On a very cold Saturday morning
in the middle of January, with the sun yet to rise, Claudia, Em, Phil, Sophie
and Mike met in a car park in Edale (which was far too full given the
temperature and time!), to embark upon their first training walk for Trailwalker
2012. With sub-zero temperatures, and a measly 8 hours of sunlight ahead of
us, we set off....
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To say that Claudia had been
ambitious in her planning of our first walk together could perhaps be a slight
understatement. We were walking the Kinder Edges, (what should have been) a 29km circular route,
round the Kinder Scout Peak in the Peak District. Had temperature and sunlight
been on our side it wouldn’t have seemed nearly as daunting, but spurred on by
Claudia's enthusiasm & careful planning, we decided that yes, it would be
tough, but we could do it and that it was important that we had a decent walk
to tackle given that we couldn't meet up that often. So, undeterred by reports of freezing
fog we packed our bags, donned our long johns and collection of
ridiculous hats and went walking.
The sunrise and frost made a
beautiful backdrop as we started on our way. Claudia got distracted by the sheep, Soph by
her new walking stick (named Nigel), and I enjoyed the fact that my new walking
trousers had multi-sectioned pockets. Phil did her best to keep us upright,
keeping her eye to the path on ice watch and we (the angels) decided Mike was
definitely our very own Charlie. Everyone was in high spirits and looking
forward to the day ahead. Somehow, amid
the excitement, we missed the first turning to begin our accent. Damn.
As we were on a tight schedule to
complete the walk in daylight, we decided to find another route up. Straight up
the side of the hill. Wow. Apparently
the route we took was a path, but looking back, we're not so sure. Nevertheless, we made it to the top, only
slightly out of breath, reassessed, and after a bit of hunting, found our path!
We were back on track - a little later than planned - but just happy our map
reading skills hadn't completely let us down!
The views from the ridge were
breathtaking. The cold crisp weather and bright sunshine meant that we could
see for miles, and the cold temperatures meant we could walk at a pace without
getting too hot. It was perfect!
The
rest of the morning passed in a blur of stunning scenery. Constantly checking
our timings, we realised that we weren't really making our lost time back, so
the pace was quick, and we stopped for lunch with over half of the route still
to do. HALF OF THE ROUTE!! Saying it out
loud doesn't quite capture the feeling of looking at the route on the map -
that drawn red line telling you how much you've done, and how far you've still
got to walk . Needless to say, thought
of quite how far we still had to go, the amount of daylight left and the fact
it was flipping freezing cut our lunch pretty short, and we headed on our merry
way again.
Although we set off after lunch
in good spirits, I'm not going to lie, the next section of the walk definitely
came in its ups and downs. It was crazy how tangible the motivation and feeling
of the group was as we lost and found poorly marked paths ( and for such a
popular route, we were surprised at quite how poor some of them were!), and
negotiated frozen bog after frozen bog. We'd pretty much stopped chatting by
then, and were purely focussing on putting some kilometres behind us.
Our next
check point was the elusive Pennine Way, which to us signified the next part of
the route and a real path (fingers crossed) - no more
flipping frozen peat bogs!! When we got there, the change in everyone was
incredible. It's like we'd been given a motivation injection as we skipped over
the stile. We felt like Dorothy who'd found the yellow brick road! Kansas was
still a long way off though, but we carried on with a renewed enthusiasm!
 |
| The Pennine Way!! |
After some kilometres and
constant reassessment of our route and timings, we knew that we were going to
be descending, at the very least, as the sun was setting, so we carried on with
our fast pace moving round the rest of the ridge. There were a lot more people
on this section of the walk, who just seemed to appear out of thin air. We were on the final leg by now, and twilight
was reaching us. Remarkably at this point people were still passing us the
other way, with no obvious route down that we had passed! By now we were all a bit sore and tired (we
had been walking for almost 9 hours!!),
but our priority was to get down as quickly as humanly possible. We had a quick stop to prepare for the descent and the setting sun - layered up, got out our torches, popped some ibuprofen
(now named the wonder drug) and had a munch on some of Phil's amazing flapjack.
Ready. Set. Go. Down the hill we went.
 |
| Racing to finish the walk before the sun completely set |
Turns out twilight doesn't last
so long and we were soon in the dark.
After one wrong turning we found our route down. Luckily Jacob's Ladder
was not nearly as awful as we thought (visions of icy, steep scrambles in the
dark were getting alarmingly close to what might happen), being a series of steep but very clear steps.
With our torches in hand, we slowly made our way down. Crazy is what you would
probably call our descent. It was a comfort
however that other walkers were descending at the same time as us, so we knew
there were others within shouting distance if things didn't go as planned. It
was with utter relief we made it to the bottom. Yes it was dark, and yes we had
an hour of walking still to do, but these were proper footpaths and fields! Halleluiah!
We pretty much sung our way to the end of the walk, keeping our spirits up in
the dark. From old Guide songs to a rousing chorus of Celine Dion's 'My Heart
Will Go On' (don't ask), we got back to Edale and a warm meal in a local pub!
Happy. Shattered. Cold. Inspired.
What. A. Day - 34km, 11 hours,
and a descent in the dark. Yes we chucked ourselves in at the deepend, but this
was certainly great start to our training! In retrospect, the walk was
overambitious, but as a result we learnt some important stuff about walking as
a team, motivation and the dark:
- We have a good pace, and as a
team fairly equal levels of fitness, but need to take turns leading, so that no-body
feels like they're stuck at the back.
- We need to eat and drink more.
Maybe because of the cold, or the fact we were racing against the daylight, we didn't do this
enough. Must make a conscious effort. (Phil's flapjack is king of a long day's
walk)
- Invest in *really* good
torches....funnily enough walking in the pitch black is easier with a
ridiculously bright light
- Singing helps - motivation, happiness, and
conquering the dark. Yes. We will sing.
Next training walk together is in
the Yorkshire dales towards the end of March. Shouldn't be quite as dramatic,
but I can't wait!!!
Em xx
