Pennine Way (North to South) 2024 – Day 15

22nd August 2024: Cowling to Colne to Home!

I’ve not done this on a long distance walk for a while, but I’ve had enough and I’m currently trying to arrange a collection from the path.

It’s a combination of circumstances and feelings, as it usually is. I’ve only had to abandon one walk because of injury. I’d love to say ‘ooh, it’s my knee’, but that’s not the case – the pain is manageable and it’s only bad on steep descents. The rest of me is fine, no blisters, no cheek chafe even at this point. Physically I could finish if I wanted to.

I have to admit the weather has been demoralising, the persistent cold, the relentless bloody wind, the constant threat of rain, and today, as I write this the wind is howling round the eaves of the house, the rain is sheeting down and I’ve just seen the forecast for the next few days. Tomorrow, the winds are expected to be 40mph plus, with rain at 80% all morning. I just don’t have the will power at the moment to push through that!

I think the biggest pull is family though. My mum is going through a traumatic time at the moment, I’m not going to go into details, but being on the phone isn’t enough, I need to go and see her, she’s not dying or anything, but I don’t want to leave it another four days.

When my brother dropped me off on Saturday, he offered to pick me up if I needed it. I said I wouldn’t need it, I’ve never felt close to wanting to quit on my long walks for the last few years, but the offer was there. I sent him a message this morning, about 8am and asked for the pick up. He agreed and said he’d set out immediately.

I packed up, cancelled my next three nights accommodation and went down to check out and say thanks to Marion. I was out of the door at 8.45 and decided to walk into town to meet Roger. I could have asked him to pick me up at the B&B, but for some reason I can’t actually explain, I decided I needed to walk into Colne town centre and have him meet me there. I walked the 2.5 miles in the pissing down rain, the wind wasn’t too bad as I was protected by houses and fences and hedges, but it was a bloody miserable day, and I was glad I wouldn’t have to put up with it for long. I’m sure there will be some post-walk guilt and self recrimination over the next couple of days, but I’m also sure I’ll get over it.

I found a Wetherspoons in town and ordered a pint of Diet Coke, for the astonishingly low price of £1.95 and sat in a window seat and watched the road into town. Roger pulled up before I’d even finished my drink, and he drove me home through some of the worst rain I’ve seen in a long time.

I may try and finish the final section, perhaps Chris will agree to do it with me over a couple of weekends, and I can nail the coffin shut on the Pennine Way for the last time. It’s a superb walk, but I was doing it the wrong way. It’s not you, it’s me! Surprisingly, I only realised that a couple of days ago. Until that point, I would tell people ‘I’m walking the Pennine Way, backwards’ – and it’s only been the past couple of days that I’ve been using the more accurate description of ‘walking the Pennine Way, the wrong way’.

Most long paths have a traditional direction to walk them, and in many cases that direction is fairly arbitrary, maybe just the whim of the author, or the path designer. Some walks take advantage of our prevailing weather conditions, which comes from the south west for the most part, so Wainwright’s Coast to Coast for example, runs west to east, so you’ll typically have the wind in your favour. I’ve walked the C2C in both directions and I honestly believe it’s just as walkable in either direction. If you walk it ‘backwards’ you may have a headwind at times, but you’re walking towards the best bits, the Lakes. You’ll also have several days training behind you when you hit the very hilly bit. There are arguments for either direction being the right direction.

The Pennine Way on the other hand, only has one correct direction, and it’s not north to south! I didn’t notice the weather particularly on the first section, there were maybe a couple of times I had a headwind, but nothing too memorable. This section however, has proved how bad it can be when you walk against the weather. Every day had me leaning into the wind, holding my hat on, or pulling my hood back down. Each of those days would have been so much easier if I’d been walking north.

Then there’s the sun – heading south means you’re walking into the sun. This caused me some problems on the first section, I burned the back of my hands quite badly, which has never happened before. It also makes poor lighting for photos – which tend to be over exposed and the colours looked washed out, with too many items in shadow or silhouetted.

It’s a bit more subjective, but the scenery on the Pennine Way is more consistently splendid once you get north of Gargrave. Edale to Black Hill is lovely Peak District moorland, maybe not to everyone’s taste, but certainly to mine. But between there and Gargrave, there are way too many fields, reservoirs, harsh access tracks and roads for my liking. But when you know what’s to come, they can be seen as a ‘transition section’. All long walks have these, and they take you from one scenic section to the next. The Pennine Way is 80% stunning scenery, but the vast majority of that occurs north of Gargrave and it keeps getting better the further north you go. If you’re walking north, the Pennine Way just keeps feeding you better and better scenery. Walking south, and you’re just slowly leaving it behind.

There is no advantage to be gained from walking the Pennine Way north to south, at least none that I can define. Except maybe to say you’ve walked it in both directions – a check box exercise basically. If I can persuade Chris, maybe I can check that box.