The Pennine Way (1975)

July 1975

This Long Distance Footpath (LDP) is 271 miles in length. It links the village of Edale in the county of Derbyshire with the village of Kirk Yetholm just over the border in Scotland. The vast majority of walkers/hikers do it in a northerly direction, so for most people Kirk Yetholm in Scotland is the destination.

The Pennines are a range of hills that start in the English Midlands and run northwards ending technically on the River Tyne…in fact where the famous historical site of Hadrian’s Wall ( constructed by the Romans to protect their English possessions from groups of marauding Scots) runs east-west linking the present day town of Carlisle with the outskirts of Newcastle.

But the footpath continues northward into the county of Northumberland passing through the vast Border Forests and then onto the Cheviot Hills that carry the present day border between England and Scotland. The highest point is 2930 ft above sea level so they are not exactly the Himalayas, but hey ho, it’s a good workout going up and down them with a rucksack (or should I say backpack or mochila!!!).

It was a walk I did with a university colleague. It took 20 consecutive days to complete it. 19 of which were walking days. One day we were ‘grounded’ by incessant rain. Which gave us time to explore what there was of the small town of Hawes in Wensleydale. We realised that as students we had the time to devote to this undertaking. In the UK students have a 6-week break between mid July and September. For overnight accommodation we used the UK’s network of Youth Hostels for the first few days. After that we were camping, as the route passes through some very remote areas. One notable exception in the first week was the evening we spent in Ponden Hall.

We were invited into it by the landlady. A lovely sumptuous oldy-world place, well preserved. We were privileged that evening to have THE main room. But it was my colleague Dave that got lucky and had the four poster bed all to himself, I got the short straw and had the ordinary bed. For those with an interest in English literature Ponden Hall is linked to the Emily Brontë novel ‘Wuthering Heights’ where it is the inspiration for Thrushcross Grange. The three Brontë Sisters lived in a village just a few miles away.

But this ‘adventure’ was extremely important for me as it taught me two lessons, each of which had a profound impact on how I would eventually prepare for future long distance walks such as the Camino.

Lesson 1:- Minimise the weight that you carry.

This was the real tough lesson that I learned on the very first day. Remember that ‘rucksack/backpack/mochila’ technology was fairly primitive back in 1975. The one that I bought had a rigid aluminium frame around which was attached one capacious single bag. I think it may have had two side pockets. The problem with a capacious bag, in the hands of someone that has never backpacked before, is that it gets filled to the top with stuff you take along ‘just in case’. I should have been worried when I put the mochila into my colleague’s father’s car and saw the effect on the rear axle suspension! It just never at any time occurred to me that carrying such a heavy weight would have a huge impact upon my rate of progress in these first few days. For the first mile on the first day of that Pennine Way the track is quite flat so no problems at that stage. But then it ascended quite steeply and that’s where it all began to go wrong. At the end of that first day we did complete the 16 miles that we had planned from the comfort of the armchair but I was really exhausted by then. The next day was absolute purgatory. We did 10 miles instead of the planned 16. I had never in my life before then nor have since (though there were times in the European Alps when it came close) felt so absolutely and utterly exhausted as I did that day. At one stage I was on the brink of waving the white flag and giving up!!! Just the second day of what we knew would take at least 20 days. It is just NOT me to be in this kind of state. Day Three came around and I set off that day very very slowly and I’m happy to say that I must have found what is known as the ‘second wind’ and things just got better from then on. I was 22. I imagine the poor old body had had to undergo a rather radically quick adaptation to the stress and strain that this ‘adventure’ had put upon it. I imagine that at the age of 22 a healthy body can do this successfully and fairly quickly. Having said that, the weight continued being a problem for a different part of my body:-the shoulders. Although by Day Three I had adapted my breathing to cope with the strain, the primitive rucksack design meant that most of the weight was being borne by my shoulders and not the hip bone. Gradually the shoulders reddened and then the skin wore away under the constant friction, so by the end of the walk they were not particularly pretty sights and were accordingly very painful – despite using spare pairs of walking socks to act as cushioning for the rucksack’s shoulder straps. So the lesson was:-KEEP THE WEIGHT DOWN!

Lesson 2:- The human dimension

Many of the areas that this walk passes through were already familiar to both my friend and I because we used to live quite close by some of them and they can be done as day trips. We originally viewed walking the Pennine Way as being merely a very nice means of passing through some of these areas without the inconvenience of having to return home. Both of us appreciated the countryside and that in itself would have been rewarding enough. We started the Pennine Way on a Saturday. The village where it starts is within easy reach of large urban areas close to it and the area is extremely popular for outdoor recreation especially at weekends in good weather, which we had when we started. So it wasn’t immediately obvious which others were also starting off on the Pennine Way. When the Monday came around it was much quieter in terms of the total numbers of people walking but we began to notice several groups of people that we had seen in the preceding days, and yes they were all doing the Pennine Way. Back in 1975 the infrastructure supporting the walk wasn’t all that well developed which meant that most of us ended up coming together at the end of every day into the few hostels, camp sites and public houses that were available at the time. Discussing with each other our accounts of what had happened every day was quite good fun. For example just when you thought you’d had a bad day you’d always find that at least one other group had had it even worse that day…not as though you should ever draw comfort at the expense of someone else’s misfortune! So I just knew that this aspect of the human element would be a really really important dimension to add to the experience of walking the Camino.