HRP ... and beyond: Peak District 2023

4 May 2023 16.2 miles, 32872 steps

This might be a long post .. I can't work out whether Thursday has been a triumph, or a disaster.. you decide.

One of my ambitions was to circumnavigate the Kinder plateau. If you keep to the top bit, it is about 14 miles around. Pfft, a bagatelle! I routinely walk further than that, and I have friends it seems who can walk 50! But we are forgetting a few things. The terrain on Kinder is not easy. Lots of picking your way over rocks, and through bogs (read on!) and no tarmac, gravel paths or similar here. And then there is the weather .. and you have to get up there, to 2,000ft or so, and get down again afterwards.

Still, surely nothing we can't cope with. I say we, because my friend Wayne Boothman came yesterday. We had a fine dinner in The Sportsman, as previously mentioned; and a nice breakfast this morning, courtesy of bacon and Cumberland sausage provided by Wayne, toast and coffee provided by me. And we did the walk together, today..

Things started perfectly well with a steady walk up to the Kinder reservoir, and then up William Clough as I did yesterday. It is a lovely ... clough. Picturesque, and no hardship at all to do it a second time. However when we got up to the Pennine Way, and then up that to the plateau, I discovered that it was a windy day. A really windy day. The sort of day when the wind batters at you, and walking in a straight line becomes an issue, because the gusts threaten to push you over.

We stood there for a moment deciding what to do, but what can you do? The sensible thing would have been to turn round, go straight back down the way we came, and head back to the Sportsman for a consoling beer. So obviously, not an option for us. What we did instead, as you might expect, was to carry on a bit, and see if things improved.

Well they didn't.

we ploughed on, but throughout the day, bar the occasional blissful gap, the wind howled around us. Wayne sailed serenely through, athletic, untroubled and although he said his legs ached, I wasn't convinced, but I found the constant battering from the wind quite draining and the going hard. We did cut off the far end of the Plateau, finding a route across the middle - interesting in itself, because peat bogs ... some folk say that the Pennine Way is not what it once was, because nowadays there are flagstones over (most of) the boggy bits. Well if the bogs we had to traverse today are any guide, they should be grateful for such a humanitarian act. Three times, I nearly lost a boot in the bog.. and had to prise my walking pole back out of the deep. We coped, but it cost time and effort, and rude words were said.

We had started at 8.30am, and finished about 7pm, so it was a long day. Still, we eventually wound our way back down the mountain and to the campsite. Annoyingly it rained heavily for the last hour or so; and by that time, I was thinking that Kinder was trying to say something to me. I was glad to get back to Larry the motorhome, and a nice glass of red.

I am writing this today, Friday, and it has been pretty wet all day. I am still trying to decide if I enjoyed it or not yesterday, and I am bound to conclude that yes, I did enjoy it. Wayne was a constant patient, friendly, and knowledgeable presence and if the Kinder plateau was not quite as welcoming as it sometimes is, still it is a wonderful place to be. If I were as fit as Wayne is, I would have enjoyed it more but that is my own fault and something that can be worked on.

Well, there you go. It was an interesting day, and I don't think walking 16 miles has ever before cost me quite so much effort. But as someone once said, a bad day in the mountains is still better than a good day in the office. I still love the Kinder Scout plateau.

One more thing about the day.. my friend Reg Edmunds, who I met in the Pyrenees in 2016 and have kept in touch with ever since, has been walking the Pennine Way, North to South so finishing at Edale. Reg is 78, has overcome a number of health issues including cancer, and is altogether a walking dynamo, and a truly wonderful example of what you can do, an example to anyone (me for example) who feels that age is creeping up on them. I am moving Larry to Crowden tomorrow, which is on the PW, and I had hopes of meeting him there and maybe walking a way with him. Unfortunately, he has been too quick for me! He has done the whole PW (for the third time, so he has caught me up now!) in only 15 days including a rest day, and has arrived today at Edale. Our route homewards actually crossed the PW, at about 6pm, and we were only a bare few minutes away from meeting Reg on the trail. Sadly, it was not to be, and the conditions did not allow for sitting about waiting. So close! Still, we had a nice chat on the phone and it turns out that Reg has a sister who lives near us, so we will meet up again before too long, I hope.

Not many photos! That sort of day:

Sheltering. That is wind gear I am wearing, not rain gear!