THE PENNINE WAY STRETCHES FROM DERBYSHIRE TO SCOTLAND
NATIONAL
TRAIL GUIDES UK
INTRODUCTION
One fine spring day, whilst on holiday in the Derbyshire Pennines
with my family, I decided to run the Pennine Way. It
was not a definite commitment but more a careless expression
of desire made without first thinking it through. I am
an ardent squash player and a countryside rambler but never
a runner. The desire was vocalised to my wife, and being
a goal-orientated person that desire was later penned.
This is the story of how I ran 276 miles, the length of the
Pennine Way, first in weekend sections starting from Edale
and working up to Kirk Yetholm, and then again, all at once,
from Kirk Yetholm to Edale, accompanied by my sister for the
first 8 days (almost one-half of the journey) and completing
the rest of the run alone.
In the early stages the amount of planning and physical preparation
had not been remotely imagined; had it been, the run would
almost certainly have never taken place. “Line
upon line, precept upon precept” is the way this goal
was achieved. Each time it was reviewed it was more
carefully refined and added to, and eventually the enormity
of it all struck home, but it was by then too late to change my mind; I
was hooked.
My
sister, Carol, was unaware of my preparations for more
than 6 months after they had begun, although she had been
running regularly each week where she lives in
Oxford (a considerable distance from the Pennines).
As soon as she found
out that I was looking for a partner to run with she jumped
at the opportunity, rather rashly if I may say so, but
then my own decision to run was just as rash. Perhaps it
is in the genes
Preparations began. It
was spring 1997 and a 16-month plan was made. This
was to include running the whole of the Pennine Way in
sections so that I would be familiar with the route and
be aware of any possible snags – particularly
with route finding, and also to acclimatise myself to long
distance running. I
would run, whatever the weather, all year round and would
be certain to experience every type of weather that I could
experience on the main run.
The
Author on King Commons Rough
The
purchase of Pennine Way maps and guides and more detailed Ordnance
Survey maps was also required, together with the correct running
clothes and equipment. In this respect I was not very
informed but thanks to several friends who went out of their
way to advise me, notably Nick Lindesay and John Ryder Jones,
themselves ardent long-distance runners, I was soon put on
the right track.
I was further encouraged
after reading a book kindly donated to me by Nick, a biography
written by his brother William who had run the Great Wall of
China – a staggering 2,500 miles or thereabouts, just
9 years earlier ( William Lindesay – Alone on the Great
Wall [Hodder & Stoughton 1989).
Many, many times while out
running, even during the earlier months of 1998 I doubted my
ability to complete the run, which had been planned for the
first 3 weeks of August 1998. I was concerned for my
sister, who was then recovering from a minor knee injury – if
anything would exacerbate such an injury it would be running
in the Pennines.
I soon discovered that running
in the Pennines was not like running on roads, not even steep
roads. The cloying, deep mud made balancing an arduous
exercise especially when running downhill. The green ways,
with their deep but narrow ruts were difficult to negotiate
and seemed to exercise parts of the legs that orthodox running
never did; the bogs were often a nightmare to traverse and
the sheer steepness of some of the mountains made running very
difficult and discouraging.
But there were also less
difficult runs and the staggering beauty and splendour of the
scenery in the Pennines more than made up for the difficult
times.
The majority of the preparatory
runs were run in the direction of Kirk Yetholm in Scotland (the northernmost
point), at first in sequence, but as time progressed the runs
became more and more out of sequence. Several
of the preparatory runs were run twice as the first time around
they were run in the drought of 1997. It soon became
obvious that there would be no recurrence of a drought in 1998
and I thought it necessary to run some of the wetter areas
in mist and rain. The main run was to be run from
Kirk Yetholm to Edale so that I would be running in the direction
of my home.
I attempted to find books
written by others who had run the Pennine Way but I could not
discover them. It was after the frustrations of trying
to find such a book that I decided to write this one. I
had also become increasingly aware that the guides and maps
I had seen did not contain sufficient photographs of the actual
route and that people in my position would desire a more generous
store of them. I concluded that this book would contain
many, many photographs of the Pennine Way. I also decided
that my book would double up as a guide book for future runners
and walkers of the Pennine Way and that I would provide detail
of footpath junctions and ground conditions.
