Walking the Pennine Way: Day 11

Some people suggest that the first day of the Pennine Way is the hardest – 17 miles of tough going, with your pack at its heaviest and your body at its weakest. But most people agree that as far as physical punishment goes, today’s 21 miles are the worst. The day starts with Cross Fell – scene of Sarah Hall’s incredible novel Helm – and across its surrounding mountains – over 3200 feet of ascent. But the toughest part is the descent – 5 miles of hard, stony track, unrelenting and frankly dull, into Garrigill. It’s a pretty village, but the pub has closed down and the shop shuts at 4pm, and nowhere offers the honesty box cold drinks we’d been dreaming of. With no shops or pubs open in Dufton, we’d eaten our way through the 2 days of food we’d carried, and by the time we reached Alston, we were both close to the ends of our tethers.

Anna Chilvers, my Writing Bogwise co-author and co-facilitator, is currently walking her own long-distance paths in Wales, camping with her dog. I just got a text from her: “Why have I made my holiday such hard work?” I’ve asked myself the same thing today. Then I remember yesterday and crying with happiness; or the summit of Cross Fell where Niamh was so full of wonder, it was as if their eyes were full of sky. Even on the horrible descent, two barn owls flew together over the heather.

And there’s something about the exhaustion, pushing your body into unaccustomed extremes, finding in them a sort of dream-like peace. Climbing Cross Fell this morning, or descending, or following the rise and fall of the fields above the South Tyne, rabbits scattering before us. Something about the remembering of body and its rhythms, how the body becomes everything until it is nothing; something about the river of it, its painful and powerful pull. Like falling down Alice’s rabbit hole, objects and sounds pass by – buzzard and ruin, ash tree and stile, roadkill and stone, rowan berry, cloud, grouse clattering from heather, curlew and passing car...

And the mind falling in on itself, thoughts and memories, the time Rachael and I watched the caterpillar eating bilberries, my mother in bed in the morning, leaves underfoot, the smell of winter, the streetlamp through the bare trees in the street where I grew up. How many miles to Alston, floating in the dinghy on Windermere, the bright shock of sphagnum, smoking under the stars on New Years Eve, sherbet, my first rabbit, is there anything left to drink? Harebells and eyebright, the tiny bags under Niamh’s eyes on the day she was born, Jayne walking towards me down a hot scree in Wales, winter is coming, has the bedroom window leaked? How many miles to Alston, it feels like there is a hole in my foot, tomorrow I’ll see Hadrian’s Wall, will my girl be alright? Will I be alright? Swifts screaming overhead, the smell of hay, leaf litter soft beneath my boots, I would kill for an Iron Bru, cars in the distance, will we make it to the end?