Important Info

Planned kilometres: 24 (cummulative 837)

Kilometres walked: 24 (cummulative 893)

% Completed (based on 1800km trip): 49.6%

Weather: Sunny

Pubs visited: The Crown, The Golden Lion

Pints: 4 (cummulative 113)

Kms per pint: 7.9

Blisters: 0 (cummulative 4)

 

Malham to Horton in Ribblesdale

I have a Sherpa service starting today, so my backpack gets picked up from my accommodation each morning and delivered to the next nights accommodation. It is going to be such a relief not having to carry a15kg backpack and only having to carry a daypack with food, water & wet weather gear. Today I changed to my second pair of boots that I picked in Manchester as the first pair are starting to run out of tread after almost 900kms.

 

Yesterday I asked a question of the engineers regarding why there were double arches on a canal bridge. The correct answers came from Greg A (Christchurch) – they were walking the length of the UK while drinking and thought it would be funny….

 

The start today was walking out of town to Malham Cove to repeat my short tourist trip from yesterday, however today requires continuing and climbing the stairs/path to the top of Malham Tarn. The climb certainly got the heart rate up however at the top there were spectacular views of Malham area and it was the start of a great walk through lots of limestone.

Well it was the start of a great walk when I found the trail after getting slightly lost. After I climbed to the top of Malham Tarn, I saw the trail continue up another hill above the escarpment (not the surprise I needed as I struggled for breath), so I continued the next trail and got to the top of the hill and then had quick rest to review the map only to find out I was on the wrong trail. It was then back down the hill to walk along the side of the escarpment to get onto the correct trail – The Pennine Way. A bit of extra cardio never hurts first up in the morning when you’ve got 26km to walk through hills for the day.

The start of the walk through lots of limestone was great and the trail went up and down through some impressive scenery.

After getting through the limestone rocks, the walk came onto a lake and this was a nice easy section as you walk around along the foreshore road for half the lake to re-join the Pennine Way.

It was then to Fountains Fell which is a sustained climb over very large hill, which seemed to go on and on. It is very desolate and exposed area and I think I only passed 2 farms and saw no other walkers.

 

There was no mobile phone except in one spot when I was climbing over a large rock style and just as I was standing on top of the wall, the phone beeped with a couple of messages. I climbed down the other side of the style and immediately lost reception, so I climbed back up the wall and stood on top for a few minutes reading and responding to the messages.

 

I pushed on to the top of the hull where I decided that to have my lunch spot with a view over the valley and Pen-Y-Ghent (side trip for those that want to do a second big climb of the day). Not a bad view for a lunch stop and after lunch it was a long ascent down.

The Pennine way continued onto Pen-Y-Ghent and I had already been advised to look for the side pathway just before the climb as that was the walkway to Horton.

As I was stopping to take photos and look at the map, another walking came by and he was heading to Horton also. Mike from Cambridge was doing a week-long walk on the Pennines and was also heading into Horton, so we walked and chatted for the rest of the trip into Horton.

 

Horton is a very small place and after checking into The Crown pub which was my accommodation for tonight, I decided to walk the 5 minutes to the other end of town and have a beer at the Golden Lion. There were two reasons I did this

1. No Wi-fi or mobile phone reception at The Crown, so I thought I would update blog at the Golden Lion who had sign outside saying Free Wi-Fi
2. The main reason was that the only lager that the Crown had on tap was Fosters, so I thought that the Golden Lion couldn’t be worse. Well the Golden Lion had Carling and Coors on tap, so not great choices. I don’t like Carling, so I sat in an English pub drinking American beer.

While I was having a beer and doing my blog, Mike turned up in the pub, so I had a couple of beers with and dinner with him before calling it a night at 9pm (must be all this fresh air tiring me out)