August 21, 1974: Horton-in-Ribblesdale to Hardrow

There was still a bit of hazy sunshine about as I arose for my third day on the Pennine Way. My knee remained a problem, I soon discovered, but, once again, only on descents. Although I realized that I had a long day ahead of me, I knew it lacked the dramatic rise and fall in elevation that had figured so prominently in the previous day’s trip. I had enough confidence, therefore, to begin my preparations for the march.

The hotel was locked and I had to complete most of my morning ablutions in the public conveniences next to the car park. Eventually I succeeded in getting the attention of the Crown’s kitchen staff, and they admitted me with just enough time to shave before breakfast. All of last evening’s diners had returned to their tables and I now realized that the four gentlemen who had lead yesterday’s assault on Fountains Fell were among the hotel guests as well. They proved to be related, in some way, to a Midlands university, and they were doing the entire Way as a part of their holiday. (A non-walking wife had the assignment on this day of ferrying their packs from Horton to Hawes by automobile.) I engaged one of these fellows in conversation in front of the hotel. Headmaster or retired major, I couldn’t decide which role befitted him best, but he was obviously the team leader of this expedition. I asked him how long they expected to take to reach Hawes. “As we used to say during the War,” he replied pompously, “the convoy is as fast as its slowest ship.” With this comment there came a brief but significant nod in the direction of the senior member of the party, a recently retired Dean of Education in shorts. I later spoke to this bespectacled gentleman as well. He told me that on an earlier stretch of the route he had become so enmired in peat that it had taken the combined strength of the other three to pull him out. Once again the anxiety alarm echoed in my soul. Perhaps one was not meant to walk the Pennine Way alone.

Before leaving the hotel I tried to obtain my packed lunch. I had checked this option on my accommodation reservation form but the staff didn’t want to know now. It was really my own fault for not having reminded them the night before, but perhaps I didn’t deserve the rocket sent my way by an outraged kitchen crone who retreated to the scullery to throw something together while delivering a loud monologue on the subject of this grave imposition. I paid up as quickly as possible and made my exit. Before throwing on the pack for good I retreated to the telephone kiosk and this time I was successful in reaching a London relative and it was especially pleasant to hear a friendly voice after my recent scolding. Cousin Bernard could hear the pips of the coin-gobbling telephone and quickly arranged to call me at my night’s lodging. All of this palaver delayed my departure. It wasn’t until 9:20 that I was able to begin my long trek along Harber Scar Lane, another walled track that continues for almost three northerly miles beneath the western flank of Penyghent.

I had not been gone for more than five minutes when the last of the day’s sun disappeared and a lowering grayness took its place. The walking was easy, though it was difficult for me to figure out how far I had come – and I was worried about a critical turnoff to the left. When I had the opportunity, I made enquiries of other walkers, but there were few of them about this Wednesday morning. A gentleman was instructing some kids in the use of semaphore. He was able to tell me how many more gates to count before leaving the lane. After I had been on the march for an hour I suddenly remembered that in paying my bill at the Crown I had not received credit for my deposit: too much change the day before at the Listers Arms, too little today.

When I got to the spot for the turnoff, the route was obvious on the ground after all; someone had even painted “PW” and an arrow on a rock. I was about to close the last gate when up behind me came the Midlands Four. I waited until they were through before fastening the latch and asked them if they minded if I followed them for a while. They had no objections, but as soon as we were over a little hill a brief descent to Old Ing farm began – and I had the greatest difficulty, because of my knee, in keeping up. To add to my discomfort, a fine mist began to fall. I disdained my rain cape at this stage, hoping that my anorak would resist this degree of moisture. All surfaces were soon clammy with wet.

We circled the farmyard and reached another walled lane. Just as I was getting into stride again the others stopped to have a look at a pothole, Calf Holes, on the other side of the right-hand wall. A geography professor, using his walking stick for balance, climbed up the slimy surface – employing a few projecting stone steps. As he dropped to the other side we heard a plaintive call for assistance, “I say, chaps, I’ve rather bashed my eye.” The rest of us were over this wall in a shot. The victim was squatting in agony, his hand covering his face, and his fingers had to be prized loose so that the damage could be assessed. He had slipped on the wet stone and fallen onto the end of his own walking staff! The bridge of his nose bore a reddening gash and his eye was already swelling shut. I offered the contents of my first aid kit, but only a cotton swab was needed to remove grit from the eye. A conference took place on what to do next. The others agreed that their friend needed to see a doctor, but it was more likely that one would be found in Hawes than in Horton. Therefore they decided not to return to the Crown but to press ahead to the more sizable village where, in any event, their knapsacks would be waiting for them. I began to repack, using an extra minute to put on my rain pants. Calf Holes was thundering away at our side, a mountain stream that plummets underground just at this point. The Dean held out his walking stick so that, by grasping it, I could lean over the rushing waters to get a drink.

We re-climbed the wall carefully and returned to our lane. The geography professor had pulled himself together magnificently and, as a sign that he did not intend to let his misfortune spoil the plans of the other walkers, he had agreed to take part in an expedition to visit Browgill Cave, just off the route and only a few minutes away – there they could see the re-emergence of the same stream that had disappeared at Calf Holes. I declined to undertake this extra journey but agreed to walk ahead and wait for the others at Ling Gill. In the meantime I asked if I could have a look at the guidebook which two of these chaps were clutching. It was obvious that the very existence of Calf Holes and Browgill Cave had come to the attention of this walking party through some source unknown to me. The others were very surprised that I was not using the book myself and the youngest member of the party agreed to loan me the volume in question for the short period it would take them to catch me up. In this way there came into my possession, if only briefly, one of the most unique and wonderful guidebooks known to the walking fraternity, A. Wainwright’s Pennine Way Companion.

I will have a number of occasions to refer to the work in question and surely my reaction to it today, and to many other publications by the same author, is based on repeated use and close scrutiny. In the few minutes it took my four companions to meet me at the ancient pack horse bridge at Ling Gill I certainly had too little time to appreciate the quintessentially cranky nature of Wainwright’s approach to guidebook writing: the guidebook as a catalogue of the author’s personal enthusiasms, obsessions and grievances. What I could see was just how useful a technique he had developed to keep the rambler from getting lost – long strip maps with graphic representation of all natural and man-made objects likely to present themselves to the orienteering walker: walls, fences, stiles, signposts, bridges, gates, all paths, tracks and roads encountered on route, information about the footing and the flora, contour elevations, hints of directions in ambiguous terrain, miles traveled from Edale, clues on what to see just off-route. A text at the side of each page offered a running commentary on the wider Pennine scene as well. It was obviously a note on p. 105, for instance, that had lead the four Midland friends to explore Calf Holes and Browgill Cave. Wainwright’s brief description of the wooded ravine of Ling Gill was sufficient to send me back over the route I had just come for views I had failed to look for on my initial approach.

Thereafter I knelt by the waters of Cam Beck and re-examined what Wainwright had to say about all those spots that had caused me such anxiety – today’s turnoff to Old Ing, yesterday’s moorland route to Dale Head Farm and the alternate Dry Valley route from Malham Cove (which Wainwright prefers to the official Way). I noted that even Monday’s problem, the one that had lead to my getting lost after Mile One of Day One on Horrows Hill, was anticipated – “beyond the plantation the Pennine Way is prevented from making a beeline from A to B (as it is supposed to do) by barbed wire fences. Instead aim for a gate in the wall (C) and continue alongside.” Accompanied by a map in which all these particulars were featured (and many more as well) such a text would have been my salvation. My little xeroxed copies of the Ordnance Survey maps in Stephenson had proved totally inadequate in all of these instances. To walk without Wainwright suddenly seemed an act of lunacy. Having reached this conclusion I yielded the copy I was using to its owner and fell into step behind the college foursome as they crossed the bridge and began their march up a wide track through a desolate moor.

I spoke for a while with the injured geographer. We talked about our research. He was interested in the history of exploration and astonished to discover that I had just written an article on so academically questionable a topic as British television programming. I must say that the activity in which we were engaged fit more aptly into his specialty than mine for our track coincided with an ancient route indeed. “Where you tread,” Wainwright says, “a Roman soldier once trod.” A few of them, I suppose, might have limped like me if they had felt the same compulsion to keep in step with this packless quartet. A portion of our road had received a coat of tarmac, for far ahead of us, disappearing into the mist, was a tiny red blur identified by the keenest-eyed among us as a Royal Mail van. What it was doing here I cannot say, unless it had just come up from making a delivery to Cam Houses, far below our crest in a valley on the right. Someone suggested a descent to this spot as a likely spot for some noontime shelter. This possibility was rejected by the others, to my great relief, for considering the behavior of my left knee on down grades there was no way I would have agreed to an additional unnecessary descent on this day. (Thirty years later, however, I spent a night at Cam Houses while walking the Dales Way.)

We left the road just before Cold Keld Gate, the traditional dividing line between the West and North Ridings of Yorkshire, and tried to find some lunchtime relief from a chill wind by nestling up against a boundary wall. I felt very uncomfortable sitting on the wet grass – munching a fish paste sandwich as the mist descended. Indeed I was certain my knee would stiffen to immobility if I didn’t keep moving so after only a few minutes on the ground I decided to press ahead alone. In this way the four walkers I was leaving behind might still be available to guide me through another worrying turnoff when they at last overtook me on the West Cam Road ahead. Wainwright was consulted and I was supplied with a verbal summary. Off I went on my own, taking a well-marked left-hand fork at Kidhow Gate and proceeding beneath Dodd Fell along a delightful wide grass path.

For nearly three miles I had the benefit of a surface almost as level and smooth as a golf green. No obstacle more profound than a puddle or a clump of thistles interfered with my progress and nothing broke my concentration on forging ahead – unless we count the momentary shock produced by some crying sheep, an almost human wail suddenly bursting out of the cloud. Occasionally there would be a moment’s clearing during which I could see into a deep remote valley on the left and there were even a few glints of a yellowish light that hinted at the possibility of sunlight. None arrived after all, but it was in one of the clearer patches that I neared my critical turnoff at the Ten End Peat Ground, the main track descending due north to the Ingleton-Hawes road – with the Pennine Way, only a path again, heading north-east over Ten End to Gayle. The former is in fact faster and better in a mist, according to Wainwright, but the official route was well trodden and it seemed to be getting fairer, so I began my ascent.

Two things happened almost immediately. The little elevation rise put me back in cloud and so there was mist after all. Also, at last, there came up behind me my four sometime companions, rather impressed by the progress I had made since our parting. Naturally I was soon trailing behind all of them except the Education dean, who even paused to take my picture before burying the camera in my pack for me – out of the moisture at last. As we circled Ted End the fog lifted and there was an absolutely breathtaking view of Wensleydale below, a huge checkerboard in yellows and greens, grey buildings and dry stone walls. The steep descent to Gaudy Lane was a torment for me and I must say I was grateful for the companionship of the dean, who fell behind his fellow walkers to stay with me. We discussed the issue of recruiting new faculty at our respective universities and this conversation helped pass this uncomfortable time wonderfully.

As we reached the first farmhouse he abandoned me at last, anxious to catch up with the rest of his party – now speeding toward Hawes and a doctor’s surgery. I was still able to use these fellows as a kind of scouting party, leading me through a complicated field system above the hamlet of Gayle, but when I reached the village itself I lost sight of them and had to ask a little boy how to continue. The last I saw of any of them came as I left the Gayle road. From the path behind the Hawes church the dean turned to wave to me. I returned the salutation and followed his footsteps down to the A64.

I chose not to investigate Hawes itself, one of the few towns of any size on the Pennine Way. It was early closing day and I wanted to press on to my hotel on the opposite flank of Wensleydale before running out of steam. My pace was nothing like that on West Cam Road, but I had mostly level ground to deal with as I crossed the bridge over the Ure and headed northwest through a series of fields. I lugged myself over the last stile and dodged the last cowpie at 4:40. I had walked sixteen miles in seven hours and twenty minutes, a speed that I have seldom equaled and one all the more surprising considering the physical disability under which I had labored. Perhaps the fact that I had been off my feet only once in this entire distance helped offset the knee factor.

The Green Dragon Hotel was a most welcome sight. I was suddenly transported from the raging breath of nature in its remote emptiness to the calm aura of refined civilization: new furnishings, bathroom en suite, telephone, even a television set in my room.  Renee and Rita Shay, the proprietors, made me welcome and assured me that, as a resident, I wouldn’t have to worry about licensing hours or pay the token fee charged for visits to Hardrow Force behind the hotel. I advised them that I expected a London call and asked them about the possibility of proceeding to my next stop by public transportation. When this did not seem promising I asked them if they had a room for the next night as well. It was obvious that I was already thinking of bringing this first Pennine excursion to an end. The loneliness, my concern about walking alone in environments full of peril, the route-finding anxieties in a world without Wainwright, the deterioration in the weather, my painful left knee ­­– everything seemed to conspire against a continuation of the project.

I was in for an additional shock. As I had the luxury of my own bathroom I now prepared myself for the pleasures of a long, hot soak. It was at last time for me to remove the tape I had applied in Malham, but when I did so I discovered that both little toes, encased in their adhesive shrouds, had suffered considerable abrasion, indeed one toe nail was bright red and the other black! In an attempt to ward off blisters I had allowed the toes so little breathing space that I had done in my toenails. Months later they simply peeled away: they were not painful at any time – but that first look at the mess was unexpected and dispiriting. Little wonder that when my mother-in-law called to express astonishment that I should have undertaken so bizarre an outing as a Pennine walk in the first place, and to enquire when I would be back in London in the second, I acknowledged my own failure and told her I would arrive in two days. My first Pennine expedition was over.

I wrote to all the landladies I had expected to visit on the rest of my walk and posted these cancellation announcements in time for the evening pickup. I drank a pint in the Green Dragon pub and listened disconsolately to the chatter of the local farmers sitting at the bar. This Yorkshire dialect was so strange to my American ears that I understood but one word in four. In an almost empty dining room I had a large choice of entrees and experimented with the grouse. Lucky I had practiced my surgical skills on the Crown Hotel’s fish – for I had just as protracted an operation to perform tonight, with just as little a reward (unless you count the odd piece of buckshot). In consolation I retired early to my bed. I did not rest well, walking again over every inch, it seemed, of the forty miles or so I had traveled since leaving Gargrave.

I spent the next day recovering from the rigors of the walk, ambling about the little village of Hardrow, visiting its church, walking behind the waterfall in a backyard amphitheater once favored by aerialists and brass bands. I even climbed to the top of the force and discovered, on my return, that my knee was remarkably improved. Perhaps I could have continued after all, perhaps I had panicked unnecessarily, given up when I should have pressed forward. It was even dry again, through grey. I was full of self-condemnation. In my new room I moped about for the rest of the afternoon, washing underwear in the bathtub. In the evening I watched Joseph Losey’s Accident on a television screen that had gone black at the edges.

On Friday morning I said goodbye to the Shay sisters and prepared to return to Hawes. A brief drizzle sent me back inside to put on my rain cape. Back through the meadows and over the Ure I marched in defeat and despair. As I walked along the little flagstone path into Hawes I met, much to my surprise, the Malham Tarn speed kings. Well at least I had beaten them to Hardrow. I smiled as though I were only returning to Hawes for a cup of breakfast tea, but when I reached the market place I boarded a bus and began a long journey through beautiful Wensleydale via Leyburn and Richmond; here I changed buses for Darlington and the train to London.

Ten days later I was back in the Pennines, spending the last few days of my English holiday visiting many of the sites which, in my unschooled ambition, I had expected to reach on foot. I had rented a car for this outing and it was by car that I first saw Thwaite and Keld in Swaledale, lonely Bowes on the A66, Hadrian’s Wall in Northumberland. I even returned to Hardrow and climbed to the spot I should have reached by noon on Day Four, Great Shunner Fell. I did this in a gale so strong that moisture melted the cover off the new copy of the Pennine Way Companion in my pocket.

On my last day in England I stood at Rapinshaw Gap on Hadrian’s Wall. I stared longingly to the north as the Way disappeared invitingly into the distant Kielder Forests. It was a brilliant late afternoon with high clouds in a bright blue sky. The Wall dipped in sinuous curves over the crags, small lakes sparkled in their green beds. After my great failure as a Pennine Way walker, after learning all those lessons about conditioning and route finding, I vowed that I would reach this spot some day – and not be car – and that I would leave this gap in the Wall and see what adventures I could find in the dark green northern horizon. Here it was that I decided that some day I would walk the entire Pennine Way.

To continue with the next stage of our walk you need:

Day 4: Hardrow to Keld