The Pennine Way

Wreathed in mist, braced against icy rain and a screaming wind, I strode out across the bare millstone grit of Kinder Scout. London lay 240km behind me, but it might have been on the other side of the Earth. Here there were no skyscrapers and no sign of the sluggish Thames; no Tube, no crowds, no traffic. Just the sharp wind hurling rain at me from a bank of fog. This was day one of the Pennine Way: a 460km, 16-day walk through some of England’s finest back-country. I drew my jacket close and pressed on towards the invisible horizon.

It would be trite to say that my first strides on to the Pennine Way – something of a rite of passage for British long-distance walkers – set the tone for the rest of the journey. The Pennine Way so diverse in weather, terrain and wildlife that no meaningful conclusion can be drawn from any single day on the trail. As an epic challenge, it must be indivisible: the route can be split into smaller weekend trips, but only the full walk will ever really count as the Pennine Way. That’s my Pennine Way. And this is why and how I walked it.

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