Day Twenty Two

Sunday 28 March - Edale to Crowden.

The previous day, when I arrived at Edale around 1pm, the place was packed with people in full walking gear, all sitting around. I went for a walk, came back, and I swear they hadn't moved. After dark the place was much quieter, the sitters, I guessed, having come for a day's fresh air and sit down, then gone home by car or train for a rest. The exception was the campsite – as I walked off my supper, headtorches flitted around the field like fireflies.

As I walked up the road in the morning, making for the start or the Pennine Way, I passed a few people half in and half out of car boots. Logos were being deployed. The route initially lay Westwards to the head of the Edale valley and the promise of a brutal climb up Jacob's Ladder.
Groups of people were strung out along the path at about 50 yard intervals, with a few local dog-walkers making up the numbers. But this was serious stuff – everyone was walking, and by the time I reached Upper Booth, a mile or so from Edale village, I had seen nobody sitting down. Too early, I suppose, or perhaps they were all sitting in church (it was a Sunday).

I puffed up Jacob's Ladder. It was not difficult in any technical sense, just relentlessly upwards. The nasty trick is that, having completed the “official” Jacob's Ladder, you've got another half mile of pretty steep climb until the path levels out and heads North. The walking here was superb, with long views West towards Manchester, and dozens of standing stones, perching stones, and leaning-on-each-other-at-bizarre-angles stones which characterise this area.

Kinder Downfall was a con trick: the water was reaching the edge of what should have been the eponymous downfall, only to be gathered up by the wind and thrown back again. Ah yes, the wind. It was strong. Not cold, but strong, from the West. For most of the day, thank goodness, it hit me side on. The times when I was walking straight into it were rather trying.

A few early black clouds gave way to white ones, drawn by the wind across the sun and whisked away again – this was the pattern all day. I was starting to get used to another local feature – slab paving. A bit like the high street, but laid across fields and moors to stop soil erosion. On sight I disliked them – could have stayed at home and got pavement outside the door, blah blah. But they were clearly very effective at minimising further erosion, they weren't too bad to walk on, OK I suppose... until suddenly their stock rose.

As the Pennine Way set out across a peat bog, the rough paving stones formed a blessed causeway over a sea of black water and black mud. I'm up for any number of walking challenges, but peat bogs are along way down my list of desirable walking venues, so I trotted a long the pavement as happy as Larry.

I found a hollow giving shelter from the wind and ate my lunch. Within a hundred yards of this, I crossed the A57 road at Snake Pass (to be partially blocked by snow within 24 hours). The traffic was being disrupted by road works. I sneered at such trifles, but my own progress was about to be arrested. Just slowed down, really. North of Snake Pass, the path became very “knobbly”, ocasional lengths of paving being interspersed with much longer bits of boulder-strewn, sometimes soggy, track.

The path often shared a gully with a run-off stream, with the occasional pocket of snow covering both track and water. It was clearly important to tread on the right bit of snow to avoid a frozen ducking. The ups and downs, ins and outs, of the stones, water and mud continued for several miles. One blessing was that I was now sheltered from the worst of the wind. Eventually the path swung round from North West to North, hugging the side of a deep valley, Torside Clough, before it almost fell off to reach Torside Reservoir, one of a series of reservoirs perched in the Longendale valley above Glossop. Crossing the dam, I headed East for a mile to Crowden, to spend the night at the Youth Hostel.

Later, as I walked off my excellent hostel supper (not cooked by me!) I passed the local farm; inside a shed, new-born lambs and their mums were spending a night or so inside before they were turned out into the fields.