Day 3: The Hunt for Water and a White House Invitation

July 29, 2024: I once again woke up early with the sunrise. The midges were awful, however, and breaking down camp went quick since the quicker we finished, the sooner we could be hiking and the sooner we were hiking, the less bothersome the midges would be.

The weather was clear, the terrain was relatively flat and mild. At least compared to the last couple of days! 

An hour or so into our hike, I passed a blue Nalgene bottle laying on the side of the trail, nearly half-filled with water. Being in the water bottle, it seemed likely that the water was probably good, clean water--but we also didn't know where it came from. It looked like it had probably fell out of someone's pack within the last day or two. I was hiking ahead of Karolina at the time and picked up the bottle. At the top of the hill, I took a break and waited for Karolina to catch up. 

Then, after she did, I asked if she wanted the water. She was happy to take the water, but much to my surprise, she was actually more excited about the bottle itself. She had apparently been wanting a Nalgene bottle for eons and was quite happy to acquire one for free. =) The extra water inside was just a bonus for her.

Not the kind of water we had expected to pick up on the trail,
but Karolina was pretty excited about the find!

A couple of hours later, we crossed the A635, and parked on the side of the road was a pop-up trailer serving food and drinks for passing motorists and the occasional hiker wandering by. We stopped for a break. I ordered a burger and a Coke while Karolina ordered a sausage sandwich, a Coke and a tea. Everything was delicious!

I'm eating my burger at the pop-up trailer/restaurant.

 

Filling up with water was a high priority. I had tablets, but they were limited in numbers, so we didn't want to rely on them any more than was absolutely necessary. I thought about trying to fill up at the pop-up restaurant but our guidebooks showed a lodge a couple of miles up the trail (and we passed a sign right next to the highway pointing to it saying it was 2 miles away), and we had enough water to get us two more miles so we figured we'd refill there.

The trail passed a couple of reservoirs along the way--rumor had it they fed into the water supplies for Manchester and the surrounding area--but when we arrived at the lodge, it appeared to be a private home. There was absolutely no signage marking the building or anything to suggest that the public was allowed to enter. The building itself looked well-maintained, but appeared to be deserted at the time with nobody around. I took a quick look around the building but didn't see any spigots to fill up with water either.

Seems like we passed a half dozen different reservoirs today!

 

That was.... a bummer. We really needed to fill up with water. There was a creek nearby--running off from the reservoirs we had passed earlier--but I had been hoping to avoid using that since I'd have to use the iodine tablets to treat it.

I filled up with a liter of water, but didn't treat it immediately still hoping to find a better source of water later. Our guidebook showed a campground further up the trail, near another reservoir--seemed like we were passing a reservoir every hour or two! 

So we had hope that we could fill up at the campground, but I wanted the extra liter just in case I started getting thirsty enough that I'd want to drink it before reaching the campground.

However, when we arrived at the designated reservoir, we couldn't find any sign of a campground at all. WTF?! What's up with all these listings for accommodations that didn't seem to exist? At this point, I started treating the water I carried. There was no way I'd make it to the next civilized water without needing a drink before then.

Karolina, not wanting to carry any water that she didn't plan to drink, filled up later from a difficult-to-reach source that was much more murky than the water I had. She had to lay down on the ground and get her head into a grass-filled ditch, but she managed to fill up with water--abeit really ugly, horrible-looking water. (Although to be fair, it wasn't that much worse than the water I carried.)

Karolina filling up her water bottle from a small, stream on the side of the trail.

 
Anyhow, we took a longer break on a windy ridge just past the phantom campground where, for the first time in two days, I managed to get a cell phone connection. This was essential to begin our hunt for a new water filter. Now I could get online and start figuring things out. Looking ahead on the trail, I didn't see anything that jumped out at me as a place to get a water filter. I could find it listed on websites like Amazon, but where would I ship it to? But I also had an ace up my sleeve: Dilton Martian.

He was an Englishman who I happened to know from Atlas Quest and Walking 4 Fun, and he was in the area. He lived hours away in the south of England, but happened to be camping not far from the trail as part of a scouting group so I sent him an email about our water filter problems and if it was possible for him to acquire one for us before we met up later in the week.

I sent the message into the ether, checked some other email, then we pushed onward.

Late in the afternoon, I saw something that looked like a giant oil rig, which baffled me since I was pretty sure that they weren't drilling for oil in these mountains. As we approached closer, I reached the page of my guidebook that included that section of the trail and it explained that the tower was just a broadcasting mast. The reason it looked way bigger and stronger than a typical broadcasting mast, however, was because it had been designed to survive a nuclear blast! My guidebook also noted that cell phone reception near here was particularly good. =)

No, it's not an oil rig--it's a broadcasting tower that's designed to survive a nuclear explosion!

A bit later, we passed by Nikie's food bar, which was located on the side of a busy road in an old shipping container. Our guidebook said it was closed on Sundays, so originally we figured we'd miss out because we had expected to pass by on Sunday. Our miles for the first two days were considerably shorter than we had expected, however, and it was now Monday--which meant the food bar would be open! Hooray! Except when we arrived, there was a sign on the structure saying that the business was temporarily closed through Thursday. Boo!

I was dejected. We took a short rest at the tables out front where, annoyingly, a big rig had parked right next to it. Although the food bar was closed, the porta-potty behind it was not so I went back and did my thing there.

The food bar, alas, was "temporarily closed" when I passed by--much to my sadness. I was also annoyed by loud truck that had parked right next to it.

 

After returning to the table, Karolina pointed out that it was a shame that the White House was another hour to hour-and-a-half away.

"Wait, what?"

The White House, we had been told by day hikers earlier in the day was a legendary restaurant and bar for thru-hikers on the Pennine Way, but when we passed them, they said it was something like 7 or 8 miles ahead. That was far too far away for us to reach today, which we told them, and they said we could also sleep in late tomorrow since they didn't think the place opened until noon. We had kind of assumed we'd probably pass by in the morning when they were still closed and didn't give it much thought after that.

Until Karolina mentioned that it was only about an hour to an hour-and-a-half ahead.

"It's that close?" I said. "I thought those people told us it was maybe 7+ miles away?"

It was fairly late in the day. After passing by Nikie's food bar, our plan had been to start looking for a place to camp, but I realized that it was entirely possible for us to reach the White House before sunset if we pushed onward, and that provided a couple of major benefits.

First, we could order real food rather than eat the stuff out of our packs.

Second, we could load up with lots of clear, clean water since today had largely been a bust in that regard.

Third, maybe we could charge some devices.

Fourth, our guidebook mentioned that there was a decent wild camp site just before the restaurant and bar, and an even better one by an old quarry about a half hour walk further on. We knew there would be a place to wild camp near there!

"I think we should try to hit it. This evening. Right now," I told Karolina.

"We can do that?" she replied. It was late in the day and she mentioned the White House sounding somewhat longing--kind of a "so close, but not close enough" kind of disappointment. Apparently, it never even occurred to her that we could actually reach it this evening.

But the sun didn't actually set until a little after 9:00pm, and so we still had plenty of time to reach the White House well before sunset, and then we knew there would be a nice wild camp site only a half hour beyond it. It was totally doable!

Karolina got very excited about the idea.

"But we need to go NOW. Our break is over!" Although we could make it, we didn't really have free time to dawdle anymore. 

The thought of food really lit a fire under our butts, and we hiked hard and fast.

Not as fancy as I expected of the "White House", but it was absolutely luxury for us! And, to be fair, it was white, and a house. No false advertising here!

We arrived and took a table inside. I ordered the Mexican chili with "chips" and two pint-sized Coca-colas. I put "chips" in quotes because I was never sure what I'd get when I saw that on the menu. Sometimes, they gave me French fries, but other times, they gave my potato chips. Whenever I saw something like "burger + chips" on a menu, I could never be certain which I would wind up with. It was kind of annoying. I wished the British were more consistent about how they used the term "chips". In any case, it was still a surprise when they came out with actual French fries rather than potato chips. =)

Karolina ordered a local beer instead of Coke, and also ordered a dessert. That woman can eat more than a platoon of men! I was only able to finish maybe 2/3rd of my dinner, and I hated the idea of wasting the part I couldn't finish, but Karolina the Vacuum Cleaner offered to finish it off for me and did just that. How...? That's all I wanted to know. How does so much food into into her stomach?

Dinner is served....

Anyhow, while waiting for our dinners to be prepared, the workers pointed me to an outlet where I could charge my devices and they poured out the horrible, ugly brown water we had been carrying and replaced with with several liters of pure, clean water. There was also a wi-fi connection, so I could get online and had gotten a reply back from Dilton Martian that he's working on getting a new water filter for us. Yes! Things were looking up!

A little after sunset, we had finished dinner, used the toilets (I even brushed my teeth in the bathroom so I didn't have to do that in camp later), and it was time to get going. The sun had technically already set by the time we left, but only by a few minutes and the sun descended so slowly, it was still surprisingly light out a half hour later when we arrived at the quarry and set up our campsite.

According to my GPS, we had covered 17.7 miles for the day--far more than we had ever imagined we'd do after our pathetic 11.8 and 10.6 miles respectively the previous two days. But it was late, and we were exhausted, and both of us basically hit the sack the second we laid down. We were exhausted!

Hiking after sunset has its advantages, such as this lovely view we saw just before setting up camp.

You'll find these monuments everywhere! Every high point seemed to have one, even when it wasn't a particularly noteworthy high point.

Every road crossing should have one of these. *nodding*

So many reservoirs....

From some of the high points today, we could still see the skyline of Manchester, but if I recall correctly, today was the last day we'd be able to see Manchester.

Inside of the White House