Pennine Way on Ice

Well, I have now thawed out enough to write the blog for my latest day on the Pennine Way. Finn and I spent a week in Yorkshire in January with our friends Shiriin and Galey, and Maria. Quite why we decided to go and spend a week in north Yorkshire during the coldest winter in thirty years is beyond me. But go to Yorkshire we did.

We did a number of circular walks during the week – mostly in ice, snow and mud – around Swaledale – Gunnerside, Richmond, Barnard Castle, Reeth and Grinton – but Finn and I decided to be antisocial one day and take ourselves off for a Pennine Way jaunt, while Maria went and did some forest walking to collect pine cones for the cottage fire.

We drove from our cottage just outside Richmond the twenty odd miles to Middleton in Teesdale where I went to the local MOT garage to book our places on the minibus back from Langdon Beck later in the day – how very civilised! Once we’d got the admin done, we were free to spend the whole day if necessary walking the eight miles to our destination.

The path was very muddy on the low level and very icy on the higher level – we walked alongside the Tees all day practically, past a few waterfalls – most notably Low Force and High Force – to head steadily uphill towards Langdon. The sound of the waterfalls was very evident before we could see them – the sound was deafening at High Force, due to all the extra water because of the thawing snow.

As we headed away from the river and uphill, the path became very hazardous, although Finn loved rolling in all the ice and snow. I had to haul him out of a couple of snowdrifts where he fell in – sadly he couldn’t do the same for me, I had to extricate myself on my own! The really tricky bit was having to come down off the hills towards the road and Langdon – the path was basically in a gully which had become really muddy and of course I fell over and ended up on my bum, which has quite a lot of padding so it wasn’t too bad. However, when I then fell forwards onto my knees on ice and a cattle grid, there were definitely tears then, and dizziness and I saw stars. Time to call it a day.

So, we headed out to the road to wait for our bus – the cloud was really low at this time and it was freezing. The bus was on time and Finn immediately jumped up onto the seat but the lady bus driver wasn’t too bothered. Apparently that’s what “all sheepdogs do”. Hmmmm. It wasn’t long though before he got on the floor which was very warm and fell asleep, so the journey back to Middleton was punctuated by some very gentle snoring down by my feet! Sadly, I have no photos as evidence of our day though as my camera froze (and still hasn’t thawed out, three weeks later!)

A good day – despite the cold – but it makes life a bit easier later in the year when I’m due to come back and do the next bit. Roll on May …..