I didn't want to go to work today. I have a bad habit of looking at the map in too much detail and counting the contours, Becks tells me not to do this as i get myself in to a state about how sweaty we will get walking up hills! I wanted to take today off as a rest day but then realised that we only have to walk it tomorrow, so i would be gaining nothing! Julian dropped us off in to Hornton and we were back on the trail at 9.30am, we must have been in the mode as we marched from Hornton to the summit of Pen-Y-Gent in exactly one hour! Pen-Y-Gent is the lowest of Yorkshire's 3 peaks at 694m. We were machines if i don't say myself, it was about 5km, and super hilly! Had a little rest on the top and rang Zoe, she was on her way to Snowdonia which sounded pretty cool!
Getting down the other side of Pen-Y-Gent was a right mission! As we are doing the Pennine Way 'the wrong way' we were going down the way most people come up, it was a bit of a scramble and we were lucky we had day sacks on else i think we would have really struggled! Saw a girl on the way down who looked like she was going to collapse! Everyone looked exhausted walking up which made us think we may have walked up the easier side even though it was longer, but walking downhill was tough work too!
Not long after decending Pen-Y-Gent we went up Fountain Fell, i remember looking up thinking'I'm never going to be able to walk up this' but it was no where near as bad as i thought, and as Becks said, i got worked up over nothing! I had a dangerous nature wee half way up but it paid off and i wasn't caught by decending people! Walking down fountain Fell, we could see 2 guys walking inf ront of us we were joking about having an akward gate moment as we thought we might catch up with them and we would be too close to the gate for them not to leave it open, then they would have to stand there and wait, and we would feel pressured to walk faster, turns out it wasn't a tate, but a style and as we went for the overtake one of the guys asked 'Are you two going to Lands End?' We were like.....Yes, he then said that he knew we were both from Devon, and that one of our parents was down for the week and that we had a BBQ last night, i stopped him there and told him that actually last night was fish and chips, and the night before was in fact a BBQ, then most importantly asked him how he knew all of this!
Turned out they had been meeting Lancaster man as well after he had seen us, they had camped near him and been to the pub with him, Lancaster man was getting around! When he met us in the day he mentioned us to them int he evening so apparently they were on the look out! We walked with them for a couple of miles and they were walking at a slower pace to us as they had full rucksacks and one of them had blisters, when they stopped for a break near Malham Tarn, myself and Becks carried on as were were due to meet mum in Malham at 4, as there was never any phone signal we told her to meet us at the most obvious pub/cafe. Annoyingly the next part of the route was a single file track entering and going through Malham Cove, so when your in a bit of a hurry what could be the worst possible scenario? Stuck behind a large DoE expedition group walking at 0.6mph Rrrrrrrr.
It was painfully slow and i was getting annoyed, there wasn't even any where we could really overtake but after 15 minutes the pain was too much to bear and soon enough i spotted an opportunity and went for it, as me and Becks have been saying the whole trip: we will never see them again so if they think were rude, then thats fine by us, i was nice by saying 'excuse me guys, do you mid if we just squeeze past'. I'm glad i took the opportunity as the next part of the route was a steep single file scramble down and we would have been there for an age waiting for them to get down!
The rocks at Malham cove were pretty cool, a massive plateau i think carved by glaciers, i had limited reading time on reading paraphernalia en-route as we had a deadline, in Malham we met mum (we could see her liquorish all sort a mile off) she said she was waiting 45 minutes, i reckon we could have been there if we didn't walk with the 2 guys and got stuck beind the DoE group, but it was a lovely day walk! And if those guys read this, i really don't thinkw e would have been able to navigate the part we walked with you by ourselves, so for that we thankyou!
Lovely Carbonara for tea and made use of the DVD player, unfortunalty we had to watch cheaper by the dozen 2 as Cole wanted to see it, Becks said she really enjoyed it!
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