Walking the Pennine Way: Day 10

A very long and very tiring day, so I’m keeping words to a minimum. Today has been the kind of day I’ll remember for the rest of my life. From Middleton along the River Tees, past Low Force and High Force, the riverbanks crowded with willow, yarrow and scabious, knapweed and lady’s bedstraw. Sneezewort, silver in the sun, bright birch. Up into the moors, the leggy heather, bilberry and tormentil and gorse, along Holmwath Beck under the high cliffs of Widdy Bank to the whitewater tumble of Cauldron Snout. Footsore along miles of rocky track though the MOD land, then onto bright moss, soft peat, sphagnum and mother of thyme, Niamh walking ahead of me, steady and fast.

Hour after hour, the sky shifting, sunlight and cloud, rivers and springs, pipit and curlew and stonechat. The repetition of walking, lost in the dream of it. Memories passing through my mind like clouds. Buzzard and kestrel, red kite. Stone markers, my feet their own painful rhyme above Maize Beck. Then a barn owl over the moor, and I’m crying with the beauty of it, and at the first glimpse of High Cup Nick, I could fall to my knees. I could sing with it, pray with it, all of me is a prayer of thanks for this long day, this hour after hour of beauty. A hare, tall ears trembling in the grass, and Niamh striding ahead of me, as she will now, the gap widening as she walks further and further away from me, into her own wide and waiting world.