang around – I’d been this Way before.

Bleaklow in October – unusually unsociable.

Somewhere inside my rank, soggy carcase a strange metamorphosis was stirring, as if in an Axolotl after a hormone shot. Were the sun to come out, I felt as if my carapace of claggy down and peat-encrusted Goretex might split open, liberating a shiny dry creature of supernatural powers – living in a house and driving a car, maybe. The sun peeped out obligingly and I splashed onwards down Hern Clough, which resembled a small river after the previous day’s downfall. My feet were soaked, but I didn’t need to care. At Doctor’s Gate a pair of Peregrines sliced through the clearing air, the big Falcon leading her tiny Tiercel a merry chase down Urchin Clough and off towards Glossop. Peregrines! Was I about to emerge from the blasted upland wilderness of poisons, traps and guns into an unabused countryside with actual wildlife? Well, no, I was about to cross the A57 and stomp across the interminable flagstones of Featherbed Moss.

The clouds cleared and it turned into a beautiful morning; people started to appear. I was on the last day of the Perverse Pennine Way and I fear everyone could tell. It may have been my somewhat wild and deranged mien. It may have been the smell, and not necessarily in the way you’re assuming. To lift my spirits during my dark night of the soul on Bleaklow, I’d broken out my desert island luxury – a tiny free sample of fragrance I’d scrounged from John Lewis, figuring it might in extremis redeem my sleeping bag from stinking like a midden full of chickens. It was a bit less tiny than I’d thought, and I was starting to warm up. At Mill Hill I sat on the cairn, contemplating both the panorama and the infinite through a surprisingly dense cloud of exotic perfume.

Contemplating the ascent of Kinder from Mill Hill.

A perky white-haired chap in suspiciously clean trousers caught me up. He seemed very animated and pleased with himself and had clearly settled on my stationary silhouette as a target upon which to unburden himself of some extraordinary information. He had the manner of the man in the pub who, after a few minutes of normality, starts to tell you Lord Rothschild produces the X-Factor, the judges on Strictly are all Illuminati and did I know the Moomins are real and work for Mossad?

‘Today I’m going to complete the Pennine Way!’ he announced. ‘I see’, I said. What I thought was: ‘If you’ve just crossed Bleaklow overnight as well, how come you’re not completely covered in filth and in an altered state of mind, like me?’ His wife, he explained, had just dropped him off at Snake Pass from their camper van, in which he’d spent the night. It had taken him several years to complete The Way, in sections, trailed, fed, sheltered and kitted out with clean trousers en route by his vantastic spouse.

‘I’m really looking forward to celebrating in the Nag’s Head’, he cried, adding ‘it’s where everybody who walks the Pennine Way celebrates, you know.’ ‘I see’, I said. To cap it all, his parting shot was ‘of course, I had the day off yesterday, it was much too wet for walking’. My flashbacks of Torside Clough and John Track Well in horizontal rain were too painful for me to say anything, and off he went, whistling, bless him. I ate the last of the unprepossessing cashews and a lone fluffy butterscotch I’d prised out of a dirty sock. There’s only one Pennine Way, and that’s your own.

Sunny Kinder!

In case you think my contributions to this exchange had been unnecessarily parsimonious, I was distracted by contemplation of the last ascent up onto the Kinder plateau. In Walking Home this last climb is the last straw for Simon Armitage, it beats him. I’d deliberately rested, conserving my remaining energy, at Mill Hill lest this fate befall me too. Not that I had any alternative to fall back on, whereas Armitage had a car back in Longdendale. Once I’d started the climb, I couldn’t in all truth understand what had possessed him to retreat and walk back all that way. It seemed pretty straightforward, the sun was warm, and the views were amazing all around. Kinder is a fabulous place.

Kinder Reservoir below.

At the Downfall I merged my last two packets of Superfragments and cooked them in the stream water, which had the advantage of being already gravy-coloured. In May I’d been completely alone here on a Bank Holiday Saturday; on an October Wednesday it was like Piccadilly Circus. Endless daywalkers popped out of the rocks with their hydration systems, GPS pouches, map cases, actually matching Goretex tops and trousers – one couple had actually matching his’n’hers Goretex tops and trousers, how is that even possible?

Looking back west from Kinder Downfall.

I raised an eyebrow at one chap’s excessive technology and he informed me, hoity-toitily, that some DofE kids ‘had had to call out mountain rescue up here only yesterday’. It seemed unlikely in the bright sunshine that was illuminating the entire massif like a vast stage set, but then, at the south end of the edge, I got what I deserved, which was quite inexplicably and thoroughly to get lost. I had to eat my words and call upon OS Locate, which told me I’d strayed not just a few yards but right off the map. How embarrassing!

Looking back north towards Kinder Downfall.

I bog-hopped back to The Way and it was like the M1, people everywhere, I thought I’d got my days of the week wrong. ‘Retired’, said one chap a little younger than me. Another quite a lot younger explained ‘saw the great forecast, called in sick’. ‘Aha’, I said. Modern life, eh?

At the top of Jacob’s Ladder I felt a bit strange, almost overwhelmed. Twice I’d clambered up here on lonely, cold dawns, starting out on big adventures. Now the Ladder was not the start of something great, but the end of something perverse, something that had mixed up my head, turned The Way upside down. Everything felt all wrong.

Looking back at Edale Rocks (left) and the Noe Stool (centre) from near Jacob’s Ladder.

I haven’t wanted to harp on about the challenges of this walk as that would be boring, and in truth it wasn’t that difficult physically. Nonetheless, with the long, dark nights all alone in the hills it had been a strange and solitary exploit. As I gazed down towards normality from the top of the Ladder, it seemed likely to have done me some kind of permanent emotional damage. Also my knee was starting to hurt.

I’d expected to trot or even canter the last flat path into Edale but in fact, with perfect timing for which I’ll be forever grateful, my left knee only just held out. For the last mile I had to rest every few hundred yards, the pain was exquisite. I broke out the Co-codamol I’d carried for 266 miles.

It seemed impossible to believe that the legendary metropolis of Edale was hidden just ahead in those suburban-looking trees, tucked into that bosky dell. There’ll be a massive carved gate, trumpets, heralds leading me to their beautiful elfin queen, horns of fairy mead…

Edale is in those trees!

I stumbled into the Nag’s Head and slumped onto the nearest stool. ‘You look like you need a pint’ said the young, friendly barman. ‘Thank you, yes please’, I murmured with quiet sincerity, like a prayer, ‘I’ve just walked the Pennine Way’.

With an effort, I looked up from my peat-stained fingers to check out his impressed expression. He was serving someone else.

The Perverse Pennine Way, October 2016.

Tags: backpacking, derbyshire, hiking, hillwalking, long distance path, national trail, peak district, pennines, trekking, walking