Nice pub and helpful people, shame about the dismal weather!

The next morning dawned grey, cold and dreary and although it had stopped raining for the moment the clouds looked ominous. We packed up our wet tents and prepared to move off at a relatively leisurely pace as we needed to call at May’s Aladdin’s Cave to get provisions for the day so we couldn’t start too early. Although housed in a low out-building by a farmhouse it’s essentially the village corner shop and every wall is stuffed from floor to ceiling with everything you could possibly need. We got freshly made sandwiches and a choice from a wide selection of cakes for lunch along with meat pies for breakfast, drinks, tissues, lip balm and a couple of Mars Bars. We ate our breakfast walking through the village to rejoin the Pennine Way and were mildly surprised when a car quietly caught us up and the grinning lady driver waited patiently for us to get out of the middle of the road – it was only day 4 and already we were forgetting about roads and traffic!

The first three days had been manageable as far as the weather was concerned but I had developed some quite unpleasant blisters on my heels from having constantly wet feet thanks to my leaky boots. In view of the rapidly gathering dark clouds I was beginning to feel the need for a night indoors to patch my feet up and get our clothes washed and dried out and was pleased when Mel agreed. I’d stayed in a very good B&B in Cowling on my previous Pennine Way attempt so we dug their number out from the guide and were relieved to find they had a twin room available.

Looking back from Heptonstall Moor towards Stoodley Pike. It would be visible straight ahead on a clear day 

We’d hardly left the village and set out across the moors when it began to rain again, not too heavily at first but steadily increasing along with the wind speed until we were struggling to walk in a straight line and our faces were stinging from the high speed horizontal raindrops constantly battering us.

Heptonstall Moor doesn’t offer any shelter from high speed horizontal rain!

The ground was ok for the most part and there were good stretches of slabs across the worst bits but it was getting slippery and there were frequent spells of sleet and hail accompanying the rain to make the experience that bit more difficult.

The lower of the two Gorple Reservoirs at the end of Heptonstall Moor. I had to put my camera away after this photo as the weather suddenly got much worse.

Heptonstall Moor came and went in an unrelenting, determined slog, then the Walshaw Dean Reservoirs and Wadsworth Moor and eventually Withins Height and Haworth Moor. My eyes were so firmly focussed on the worsening path just ahead of my feet that we were barely a hundred yards from Top Withins ruin when I suddenly glanced up and saw it there. We hurried inside the roofless shell hoping for enough shelter to allow us to at least stand and eat our sandwiches but it was not to be. The rain was still falling and the cold wind still blowing through the gaps in the walls so we just took a long enough break for a Mars Bar then launched ourselves back on to the path. The gale force wind knocked us sideways before we caught our balance and once more resumed the head-down battle across the remainder of the moor.

It was much less fierce once off the high ground and we were able to walk with our hoods down for a while as we passed Ponden reservoir and followed the road back up towards Ickornshaw Moor. The weather actually stayed slightly easier from then on apart from one brief sleet and hail storm but the ground was terrible all the way to the final slopes down to Ickornshaw village. Virtually all paths were under flowing water and many of the stone slabs were treacherously slippery. The ground either side of the paths was also rapidly flooding – it’s obviously normally boggy there anyway without that sort of weather. Our B&B host made the point later on that there would be huge numbers of grouse and other ground nesting birds up there facing total wipe-out thanks to this unusually harsh spring weather. We’d had a pretty rough day all in all, we were tired and chilled and ready for some food and our feet were soaked again but in the grand scheme of things our problems were pretty trivial and soon sorted.

Down off the moors near Ickornshaw the rain had finally stopped but the streams were very swollen

Typically the rain stopped as we descended to the A6068 and walked the half mile along the busy road to the outskirts of Cowling. Susan and Sandy Black, proprietors of the Woodland House B&B were the perfect antidote to the day, calmly welcoming us in, all smiles as we removed our sodden gear and deposited it in piles on the newspapers and towels spread out ready in their conservatory. Five minutes later we were sitting in their dining room warming up and chatting over tea and scones. If two muddy, dripping backpackers turned up at my house I’d struggle to contain the damage but the Blacks are keen and experienced walkers themselves and it shows – they know exactly what you need after a rough day on the hills and seem to provide it effortlessly – they even found space in their cellar drying room to dry our two soggy tents! We had a takeaway delivered that evening as we’d no desire to put our wet boots back on and go out again. Shortly after that we retired to our beds and soon dozed off to the all too familiar sound of the rain – but this time against the outside of a window.

Day 3 | Menu | Day 5