I woke early again, needing to get up for the loo. I crawled out and made the loo dash, and then returned to the sleeping bag for a while to consider the day to come.
Today involved climbing Pen-y-ghent, one of the famous Yorkshire Three Peaks, as well as climbing out of Malham via Malham Cove. My school seemed to be the only one in the country that had never organised a trip to Malham, and so I was interested to see what the famous cove would look like. Hearing friends from other schools mention their geography field trips in the past, I'd always imagined it a deep blue, and flecked with little white-sailed fishing boats, but it was clear to me now that, barring some bizarre geographical phenomenon, that was unlikely to be accurate.
By about 7am I was out of the tent and having a wash. The morning was dry and lovely, although a very heavy dew meant that the tent would be wet in its sack all day. I selected the least smelly of my T shirts, and hoped to be able to wash and dry some kit that night. After that I boiled the water for my flask, and I was on my way out of the campsite towards the cove by about 8am. Once again Dave had already left, but there were not yet any signs of life at Stephen's little tent.
It didn't take long to walk to the cove, and it was a magnificent sight in the early morning sunshine. (There were no boats, but I'd begun to prepare myself for that the day before.)
The climb up the left side was steep but I felt fit and so I quite enjoyed it, and not long later I was sitting on what the book describes as "cross shelves of deeply eroded limestone pavement" enjoying the view back to Malham, a coffee and my first cheese and onion pastie of the day.
There's nothing to beat being up and out in the countryside walking on a beautiful morning, and I decided as I sat there that I'd have to do it more often.
I should have realised that things had proceeded too smoothly, though, and sure enough, within 5 minutes of getting up to continue to Malham Tarn, I realised I was lost. I then spent about 30 minutes aligning and re-aligning the map and staring at the compass before it occurred to me that in this area almost all roads must lead to Malham Tarn, so I looked around for a path that didn't seem to lead back to Malham village and followed it. Note for those using the OS Guide: beware, when it says of the point where the path meets the limestone pavement, "the route here crosses the top of the cliff". Maybe it does, but if so then there's no sign of it on the ground! Hmmm....
I did eventually get to Malham Tarn, but only after wandering around on top of what must have been Comb Hill for some time, in various directions. At a junction of two paths I encountered two very efficient looking walkers and thought salvation had arrived, but it turned out that they weren't doing the PW and were walking a route plotted on an Anquet map with waypoints downloaded to their GPS. They seemed surprised that I'd been let out on the hill on my own, and suggested that I should start walking with a GPS as soon as possible, so that I'd have some idea of where I was going. Having said that, they had no idea which of the two paths led to Malham Tarn either, and so I pressed on uphill :-)
The tarn was nice, but not nice enough for me to remember to take its picture. I tried to capture my reflection in a notice board for the Malham Tarn Field Centre, though, but my effort was largely unsuccessful. I bet you can't tell where I was standing :-)
Not long after the tarn I encountered Dave at a cattle grid next to a school minibus. The teachers there had offered him a cup of tea in exchange for a light, and he was taking a break whilst they brewed up. He offered to try to cut me in on the deal, but I pressed on and up towards Fountains Fell, mindful of the ascent of Pen-y-ghent still lurking towards the latter part of the day.
Fountains Fell started quite steeply, and continued that way. I don't mind a steep pull up a hill, but this one seemed to go on forever. If I'd been able to read my map more effectively I'd probably have realised that in advance, and laid the psychological groundwork for it, but as it was I kept telling myself that I'd stop for a coffee and a bit of a flapjack as soon as I was over the summit, and unfortunately it began to feel as though that time would never come. Eventually I just gave up, and settled into a grassy hollow next to a stream for my midday snack. The weather was still sunny but the wind was fairly sharp, and I soon grew cold enough to dig out my fleecy neck gaitor and beloved Lowe Alpine Mountain Cap for the onward journey.
The ascent of Fountains Fell did eventually come to an end, and was followed by an almost equally protracted descent towards the little road leading past Pen-y-ghent. By the time I got down I was ready for another cup of coffee and the rest of my flapjack, so I took off my pack and sat down on the grass to inspect the hill which now lay before me.
Not long afterwards, I set off along the road which eventually led to the path up to the top. I had plenty of time to contemplate the hill to come and I was a little confused about where the path might be, as the only thing I could see appeared to climb straight up the limestone "lip" at the front of the hill.
As it turned out, that was actually the way up. It seems surprising, and really pretty unfortunate, that the OS Guide didn't think to mention that the path to the top involved a scramble, particularly bearing in mind that the PW passes an alternative, low level route to Horton-in-Ribblesdale just before the climb begins. I'm hopeless at heights, and right from the start I felt more exposed than I've ever felt on almost any walk in the mountains. The wind was gusty and so the weight of the sack made me very nervous: it's not possible to recover from a loss of balance when carrying that sort of weight on one's back, as I'd learned a few days earlier when I went head over heels whilst walking with Darren, and I therefore proceeded slowly, and almost to the top, on my hands and feet together, like some sort of geriatric crab.
Just before the top, though, is a lip of rock, and when I reached that point I just couldn't see a way to go on. I stopped and hung out there for a while, trying to look nonchalant whilst watching how others - not loaded up with enormous rucksacks - were negotiating the little lip, but each time I took a deep breath and tried to climb up my head began to spin, and not long afterwards it began to feel as though I might actually be stuck on Pen-y-ghent for the rest of my life, and I felt tears of fright prickling at the back of my eyes.
At that stage, and in desperation, it occurred to me to just ask for help. A couple of minutes later a young man strode past, and I asked if he'd mind giving me a hand up, telling him I was scared of heights and having an attack of vertigo. Naturally he didn't mind in the slightest, and so I took hold of his hand, took a deep breath, pushed up into space and soon afterwards found myself on top of the lip. Phew!... From there it was mainly a matter of taking a couple of minutes to wipe away a sneaky tear and compose myself, and I was then able to get easily up to the top. There I rewarded myself with coffee and my second cheese and onion pastie of the day :-)
While I was there, two couples came over to chat. The first two had seen me stuck below the lip, and had offered to stay if I needed help (though naturally I'd said no, no, no, I was absolutely fine, thank you very much... :-), and the second couple overheard our conversation, and came over to talk about the Pennine Way. Most people are so open and friendly when out in the hills - it really is a pleasure to stop and talk to them.
The descent to Horton was steep, and the surface of the path was difficult, but eventually it levelled out towards the bottom and came to an end.
Earlier in the day I'd decided to try to book B and B, partly so that I could watch Kellie Holmes in the final of the Olympic 1,500 metres and partly so that I could wash and dry my kit. My T shirts were getting pongy, and I was concerned that people might soon begin to recoil in horror at my approach! I'd not been able to find a B and B, but I'd booked a room at one of the two pubs, The Crown. The Crown turned out to be absolutely wonderful. The staff were friendly, my room was comfortable and it seemed that they provided the best food in the place. I dumped my pack at the pub and sprinted back to the Post Office shop to catch it before it closed at 5pm, as my stache of cheese and onion pasties was now exhausted, and then I made my way back again, stopping at the Pen-y-ghent cafe to buy some soap powder and the updated 2004 edition of the National Trail Guide: Pennine Way North: Bowes to Kirk Yetholm.
I had a pint of some sort of bitter in the garden, catching the last of the sun and waiting to see whether Stephen and Dave might turn up, but no-one passed by, and so after that I made my way up to my room with a gin and tonic, and into the shower. Bliss :-)
After the shower I inspected my blisters. I'd been trying to ignore them, but I now found that I had a blister the size and shape of a quail's egg protruding from the inside of my right foot! There was something similar on the left, but not quite as impressive...
I pricked both blisters with the little pin that had come with my Balloon Bed for the purpose of deflating the balloons, and after some fiddling around decided to leave them overnight in the hope that they'd dry out a bit, and improve. I then settled down on the bed to watch Kellie Holmes eliminate the opposition in the 1,500 metres final. What a wonderful moment! :-)
After that I went down to dinner, and was happily ensconced in the dining room with my goats' cheese with cranberries, followed by scampi and chips, when Dave and Stephen arrived from the bunk room in the other pub in search of food, and sat down.
After we'd all eaten, Dave and Stephen went back to their accommodation, and I went over to the bar to ask whether there was any chance of having my kit washed and dried. I was delighted to be told that there was, and after I'd taken my clothes downstairs I retired to bed with a coffee, and watched a bit of television before dropping off to sleep.
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