Day 39: Pennine Way

Distance walked: 16.8 miles
Distance driven: 2.0 miles
Today dawned dreary and grey. A bit disappointing after the brilliant blue sky of yesterday, but at least it wasn't raining. We spent an enjoyable breakfast chatting with our host, Anthony, the master of The Saddleworth Hotel. He was strongly encouraging us to accept his offer of a ride up to the Pennine Way trailhead. The first two miles of our walk would be along a very busy A road that has very little walking space at the best of times and less than none when there's snow piled up along its sides. Having walked along quite a few A roads, we knew he had a very good point. We debated it, but ultimately opted to stay alive and take the lift rather than attempt the A road and face certain death. Even Al said if he were by himself, he'd have taken the ride. But I have to admit there was another factor at play because taking the lift meant getting to ride in Anthony's car.




Yay, that's a Rolls Royce. How could we pass up the chance to ride in a Rolls Royce? And, on the way to the trailhead, it got progressively foggier until we were sure we'd made the right choice. Walking on the edge of an A road in the fog was way too dangerous for us!
We said goodbye to Anthony (I swear that V12 engine was nearly silent as he pulled away!) and headed out for our first day on the Pennine Way.




The fog was thick as we began to climb.




We enjoyed the scenic vistas, like this one from Marsden Moor.




As we continued, the fog got thicker and the trail got trickier. There was still a fair amount of snow, so it was slow going as we picked our way along. We were very conscious of the fact that straying too far off the path could result in us sinking into the mire.




It was surreal walking across the moors in the dense fog. We could only see for about an eighth of a mile in any direction. The areas of black peat seemed to go on forever. And all along the way we could hear this dull roar. It might have been a mountain river in the Rockies, but here it was the M-62. Eventually we got to the footbridge that spanned the abyss that is the M-62 connecting Manchester and Leeds.








Beyond this point, the trail climbed into a more rocky terrain. Big rocks and little rocks, all making for more slow trail finding. At least the visibility was improving, but it did start to drizzle.




As we started to descend to our lunch stop, a pub right on the trail called the White House, we met another walker. Paul is a seasoned long distance walker from Worcester who is walking the Pennine Way as a 50th birthday celebration. He offered to buy us a pint at the pub, so we had our lunch and chatted about our plans and the differences between walking in the UK vs North America.
We headed out again, only to find that the wind had really picked up. The first 3 miles were along a series of reservoirs, so the trail was flat and fast. A nice change from the first half of the day. Eventually, the path hit a stretch of boggy moorland. Since the Pennine Way is so well traveled, they started taking measures to protect the fragile moorlands back in the late 90s. Some parts of the path were moved to firmer ground, while other parts were built up and had slab stones laid.




This section of the trail leads you right by a huge black stone structure called the Stoodley Pike Monument. It was built in 1856 to mark the end of the Crimean War. There had been another monument built on this site to mark the end of the Napoleanic Wars, but it collapsed. I guess they didn't want to run the same risk, so they made this one gigantic. 121 feet tall!








Sorry about the water drops. The wind was howling up there and it was still drizzly.
We parted ways with Paul just after the tower as he continued on the Pennine Way and we headed towards Hebden Bridge and our hotel. On the map this looked very straight forward. We started descending, passing some very new lambs along the way.




As we got closer to town, we started to notice that we were still quite high. Then we came to a point where we could look down to the town. It was probably 400 feet below us and we seemed to be right on top of it.




The climb down was crazy, but we ended up in the heart of Hebden Bridge. It looks like a cool town with a hopping downtown.
It was a long day, but it was great seeing so many facets of the Pennine Way. Tomorrow, we are looking forward to getting to Haworth. It was the first place we booked, since it's over Easter weekend, and it seemed so far away at the time. I can't believe we're in West Yorkshire!

Day 38: Back on track

Distance: 16ish miles (brief Garmin fail early)
Yesterday's snowfall: 6 inches (but with drifts seven feet deep)
We knew this morning might work out better than yesterday - we were able to sleep without the howling of the wind waking us up all night. Sure enough, we opened our window to light winds and sunny skies - what a relief!




The plan was to head out late, because the roads were still covered in ice, and we wanted to give the sun a bit of time to do its work. So after breakfast we switched our telly to the Challenge network. We spent half of our snow day watching this station; it's 24 hours a day of game shows, most repeats from the 80s and 90s. There was "Pointless", where they ask 100 people a question ("Name as many Bond villains as you can") and the contestants try to come up with answers that were least popular, but still correct (so "Blofeld" is a bad answer, "Mr. White" is a good answer). "Bullseye" combined two important pub skills: trivia and darts. "Catch Phrase" had you solving rebuses, and featured a host who enjoyed tossing little barbed insults at you if your guesses were not spot on. There was a really difficult show based on anagrams. The audience for that one was from Newcastle University. It was pleasantly low tech, and required letter tiles to be turned over by a nicely proportioned young lady in a form fitting dress. The game included an arithmetic anagram (rearrange numbers and operators to make some number) and part of her role was to work out a solution if the contestants failed. My favorite moment in the show was when the host told her "You are quite bright - but these Newcastle lads in the audience, you know they're all here just to have a gawk.". "tee hee" she giggled. If that happens every show my guess is that the host will one day be found dead due to some untraceable poison. ("Tee Hee" is also an excellent answer to the Pointless Bond villain question.)
This morning's show was "Are you smarter than a ten year old?" The twenty-something good looking contestant, Chris, clearly was not, but he was charming, likable, and very lucky. The host was a graduate of the great flowing hair school of British style; we'd seen him yesterday on the English version of "Deal or No Deal". He and the audience obviously liked Chris and everyone was thrilled when Chris ended up winning ten grand. At the end of the show, he was joined on stage by his girlfriend. He got down on a knee, and, tears in his eyes, proposed to her. It was really just a beautiful moment - in a game show! But it was time for us to get to reality. We switched the TV off, and headed out the door. (she said "yes")




The storm had brought in a clean, clear, cold airmass from the north, and so we could see for miles. The mesa at the top center of the photo above is Kinder Scout, the highest peak in the Peak District - it was crystal clear and beautiful even miles away. But we couldn't just walk along and admire the views. The road alternated between black ice and snow, often just a frozen crust of snow over six inches of slush and a couple of inches of water. It was pretty slow going. But even so, both of us were very happy to be out there; it felt just great to be making progress again after our unplanned day off.




We had originally planned a somewhat high route, along footpaths and bridle ways that would give us a flavour of the peaks, but without going all the way east to Kinder Scout at the Pennine Way. But we modified that plan, and as soon as possible headed down into the valley, to Broad Bottom (really) where there was no snow.




The road went down, down, down, and ended at a footpath, which crossed a pasture with sheep, and took us to the town. The storm was obviously very traumatic for us, forcing us to spend a day at a pub drinking, eating, and watching game shows - but the footpath reminded us quickly how much worse it was for the sheep. No one expected this storm, so the sheep and lambs were all outside. There was a dead sheep in the pasture, obviously due to the storm. And fresh on the ground what looked like a placenta, we imagined some poor ewe was lambing out in the storm. Yesterday would have been a bad day to be a sheep here. I will send the placenta picture to my sister in law Lianne for confirmation that's what it is (she's a doctor, so she should know, right?). The blog gets a picture of the sheep looking tired but happy that the storm is passed.




From Broad Bottom, we headed north on a path which gave us clear views of Manchester, only twelve miles west. It was odd to see skyscrapers and an Ikea after five weeks of fields and villages.




There are so many footpath options in this area; it was easy to string together a nice walk that was fairly direct. We again made use of a rails to trail conversion, and walked a towpath for a mile or so.




We knew our destination, the Saddleworth Hotel, was only a mile from the town of Diggle, so once we got close to town, we assumed nothing was between us and showers but a short stroll. See the town in the foreground of the picture below? That's Diggle. See the bloody great hill behind the town? Our hotel is on the other side of that hill. Dawn loves to pick places to stay that are way way way above towns.




We followed an old Roman track up the hill, back up into the snow, and over the top. Fortunately, the track came out right next to the Saddleworth - so it could have been worse. And the hotel was really nice, so in hindsight the climb was worth it, even clambering over the deep snowdrifts at the top of the hill.




Tomorrow, we are walking the Pennine Way up to Hebden Bridge. The route is up pretty high, so we're hoping that today's sun has melted most of the snow, or we could have some problems.

Location:Huddersfield Rd,,United Kingdom

Snowed in!

Distance: zero!

Here's the scene we saw outside our room when we woke this morning:


The picture doesn't really convey the howling wind and freezing cold - but trust me, they're part of the scene too! We knew our luck with the weather wouldn't last forever, but this is ridiculous. It's the worst storm of the winter - in April! Walking today would be unpleasant, with the cold north wind right in our face, and dangerous, since part of the way we'd be sharing the icy lanes with cars, sometimes in low visibility. So we opted to stay here for an extra night, and resume the walk tomorrow, when hopefully the storm will have passed.


The ice has brought quite a few trees down, and caused widespread power outages, according to the news on our TV. The waitress here made it in, and reported that a neighbour's tree had come down on her mum's shed during the night. Here at the pub, the only casualty we could find was one potted plant down outside the front windows.


We did some phoning around this morning, and we're able to change nights at our next stop, switch to another inn at Hebden Bridge, and cancel one of our three nights in Haworth. So we should be back on track tomorrow. Assuming the storm stops (the weatherman says it will, but it's still pretty grim outside right now at 2pm).


We've given up on real heat, or enough water for a shower today, but at least we have a roof over our heads and enough heat so we won't freeze. And we're at a pub, so there's an infinite supply of beer and food! Tomorrow we are hoping to make it to our next stop, the Saddleworth Hotel in Diggle, which, rumour has it, has heat, hot water, and wifi!

Location:The Moorfield Arms, Mellor, UK

Day 37: The Moorfield Arms

Distance: 11.3 miles
Ramblers: 12
This post is getting to you a day late, because the Moorfield Arms has no wifi. That's understandable, since they are out in the middle of nowhere. What's harder to accept is the lack of heat or hot water. This is more of a problem today than it would have been last week because the temperature has dropped a lot, and to compound that we've moved from the low plain south of Manchester to the higher country east of Manchester - the peak district. We're not quite in the moor here, but around dinner, the clouds gave us a bit of a break and we could clearly see Kinder Scout just off to the east. It's cold enough now that there's a chance of snow tonight. So between the higher, more exposed country and the new weather system, a little heat would be nice.
The rooms are in a different building from the main pub, and while the pub is toasty warm, the rooms are freezing. Seems the propane heater in that building is on the fritz, and it doesn't want to start up. We asked, not unreasonably I think, for hot water and heat. The cook was dispatched to take a look. I guess when you're a cook out here, you need many skills. He worked on it valiantly for a couple of hours, but with no success. After he accepted defeat, a man in coveralls with power tools gave it a go. He too was defeated. Fortunately, we nabbed an electric heater from the pub and it's been running for three or four hours now and so the room is now merely cold instead of freezing. And the cook turned on the back up electrical hot water heater, which (after about five hours) heated up enough water for us each to shower. And the bed here does have lots of heavy blankets. So we're ok.




The day ended wet and cold, but started out dry and only a little cold. We enjoyed a nice breakfast at Red Oaks Farm, where I mixed things up a bit by having the full English with a duck egg instead of a hen egg. We enjoyed the company of Bonnie at breakfast - not my cousin Bonnie, but this Bonnie:




We started the day by walking under the Macclesfield canal; the canal we'd walked all day yesterday. The bridge in this picture is an aqueduct - the water flows over the road. I find this kind of odd, but it's common on the canals we've walked.




Once under the canal, we joined the Middlewood Way, a 10 mile long conversion of an old steam train rail line to a horse/bike/walk trail. This is a very nice trail, and seems pretty well used. It's the only trail we've walked that is a dual carriageway: the whole length supports two lanes of traffic.




And, there are giant bunnies (and other animals) on the trail.




About an hour into the walk, the rain started, and we pulled out the pack covers and rain gear. The rest of the day varied from drizzle to rain with a few breaks in between.




After a couple of hours, we switched back to the canal for a mile or so, and saw a cute cat peering through a canal boat window.




We needed to get from the canal to the village of Disley, but it wasn't clear which side of the canal we needed. We stared at the map, and debated, not really getting anywhere, when, out of nowhere, came a dozen men outfitted in boots and sensible walking clothes, more than half carrying rucksacks, striding towards us quickly and with a sense of purpose. The Ramblers!




Peter, their leader, looked over our map at the route we'd chosen. He told us we could get to Disley that way, but we'd have to cross a railroad line, and it wasn't really the best way. He suggested that instead we should join his group and follow them; that'd get us to a land that would lead us to town. Peter exuded confidence and authority, so we did!
It was great to walk for a half hour with no need to check the maps, and with a group of friendly people to talk with. We were curious about why it was all men, but were scared to ask what happened to their women. Too soon, we were at the lane into Disley, on course, and parted ways.




We spent an hour and a half over tea and lunch at the Ram's Head - our longest lunch yet! They had a roaring warm fire, good food, and Banoffee Sundae. Mmmmmmmm.




North of Disley, the terrain has changed. We've turned the corner from the gentle plains of the midlands, and have moved into the wilder rolling hills of north England. It's beautiful, but it will make the walking more challenging!
Tomorrow, we have a long walk directly north to Diggle, where we join the Pennine Way and head into Yorkshire.

Location:Moorfield Arms, middle of nowhere, UK

Day 36: Macclesfield canal

Distance: 13.5
Locks: 12

Today was a drizzly, cool day. The month that just finished was the warmest and driest March in the south and middle of England in the past 80 years. It's been great for us; perfect walking weather. So far, in 5 weeks, we've only needed our rain gear three times. But it looks like the weather gods are going to get back at us during the first week or two of April. The drizzle today is just a warm up for the cold and rain of next week. Scotland could see a half a foot of snow. North England, where we'll be, could also see some snow at high elevations. Three days from now we will be in North England, at high elevations, on the Penine Way. If we miss a blog entry, it means we're lost in a snowstorm up on the moor.



Today we followed the Macclesfield canal from Congleton to Bollington. Canal towpaths are nice and flat, and navigation could not be easier.


The only real climb was 118 feet at Bosley locks, a flight of 12 locks that are the only elevation change for the entire 26 miles of the canal. I really like that running the locks is a self serve operation on the canals here. In the old days, there would have been a lock master who ran the machinery. But now, if you are in a boat and need a lift, someone on the boat hops out and opens the gate, and you float your boat into the lock.


Once you're in, your boatmates close the door behind you, open the door on the other side, and up you go. They must do some kind of training for people on how to use the locks and not screw things up. It seemed to go smoothly for the people we watched.


It was very cool to see all the early nineteenth century engineering working perfectly. A mile later, we were past the locks and back to the level walking of the towpath. In the drizzle.


At just about exactly noon we made it to the Fools Nook, our lunch pub for today.


It is a great pub; Dawn rated their cheese and pickle sandwich as the best so far. They mix the cheese and Branston pickle stuff together, for a super tasty pickley cheesy taste explosion! Look how happy she is in the nook, checking for new blog comments!


After lunch, we were making nice progress when we came to a bridge where the towpath switched from one side to the other. When this happens there's a cool stone ramp, like a wheelchair ramp, that goes up on one side, and spirals down the other. This is for the benefit of the horses that actually did the work of towing the boats back before the boats had motors.


The problem here is that the bottom of the spiral looked like this:


They'd closed the path! There were no people around, but there was a piece of paper that showed it was closed for a half mile. I'm not sure why. We doubled back to the previous bridge, where we could pick up a road and make a detour. It cost us a half mile or so of distance - not appreciated late in the day! Or maps came to the rescue and a half hour later we were back on course.


It was nice to get to our B&B for a cup of tea and a hot shower. The window just outside our room is the Dutch window. The mother of the lady who runs the house was Flemish, born in Belgium in the 20s. She came to England after marrying one of the British liberation force. She brought back some of the pieces in the window, and scattered around the rest of the house, on trips back to Belgium and Holland.


Tomorrow is another short to medium length day. We will leave the canal and start making our way into the Peak District National park.

Location:Charter Rd,Bollington,United Kingdom

Day 35: April Fools Day

Distance: 17.6 miles
Ideas for a stat: 0

So it's April Fools Day today and Al got me with a good one. He told me that our walk today would be 14 miles. But it was really 17.6! Hahaha! Our friend Tom also got us with a good one in the comments on yesterday's blog. Very convincing and had us going for a few minutes. Thankfully not true.

Today's walk, aside from being longer than expected, was quite nice. The temperature has come down, but the sun's still out. We are really getting into the heart of the country. There are more cars on the roads and more people in general. I guess it's no surprise since we're only about 30 miles from Manchester.


We found out from our host this morning that Cheshire is dominated by cattle and dairy farms because the grass here is so good. I think he meant regular grass, but we did come across an exceptionally mellow herd toda


We also met another herd that followed us as we walked through their field. At first they moved away, but then we turned around and they were right on our tail. It's a bit unnerving! Al took this photo


and noted that it was like watching the Ewoks meeting C3P0, just not as furry (them) or shiny (me).

The South Cheshire Way continued to be an excellent path. These way marked paths are mainly through farm fields (hence the close encounters with livestock). When you go from one field to the next, you usually have to cross a fence. This is often accomplished with a simple stile. We can go over dozens of these in a day.


As you can see, they are expecting only giant hikers or are trying to keep us shorties out. Well, better luck next time!

I got an email today that pointed out that we totally failed to talk cheese when we were in Cheddar on day 19. We did have cheddar in Cheddar and it was unspectacular. I think we are spoiled because the vintage white Tillamook that we eat at home is so good. The cheddar in Cheddar was as good, but not better than the Tillamook. I have noticed that the cheddar in England is never coloured orange. It's only white. A couple of days ago, Al had a Shropshire Stilton and mushroom lasagna at a pub in Whitchurch. He said it was excellent. Sadly, our cheese consumption has been limited. All restaurants offer cheese selections for after the meal, but they also offer sticky toffee pudding, so, ya.

Tomorrow, I'm looking forward to a day of flat walking along the Macclesfield Canal. Al says it's 13 miles. We'll see.