2017 – UK – “Pennine Way Part 1”

Walking from Edale to Middleton in Teesdale

The Pennine Way  

The Pennine Way was Britain’s first national trail. It was devised from the 1930’s onwards and finally officially opened in 1965. It follows a high route along the Pennines from the Peak District in Derbyshire to reach the Scottish border at Kirk Yetholm in the Cheviot Hills.

According to the official guide book the Pennine Way is 256 miles (412km) long. But this total doesn’t include the various diversions that are necessary to access accommodation and transportation.

Known as the toughest trail in Britain, the Pennine Way presents various challenges to the would-be walker but also offers a real sense of achievement to those who manage to complete it.

The Plan

Fresh from finishing the Coast-to-Coast walk in May 2016, and ready for a new challenge, I started to consider the Pennine Way for the next big adventure. I purchased the official National Trail Guide (Damian Hall – Aurum Press £14.99) and started to formulate basic ideas.

As the guide suggested taking a minimum of 16 days to cover the whole route it was immediately obvious that it would not be practical to tackle it all in one go. Even breaking it into 2 x 8-day sections would effectively mean organising 2 full 10-day holidays. This would be quite a heavy time commitment. An added problem was that the Sherpa baggage lifting service did not operate on the southern part of the route and that would mean carrying full kit over the first 5 days / 75 miles.

I started to consider a plan to divide up the route.

I decided early on to at least aim to complete the final 7 or 8 walking days from Middleton to Kirk Yetholm in one go. I assumed that it might make sense to use Sherpa to carry the bags along this section. I pencilled that in for late spring 2018.

That was part 2 potentially sorted,  but what to do about Part 1?

Other commitments before 2018 meant that we would struggle to dedicate more than 3 walking days at a time to the venture. I therefore decided to split the route from Edale to Middleton into 4 sub-sections and try to complete them all by the end of 2017.

The good news was that these southern sections were close enough to home to keep the travel to and fro to a minimum. For 3 of them it would be possible to finish the day’s walk and make it back home that same evening. The shorter sections would also mean less weight to carry.

I decided that the first 3 day walk (42 miles) would be accomplished by travelling out to Edale and back from Hebden Bridge. The second 3 days (33 miles) could be accomplished by returning to Hebden Bridge and travelling back from Malham. A third trip of 2 days would see us getting as far as Hawes, whilst a final 2 day stint would finally get us into Middleton.

The idea was to complete one of the sections in 2016 and the other three in 2017.

The first one was organised for the last weekend in July of 2016.

Thursday, 28^th July 2016 –   Edale

We journeyed up to Edale by train, changing at Sheffield en route. We arrived in the late afternoon just as it was beginning to rain! An ominous sign!

 

Trip 1

Trip 2

Trip 3

Trip 4

Pennine Way – Mileage Chart  

Part 1

Day	Culm	Date	Start	End	Railhead or Access	Ascent	Descent	Miles	Miles
1	1	29/07/16	Edale	Crowden	Edale	2430	2560	16	16
2	2	30/07/16	Crowden	Standedge		2165	1575	11	27
3	3	31/07/16	Standedge	Calder	Hebden Bridge	1150	2100	15	42
1	4	27/05/17	Calder	Ickornshaw	Hebden Bridge	2885	2490	16	58
2	5	28/05/17	Ickornshaw	Gargrave	Ickornshaw	2360	1970	11	69
3	6	29/05/17	Gargrave	Malham	Gargrave			6	75
1	7	01/07/17	Malham	Horton	Skipton	2660	2560	14.5	89.5
2	8	02/07/17	Horton	Hawes	Garsdale	1760	1727	14	103.5
1	9	30/07/17	Hawes	Tan hill	Garsdale	3005	2346	16.5	120
2	10	31/07/17	Tan hill	Middleton	Darlington	1614	2280	17	137

Part 2 (Plan Only / May 2018)

1	11		Middleton	Dufton	Darlington	1837	2001	21
2	12		Dufton	Alston		3410	3085	20
3	13		Alston	Greenhead		1770	2295	16.5
4	14		Greenhead	Once Brewed		3051	3117	6
5	15		Once Brewed	Bellingham				16
6	16		Bellingham	Byrness		1814	1470	15
7	17		Byrness	Windy Gyle		2618	1591	14
8	18		Windy Gyle	Kirk Yetholm	Tweedbank	2411	3838	13

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