Day 1: The Backbone of England--The Pennine Way

July 27, 2024: I've heard the complaints, and after a couple of years of not posting about my hiking adventures, I am back! For a little while, at least.... These blog posts are not something I particularly enjoy writing, however, and it's been quite nice taking a vacation from it.

The Edale train station, and the beginning of our hike.

Anyhow, I'm back! For now, at least.... And this time, I ended up in the merry old lands of England. Northern England, to be more precise. Flew into Manchester, which is where I woke up at 5:50 AM in the morning.

For three weeks, I'd also be joined by Karolina, who stayed up quite late the night before watching the opening ceremonies of the Olympics. "Just go to sleep," I tried to tell her. "You can watch it on YouTube later." But she, like much of the rest of the world, had to watch it live.

Anyhow, I set the alarm for 5:50 AM, which should give us enough time to eat a quick breakfast, pack up our bags, check out of the motel and walk to the trail station about a mile away with plenty of time to spare.

That went off without a hitch, although Karolina did grumble a bit about staying up too late and waking up too early. (I can't say that I gave her much sympathy on that count! She knew the schedule!)

Anyhow, our train was waiting on the platform when we arrived, but the doors were locked shut and they weren't unlocked to allow passengers to board the train until about 5 minutes before the train was scheduled to depart, which we found somewhat annoying. We would have much preferred to board the train immediately and wait on the train rather than standing around it outside waiting to get in.

But finally, we boarded our train, and it departed Piccadilly Station precisely on time at 7:48 AM. 

The train cut through the countryside, mostly eastward, until arriving in the small hamlet of Edale at precisely 8:38 AM. Edale would mark the southern terminus of the Pennine Way, a 250-or-so mile trail that would lead north to Scotland.

Upon disembarking the train, we looked at some maps to get our bearings and started following a narrow road into the town where we eventually found The Old Nag's Head, a bar that marked the official start of the Pennine Way--the backbone of England from the Peak District to the Scottish borders and the first National Trail in Britain.

We didn't stop for a beer, but we did stop long enough
for a photo of the official start of the Pennine Way.

 
We took the necessary photos, including me pretending to use a British phone booth that actually appeared to be in working order, even if we didn't actually use it ourselves.

Then we took our first steps along the trail. The day was sunny and warm, and the birds were singing.

The trail was, at first, relatively flat and easy, passing through pastures filled with sheep and overlooking the valley bottom that the train followed. An hour after the train dropped us off, we saw another train following the tracks and stopping at the same stop we had stopped at. The train, at this time of day, ran every hour. If we had missed the last one, this would have been the train we would have taken instead.

The trail was relatively crowded with people. Not just those of us thru-hiking the Pennine Way, but also hoards of day hikers who came out to enjoy the vastly popular Peak District views. It didn't help that we started our hike on a Saturday when the day hikers were at their thickest.

The trail passes through lots of sheep pastures. Lots and lots of sheep pastures. Every day!

Several miles in, we reached our first big climb of the day, known as Jacob's Ladder. With an excruciatingly heavy pack and badly out of shape, both Karolina and I were quite winded going up it. How can so many muscles hurt at the same time, I wondered?

We took a short break at the top, which seemed satisfyingly symmetrical with the break we took at the bottom of the climb.

Climbing Jacob's Ladder

We took a longer break further on near an area labeled as the Kinder Downfall, where a small creek flowing over a plateau waterfalled down a steep embankment and carved out an impressive canyon.

The weather, however, had continued to worsen throughout the day, and by the time we arrived at Kinder Downfall, we felt the first few drops of rain. According to the forecast, the storm was just a passing storm that wasn't expected to last more than a couple of hours. Normally, I would pull out my tarp and try to wait it out, but I didn't have a tarp this time. Nope, this time, I was carrying an actual tent!

I decided to upgrade my sleeping accommodations from a tarp to tent for several reasons. First, there aren't always a lot of trees around to help set up a tarp in England. I almost always preferred to use a tree to hold up one end of the tarp whenever I set it up, and I wasn't sure I'd be able to find that regularly. Second, I knew I'd have to camp in campgrounds relatively often along the way, and campgrounds generally don't provide spaces well situated for tarps. Plus, in a campground, it's nice to have a little extra privacy that a tent provides. And finally, the midges! A tarp provides no protection against these evil little beasts, and I knew that there would likely be days I needed that protection.

So I switched out my tarp with a tent, and therefore did not have a tarp to throw over myself when it started to sprinkle.

Kinder Downfall

I did, however, have a rain fly that came with the tent, so I pulled that out and threw it over us like a blanket.

The rain picked up steam and became a little more aggressive. The hoards of day hikers on the trail started to thin out, but they never disappeared. Not completely, at least.

Karolina was exhausted, not just from the hike but also a lack of sleep, and decided to take a nap. I read my Kindle under the rain fly and was perfectly happy trying to wait out the rain.

We ended up staying there for about 2.5 hours, but sure enough, the rain eventually stopped and the skies even became partly sunny again. We did not, however, get through the rain completely unscathed. The rain fly has one significant problem that my tarps didn't suffer: ventilation flaps. Basically, holes in the fabric to allow air in the tent to ventilate. When the tent is properly set up with the rain fly on top, the holes are situated in a manner such that the rain won't enter them. When you throw it over yourself like a blanket, however, the rain definitely does soak into the holes.

So we were a bit wet from the rain. Not soaked through like we would have been just standing in the rain without the rainfly, but definitely wet.

I repacked the tent and we continued hiking.

According to my GPS, we ended up covering 11.8 miles on this first day, and reached camp at about 8:00 PM. It was quite a bit later than we had intended, and we had hoped to cover closer to 15 miles per day so were already behind schedule. But we set up camp at a lovely location near a creek and a trail junction. After eating some dinner, we pretty much hit the sack immediately. We were both pretty exhausted!

The Old Nags' Head marked the start of the Pennine Way.

There was no ice cream in the phone booth,
but there was an actual working phone!

Late in the day, we could see the skyline of Manchester on the horizon.

The zoom lens on my fancy camera really let me zoom in close to Manchester!

This area is infamous for its bogs, but much of the boggiest sections have been upgraded to use these stone slabs.

That's me taking a break at the base of Jacob's Ladder. =)