omens were not good that afternoon. The long and winding path made its way over a sandy depression and up into the mist, then it started raining again. There was absolutely nothing to see – no views, no wildlife, no people. Bleaklow Head looked like something out of a 1970s horror film; if a lumbering creature had emerged from behind a rock or jumped out of a swampy hole, I wouldn’t have been surprised. The summit was marked by a pile of stones with a long pole crudely sticking out of its top, as though someone had been hastily buried on a battlefield. I think it was more by luck than by judgement that I found my way off the top of the hill. I bumped into a father and his dejected-looking son, who were also trying to escape, and as we exchanged pleasantries it began to really bucket down. When the austere grey shapes of Longdendale emerged from the gloom below, I was relieved. Day 1 on the Pennine Way wasn’t meant to be like this, but at least it was almost over.
A couple of hours later, in dry clothes and with a hot cup of tea clasped in my hands, I sat chatting to my B&B hosts at the Old House above Rhodeswood Reservoir. With the closure of Crowden Youth Hostel to individuals a few years ago (group bookings only now), their establishment is one of the few options left for Pennine Way walkers looking for a roof over their head in this sparsely populated valley. For 17 years, Joanne and her husband James have run a mix of guest house, bunkhouse and café rolled into one, with Pennine Way walkers making up 90 per cent of their overnight customers. So, bearing in mind that they’re at the end of most people’s first day from Edale, what state are most walkers in when they cross their threshold? Do they get many people wanting to give up? ‘Yes, there’s some that tell us they’ve had enough,’ replied James. ‘They say “I can’t do another 260 miles of that”, but I tell them you’ve walked 15 miles from Edale today, then it’s 12 miles to Standedge tomorrow – take it each day at a time, it gets much easier!’ He paused for a moment and lowered his voice. ‘Of course it doesn’t, really, but you have to encourage them.’
Even for those that have reached Crowden without mishap, the end of day 1 is a time for reappraising your kit list, as James knows only too well. ‘The weight of your pack is absolutely vital and people tend to set off carrying far too much. We have literally bin bags full of gear that walkers have left here, including tents, sleeping bags, clothes, camping stoves – you name it. I make them put their names on the bags and say if they don’t come back and claim them by the end of the year they’re all going to the charity shops in Glossop.’
Then there are those walkers who, to put it mildly, have drastically underestimated the Pennine Way. ‘There was the American man who set off from Edale in patent leather shoes. He made it as far as the Snake Pass but chartered a taxi the rest of the way to us,’ said James. ‘Another Pennine Way walker who was booked in for the night rang me on his mobile and said he was lost. I asked him to describe the view, what he could see, so I could try and work out where he was. He said he couldn’t see anything because he was in a wood. I was a bit puzzled, but I supposed he was already down among the trees of Longdendale. It turned out he had got completely disorientated on Bleaklow and had ended up walking in the opposite direction back into the Ashop valley. He still made it to us, mind you, and carried on the next morning.’
Of course, plenty of Pennine Way walkers have no problems on the opening day – Kinder Scout and Bleaklow in favourable conditions offer invigorating walking – and indeed, some particularly fit and determined individuals stride on well beyond Crowden. But, James confided, what really riles him are the walkers who have an unrealistic expectation of the Pennine Way and complain that the trail is not properly maintained. ‘They imagine the Pennine Way is a clearly defined, well-walked trail and so they moan when they find there aren’t signposts all over Bleaklow showing them where to go. They seem to expect a surfaced path the whole length, so they won’t get lost. One party who got lost blamed it on the fact that the trail of orange peel they were following just stopped in the middle of the moor. Lots of people don’t seem to be able to read a map properly or use a compass, even though they’re often carrying them!’
James looked ruefully out of the window at the late afternoon drizzle and shook his head. ‘They read some online diary of a bloke who’s yomped it over from Edale in five hours and then are surprised when it takes them over eight and they’re utterly exhausted.’
My conversation with James was given added poignancy by the arrival of two other Pennine Way guests that night. They traipsed in wearily and wetly some time after 7pm, having taken the best part of nine hours to cover the 15 miles from Edale. Both in their 60s and evidently ill-equipped for a long-distance walk, the two men had got lost on Bleaklow and had walked half way to Glossop before working out where they were.
Later on, in the pub at Padfield, I gently tried to coax more of their story out of them. How, for instance, had they been navigating? It turned out that one had been using a mapping program on a small hand-held electronic device. Some sort of GPS? No, just a free download from a website; but the rain had got into it and apparently the thing hadn’t loaded properly anyway. What about a guidebook? Surely they had a Pennine Way guidebook between them? The second man fished a small, rather soggy hardback volume out of his pocket and passed it to me. It was Wainwright’s Pennine Way Companion, the once popular if somewhat idiosyncratic guide to the trail written by the famous fellwanderer just three years after the trail was officially opened. Since the 1990s, the book had been revised several times to take account of route changes, new paved sections and so on. I flicked to the front to check which of the recent versions they were using and was astounded to see that it was an original copy, published in 1968. They had been navigating using out-of-date maps and an uncorrected route description that was almost as old as me. I didn’t see them at breakfast the next day and learnt later that they had given up that morning.
It is very easy to chuckle at people who set out in the wrong footwear, or to disapprove of those who can’t use a compass properly and who get hopelessly lost on the moors, but at some point or other most of us have been out of our comfort zone in the great outdoors. Arguably, the only way to achieve and develop as an individual is to push yourself to the very edge and test the limit of your ability. For me, it’s summed up by a slogan that used to adorn the front cover of the Sheffield Clarion Ramblers magazine: ‘The man who never was lost, never went very far’.
Of the many Pennine Way guidebooks and articles I dipped into before I embarked on my own walk, one of the most thought-provoking was a short piece by Dr A Smith and Mr M Imrie in the 1985 Pennine Way Booking Bureau booklet, published by the Youth Hostels Association (YHA). The two men had successfully completed the Pennine Way in 1984, but both were interested in the effect that it had on their bodies and minds, even though one was already a marathon runner. The back story lay partly in the fact that YHA wardens along the Pennine Way were concerned about the number of walkers who didn’t complete the trail because they were fundamentally ill-equipped and ill-prepared. At the time, it was claimed that around a third of walkers attempting the Pennine Way, or at least a third of those staying in youth hostels, gave up, a figure that showed no sign of improving. (A report by the Pennine Way Management Project in 1991 went even further: ‘Unsubstantiated opinion suggests a drop-out rate of 70 per cent at the end of the second day, around Standedge to Mankinholes, this massive defeat being the result of exertions on the first two most strenuous and demanding days of the entire expedition.’)
In their fascinating and thoughtful article, called ‘How to complete the Pennine Way’, the two scientists said that amid all the advice on what boots or equipment a prospective Pennine Way walker needed, there was virtually nothing on the main reason for walkers giving up – ‘body chemistry’. The article explained how the first few days on the Pennine Way prove an enormous shock to the system for most people. ‘The normal store of muscle glycogen and free blood sugar is used up, giving rise to hypoglycaemia (shortage of blood sugar),’ they explained. They went on say that despite the consumption of sweets and energy bars the body will start to access its fat store, but unless you are a regular athlete this turning of fat into sucrose will be a slow and inefficient process to start with. ‘You will feel hungry, tired and depressed due to a low blood sugar level. The conversion of food into mechanical energy is inefficient, the majority turning into heat. The body then counters heat by sweating. Sweat is a mixture of water and body salts, mainly sodium chloride. Loss of body liquids and salts can result in partial dehydration