Another Long Walk: Day 4: The Hebden Bridge Detour

July 30, 2024: Woke up late, but that was by design given how late we had reached camp the evening before. I looked through the guidebook covering the day's hike and realized that there was a side trail that led to a small town called Hebden Bridge--and that the town even had an outfitters! Maybe I could pick up a water filter there?

Bridge near where we had camped

Plus, my guidebook actually had the words "we strongly advise that you" visit Hebden Bridge because it's such a nice and wonderful town. It was a little off trail and would add a couple of miles to the day's hike, but it sounded like a nice detour and well worth taking. Plus, we could even walk by Sylvia Plath's grave on the return walk as we passed through Heptonstall.

The first place of note we passed was Stoodley Pike, a giant monument celebrating the defeat of Napoleon. Construction started in 1814, but was put on pause after Napoleon escaped from Elba, raised his armies and overthrew the restored monarchy. After Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo, work continued and was completed by the end of 1815.

Stoodley Pike Monument

The tower collapsed in 1854 as the country was going to war again in Crimea, but was rebuilt. My guidebook says that "people say" that the tower wobbled a bit on the eve of the Falklands War in 1982, but I found that claim to have no merit. Why would it wobble for a relatively small and short war such as in the Falklands but not even a quiver at the breakout of WWI or WWII? It just defies credibility....

Anyhow, the monument is 120 feet tall (37 meters) and located at the top of a commanding viewpoint and made a nice place to stop and enjoy the views, take some photos and eat a few snacks.

Pushing onward, we eventually reached the junction for the side trail to Hebden Bridge and followed it into town where we found the outfitters but, alas, they had no water filters. Mission failed. =( Maybe I should have tried to call ahead first and saved us the effort of walking into town?

Anyhow, dejected, we decided to make the best of our stop in civilization by heading next door to a restaurant named Squeeze and ordered lunch, which included a couple of milkshakes because why not? We also refilled all of our water bottles--without the water filter, we needed to carry as much clean water as we could out of the town.

This time, "chips" meant potato chips, which I was a little disappointed with. I'd have preferred french fries! But the food was excellent. =)

The town was cute and very busy with tourists, almost annoyingly so. On our way out of town, we decided to stop to the local Co-op to pick up a few extra food items for the trail, but passed a hardware store called "Totally Screwed." I popped my head in and bought a bottle of methylated spirits--fuel for my alcohol stove. =)

I show off my bottle of methylated spirits after walking out of the "Totally Screwed" hardware store. =)

We actually had two options for getting back to the trail. The trail we followed into town looped out through Heptonstall (and Sylvia Plath's grave) reconnecting with the Pennine Way several miles after where we left it, but there was also a canal towpath along the Rochdale Canal which reconnected with the Pennine Way with an even smaller gap in the official Pennine Way route. Having experienced the joys of walking along canal towpaths from the C&O Canal hike I did years ago, I rather liked this idea. Plus the bonus of missing even less of the "official" Pennine Way. We'd miss maybe only a mile of the official Pennine Way path.

Of course, we could have just retraced our steps and not missed any of the Pennine Way, but we weren't that committed to the cause, and we both much preferred some sort of loop back to the trail to see different scenery on the way back!

So with that, we decided to follow the canal towpath back to the Pennine Way. It was flat. It was easy. It passed by locks along the way, and generally it was very nice and pleasant.

The canal towpath was flat and easy! Makes me wish I had a stroller to push my pack in again. =)

After reconnecting with the Pennine Way, however, the trail climbed a steep and overgrown path out of the valley bottom that had us sucking wind like a fish out of water. It was a relief when I reached the top and the trail leveled out again.

Pushing onward and eventually reaching May's Aladdin's Cave--so called by our guidebook--one of the last houses before reaching Heptonstall Moor. The shop had all sorts of food and drink options and had been opened shortly after the Pennine Way had been a designated a National Trail. It was one of those legendary places that every thru-hiker had to stop at.

We got some cold drinks, but we didn't really need any food--we'd been carrying plenty since leaving Manchester. With the pop-up restaurant yesterday at the highway crossing, dinner at the White House, lunch in town today.... we hadn't been eating anywhere near as much food as we had expected from our packs. So for dinner, we ate out of our packs. But cold drinks were always welcome. =)

May also allowed hikers to camp for free (for one night only!) in a small field behind the store. We didn't plan to use that perk--we wanted to get in more miles and wild camp further down the trail. But we wound up chatting with a group of mountain bikers in front of the store for well over an hour and by the time they left, it was late enough that we figured that we may as well camp there.

About the same time, another hiker arrived--the first thru-hiker we had actually met on the trail. There were tons of day hikers along certain areas, but surprisingly, we had seen almost no other long-distance hikers except when we got off the train in Edale. There was one I noticed at the White House who filled up with water then pushed onward, but they never stopped to chat.

May's Alladin's Cave had everything a hiker could need: food, water, toilets and even a place to camp!

I suspected there were other thru-hikers around, but they were staying in hotels or B&Bs along the way. It's entirely possible to thru-hike this trail not doing any camping at all, but you definitely have to make reservations for hotels and B&Bs ahead of time and then you're committed to those distances every day, rain or shine or injury or whatever. By wild camping, we were much more flexible about how far we could go each day. Of course, our packs were also heavier with all the camping gear.

We were in prime thru-hiking season, and the Pennine Way is one of those legendary trails in England. It's like their version of the Appalachian Trail in the US. The first national trail, the first really long-distance trail of England. Where were all the other hikers, though? Maybe they were always in towns each night while we always camped between them so we just didn't see them?

So anyhow, this was the first fellow thru-hiker we ended up meeting. I mentioned something about that--where are all the other hikers? He said that they are around, and he keeps in touch with them on the Pennine Way Facebook page, which has 12,000 members. I somehow doubted that there were 12,000 people currently thru-hiking the trail right then, but he gushed about how wonderful the group was, how helpful everyone there is, and pretty much anyone who's anyone is a member of it.

I'm glad he had a bunch of Facebook friends if that's what made him happy, but my idea of chatting with other hikers wasn't talking to them through Facebook.

I overheard the other hiker telling May that he had hiked over 20 miles today--almost double what we had done--and that today was only his second day on the trail, and that he was one day ahead of where he was when he did it last year.

It seemed like we were hiking two entirely different trails. We wanted to take our time and explore the area, while he was racing through trying to be done with it as quickly as possible. That was fine--hike your own hike and all--but that definitely wasn't my type of hiking. When he found out that this was my fourth day on the trail, he seemed to look like we weren't worthy of being on the trail. Between our slow pace and not being a members of the Pennine Way Facebook group, he looked at us like we didn't even deserve to be called hikers. I suspected he was probably trying to guess where we would quit the trail, certain that we would never finish.

We left and set up camp behind the store in the nearby field rather than sit around chatting with him any more. Neither of us found him particularly likeable or interesting. We had actually enjoyed chatting with the group of mountain bikers much more even though they weren't doing the Pennine Way at all!

And thus ended another day on the trail. The sun set, and we settled in to sleep.