It turned out I was the only person staying at the hotel and, I
suspect, there was no-one else there at all last night. The
same surly cook from last night, even more surly for having to get
in to cook breakfast for a lone resident at 8am, got me some
breakfast and I left at 9am with the idea of reaching Marsden for
the night, without knowing exactly how far it was. I was
guessing 30km, leaving me about 20km tomorrow to get to Hebden
Bridge to early enough to pick up my mailed maps, find somewhere to
stay, and meet Keith at the station.
The early walking was easy on a cool overcast morning, firstly
across some low moors (sheep and lambs everywhere as usual) and then
along a rail trail which was also the Trans-Pennine Way. It
was a Bank Holiday Monday and there were a few walkers and cyclists
about. The scenery was pleasant, without being spectacular,
but I could tell I was heading towards some big hills.
I passed Dunford Bridge around 10:30am and then climbed to cross
the wall of the Winscar Reservoir which had numerous warnings about
hypothermia (no chance of me going for a swim), before gradually
climbing into the Pennines. The grades weren't too onerous
and, as I got higher, had views in many directions of stone-walled
hill farms rising steeply from valley floors up the sides of huge
hills with moorland on top. Here and there a village could be
seen as well as some larger towns in the distance.
I enjoyed the pretty scenery and relatively easy walking,
reaching the village of Holme about 12:30pm and finding the pub for
lunch. As often happens, several people came up to me in the
pub and asked me where I was walking to and were pleasantly
inquisitive. The pub was doing a roaring trade with lots of
tourists including quite a number of walkers.
From there, my route climbed even higher into the Pennines along
some really nice tracks, giving good views all round. I think
there must have been some kind of event on because a number of small
groups of walkers, some unfit, some with kids who'd obviously had
enough, were coming in the opposite direction.
At the crest of yet another big hill, my route joined the Pennine
Way for a short distance. I'm going to be seeing a lot of it
in the next two weeks. A couple of kilometres later, my route
diverged to follow and old aqueduct high along the side of a
reservoir for an hour. It was spectacular, if a little narrow
and steep-sided in places. Near the end, I met a
mountain-biker coming the other way. I commented that he was
more daring than me, and he replied that he would be taking it easy
and had done it before (my heart would have been in my mouth for
some parts). Anyway, when I arrived down in Marsden an hour
later looking for a hotel, he rode towards me up the street and gave
me a thumbs up.
The descent from the aqueduct to Marsden was long and fairly
steep and my left little toe and right knee were complaining by the
time I reached the bottom of this medium-sized industrial town (I
passed a big derelict mill on the way in). I passed a hotel
which looked a bit pricey but couldn't find anything else in the
town centre, so checked in and confirmed it was pricey.
The room is nice and, for a change, my internet bandwidth seems
to be good so I took the opportunity to add my daily walking GPS
maps to all of my previous days' hiking. You can see them for
the individual days here,
and I hope to add a map to this journal page each day for the
balance of the trip.
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