I sit now in the pub of the Tan Hill Inn where I am staying tonight. It’s a warm, friendly place. You’re here either because you walked here or because you live nearby which is to say middle of nowhere. Everybody asked where I’d walked from and had stories about their own walking. A foursome from
I’ve just had a perfectly competent fish and chips, but how can I easily give you a sense of the place? It’s the first time I was comfortable coming right down to the pub in my traveling clothes without a wash up and change. They’ve got a website if you want a flavor of it. I haven’t seen it myself, but it’s on the wall here: www.tanhillin.co.uk. One thing you can say when you’re eating here – you’re in the best restaurant for miles in any direction.
Dinner last night was a little more elaborate. I was at the Indian restaurant in Hawes. I had a lamb dish the name of which I cannot recall, but the menu said it was Persian influenced and a side of spicy Okra. I had a sense they don’t get much call for the latter. I stuck to my brief ride on the wagon by drinking nothing but near beer.
Good breakfast at Ebor House. It was the first B&B I stayed in with lots of modern art. I asked the proprietress about it. Turned out she has a son and daughter both artists. I settled up for the laundry service and walked away smelling sweetly, if a little strongly, of English laundry powder.
I finally came up with a good analogy for the kind of walking I’ve been doing. It’s quite a bit like a cross country flight. Each stage of the walk starts with a climb of some magnitude up to cruising altitude. Once that is reached, it’s a lot less work, just the occasional drop or climb to avoid turbulence as it were. Then, there’s the descent into an airport. Just like flying, on an easy day, you basically climb once, cruise, and land once. On a more challenging day, I have to stop and change planes at a few airports – that is, I have to come back down to a low level then climb back up for a second cruise. Usually, there’s some kind of reward for the descent and climb back out, but sometimes it’s just drudgery. Finally, you come down for the last landing of the day and your overnight stay.
One more point in the analogy’s favor – if you have good clear weather, you get great views during the climb and the approach for landing. If the weather’s socked in you don’t see much.
On that plan, today’s walk had me taking off from Hawes in a modest overcast and mist. I had decent views back at the town and its environs, but colors faded beyond half a mile. It was a steep climb through fields. I was struck again by the beauty of the fields and walls. I’ve convinced myself it’s all a matter of successive approximations. My theory, is that somebody 800 years ago build a really ugly barn on such and such a spot. 600 years ago, it started to bother someone, and he or she built a better barn. Apply this theory to the entire landscape, and you get
The first cruise took me across a huge moor. I had a dried apricot and water break in a little wind shelter at the summit. It was quite a bit higher than P-y-G, but no where near the sweat to get to because it was such a smooth, long climb. Coming down the other side was a little steeper and boggy, but my heroes the path pavers had been there, so I could zip by looking at the evil black pudding on all sides.
I ran into a foursome from Derbyshire who were walking the opposite direction. By the look of them and who was walking with whom, I pegged them as a middle aged couple, their daughter, and her husband. They asked me whether I was traveling with four other fellows, and I knew I was closing in on the Canadians.
My next landing place was a town called Thwaite – which I am told means clearing in the woods. (Mom – I’ve also learned that “Wick” at the end of a place name means they have a market.) My guide mentioned that there was a very good tea shop there. I knew I’d catch up there. Well, the fellows managed to surprise me. I actually found them a half a mile short of Thwaite, napping in the sun on their ground cloth by the side of the trail. Philippe was the only one awake, but he woke up the rest of the crew. They told me they had heard the hostel at Keld (the normal stopping place for the day) was full. They didn’t want to struggle on to Tan Hill, so they were just staying in Thwaite. Who knew how long the sun would last, so they were taking advantage of it.
I walked on and stopped for a fruit cake and cheese tea. Let me just say that I had expected more opportunities for this kind of mid day civilization stop and that they would have been welcome. It was a wonderful break. I heard
The whole leg from Thwaite was gorgeous. First the sequence of fields, if anything nicer than leaving Hawes. Then I walked through a place with a bunch of wind beaten, sheep grazed trees growing in a thin crust of ground. They looked like nothing so much as giant bonsais. The turf had been recently cropped short, so it looked like the kind of moss often used around bonsais in a pot. It all made me feel about one inch tall, but in a more favorable way than that phrase is usually used. I was walking around and along the eastern side of a hill with a dale and a parallel hill to the east of me. Views were just stunning. It gave me a premium view on the limestone scars most of the hillside opposite had about 1/4 of the way from the top then the scree fields of broken limestone bits about ¼ of the way from the bottom. In this clear day, the rock looked blue grey, but I knew from experience that through the usual haze, they looked violet and very decorative.
My path took me through reefs of wildflowers that looked like proto daffodils. Probably really no kin – the foliage looked completely different, and that counts for more than the flowers. Other parts of the walk, I was in the scree line of my own hillside. That was a little unnerving and called for a lot of rock hopping. Everything was actually pretty well settled – nothing like a field of slate would have been – but I couldn’t help thinking what a small splat I would leave if for some reason the rock decided to move while I was on it. At the head of the dale opposite, there was a lovely sequence of waterfalls. I didn’t even notice how many little climbs and falls I was doing to move along the hill, but it started to tell on my legs.
Fortunately, I landed soon on the outskirts of Keld, a tiny village the guide calls the most northerly village in
Time was getting on, so I pulled myself up and started the climb for the leg to Tan Hill. The early part of the walk was fine, no fireworks views like the leg from Thwaite, but easy walking, smooth steady climb. About halfway through, though, I took a bridge over a tiny stream called How Gill. All of a sudden, I was walking along a level part of the hilltop that was absolutely sodden. The track was difficult to find, and even when I was sure I had it, I kept coming up perpendicular to 4-7 foot wide waterways full of oily water and obviously boggy at the bottom. The last time I did any organized broad jumping was back in junior high. I wasn’t very good at it then, and the run ups were easier and the consequences of failure less messy. I cleared eight or ten of these and was starting to think I had to be lost, even though I was walking almost perfectly along the line I had programmed off the map this morning. After one particularly challenging jump – on the landing from which I blush to admit I finally fell down for the first time, on a miraculous little bit of dry ground – I found myself standing up right next to a very narrow post with waymarks on it showing I had arrived perfectly on the line of the Pennine Way.
Now, in the chapter on Keld to Bowesin my book, there was a veiled reference to the fact that most through hikers going all the way to Kirk Yetholm take a different route for this part, but it is strangely silent on why. In the text supplied to go with this section of the walk, my guide Tony Hopkins (I doubt it’s the actor, but I refuse to look at the about the author and dispel all possibilities) tells me about the remains of disused coal mines on the opposite hillside. He tells me about the birds I’m likely to see. There’s some other fluff. Frankly, I think he could have edited some of that stuff down and mentioned that I was likely to find myself in the middle of a trackless waste leaping over boggy streams at the edge of my range and endurance. This patch only lasted about ¾ of a mile, but it looms large in my memory of the afternoon.
Finally, the ground became more groundlike again and I climbed a little to reach the top of Tan Hill, which goes and throws a wrench into my whole airplane trip analogy because the inn here is bang at the top of the hill, so you have to imagine that I’m staying in some kind of flying hotel.
That about brings us up to date. Tomorrow is supposed to be easy walking, so I’m planning to take a side trip to the town of
Cheers.
Garmin Facts: 17.1 Miles walked in 7:00 walking and 1:29 resting. Moving average 2.4 mph. Overall average 2.0 mph. 1,065 meters climbed – no wonder I was tired.
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