Journal:
It turned out
I was the only person staying at the hotel and, I
suspect, there was no-one else there at all last
night. The same surly cook from last night,
even more surly for having to get in to cook
breakfast for a lone resident at 8am, got me some
breakfast and I left at 9am with the idea of
reaching Marsden for the night, without knowing
exactly how far it was. I was guessing 30km,
leaving me about 20km tomorrow to get to Hebden
Bridge to early enough to pick up my mailed maps,
find somewhere to stay, and meet Keith at the
station.
The early walking was easy
on a cool overcast morning, firstly across some low
moors (sheep and lambs everywhere as usual) and then
along a rail trail which was also the Trans-Pennine
Way. It was a Bank Holiday Monday and there
were a few walkers and cyclists about. The
scenery was pleasant, without being spectacular, but
I could tell I was heading towards some big hills.
I passed Dunford Bridge
around 10:30am and then climbed to cross the wall of
the Winscar Reservoir which had numerous warnings
about hypothermia (no chance of me going for a
swim), before gradually climbing into the Pennines.
The grades weren't too onerous and, as I got higher,
had views in many directions of stone-walled hill
farms rising steeply from valley floors up the sides
of huge hills with moorland on top. Here and
there a village could be seen as well as some larger
towns in the distance.
I enjoyed the pretty
scenery and relatively easy walking, reaching the
village of Holme about 12:30pm and finding the pub
for lunch. As often happens, several people
came up to me in the pub and asked me where I was
walking to and were pleasantly inquisitive.
The pub was doing a roaring trade with lots of
tourists including quite a number of walkers.
From there, my route
climbed even higher into the Pennines along some
really nice tracks, giving good views all round.
I think there must have been some kind of event on
because a number of small groups of walkers, some
unfit, some with kids who'd obviously had enough,
were coming in the opposite direction.
At the crest of yet
another big hill, my route joined the Pennine Way
for a short distance. I'm going to be seeing a
lot of it in the next two weeks. A couple of
kilometres later, my route diverged to follow and
old aqueduct high along the side of a reservoir for
an hour. It was spectacular, if a little
narrow and steep-sided in places. Near the
end, I met a mountain-biker coming the other way.
I commented that he was more daring than me, and he
replied that he would be taking it easy and had done
it before (my heart would have been in my mouth for
some parts). Anyway, when I arrived down in
Marsden an hour later looking for a hotel, he rode
towards me up the street and gave me a thumbs up.
The descent from the
aqueduct to Marsden was long and fairly steep and my
left little toe and right knee were complaining by
the time I reached the bottom of this medium-sized
industrial town (I passed a big derelict mill on the
way in). I passed a hotel which looked a bit
pricey but couldn't find anything else in the town
centre, so checked in and confirmed it was pricey.
The room is nice and, for
a change, my internet bandwidth seems to be good so
I took the opportunity to add my daily walking GPS
maps to all of my previous days' hiking. You
can see them for the individual days
here, and I hope to add a map to this journal
page each day for the balance of the trip.