by Gary Hayden
The walk, as a whole, was a pleasant one across high moors and pastures, between fells, and along the banks of Maize Beck and the River Tees. And in addition to all of the general pleasantness there were a number of special delights.
A few miles from Dufton, the path ascends steeply and then traverses for a mile or two along the northwestern rim of High Cup, a gigantic U-shaped glacial valley. This geological wonder, which looks like a colossal grass-covered meteor scar, is one of the scenic highlights of the entire Pennine Way.
The path continues to High Cup Nick, the apex of the valley, where Wendy and I stopped for a mid-morning break to enjoy the stunning view of High Cup stretching away below us.
After that, we walked a further five miles across the fells, arriving early in the afternoon at Cauldron Snout, Britain’s longest waterfall. We sat there for a long time, eating lunch and watching the River Tees blast its way with explosive force through a series of rocky cataracts. Finally, we hiked the last few miles to our destination, the YHA at the tiny hamlet of Langdon Beck. This took quite some time, since this part of the route includes a lengthy, physically demanding scramble along a boulder-lined section of the River Tees.
All in all, the day’s walk had been one of JoGLE’s most scenic, exhilarating, and satisfying so far. And, to cap it all, we arrived at the hostel to find a freshly baked Victoria sponge cake sitting on the kitchen counter-top, alongside a notice reading, ‘HELP YOURSELF’.
We later found out that it had been baked by the mother of one of the hostel staff, for no other reason than to spread a little happiness.
God bless her.
The journey from Langdon Beck to Baldersdale was just fifteen miles long, but it felt like fifty.
It began innocuously enough with a gentle walk along the River Tees past two sets of waterfalls: the modest but pretty Low Force, where the river drops eighteen feet along a series of shallow steps, and the anything-but-modest High Force, where the river plunges noisily and spectacularly over a seventy-one-feet precipice.
We stopped for lunch at the small market town of Middleton-in-Teesdale, somehow resisting the lure of the cafés and teashops, and making do with crisps and pre-packaged sandwiches from the Co-op instead. And from there, we set off, first across Harter Fell and then across Mickleton Moor, to Baldersdale.
In theory, this should have been a straightforward jaunt across undulating moorland and rough pasture. But, in practice, it turned out to be a long and bitter battle against the wind.
A five-minute walk into a strong wind is bracing. A thirty-minute walk into a strong wind is tiring. But a three-hour walk into a strong wind is bloody exhausting.
Our original plan had been to walk four or five miles past the valley of Baldersdale to the village of Bowes. But the wind had sapped our energy and impeded our progress so much that we were glad to hole up for the evening at Baldersdale, in a bunkhouse at the remote Clove Lodge Cottage.
Wendy and I had the six-bedded bunkhouse at Clove Lodge, with its kitchen, lounge, dining area, toilet, and shower, to ourselves. It was lovely.
After cooking and eating dinner, we settled ourselves into comfy chairs in front of the wood-burning stove, gazed into the fire flames, and cared not a fig for the wind howling across the dark moors outside.
It was around this time that a curious thing happened to me. I began, against all of my expectations, to take pleasure in the problems and challenges of the trail.
Don’t misunderstand me. I didn’t derive immediate enjoyment from picking my way across marshes, blundering through mists and gales, or slithering, rain-soaked, across slippery rocks. But I did take pleasure in pitting myself against these obstacles, day after day, and overcoming them.
In the past, the walks I always enjoyed best were what I call ‘teashop’ walks: pleasant ambles through summer glades with pubs and cafés to break the monotony. So I was taken by surprise to discover that the Pennine Way, with its myriad pitfalls and privations, had become the most enjoyable part of JoGLE so far.
From somewhere in the depths of my mind, a half-remembered quote from the Austrian psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl resurfaced. I checked it out on Google and found that it comes from his book Man’s Search for Meaning, and that it goes like this: ‘What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for some goal worthy of him.’
Frankl was the founder of logotherapy: a form of psychotherapy based on his belief that the striving for meaning is the most powerful and motivating force in human life, and that a sense of purpose is essential to mental wellbeing.
He acquired these beliefs partly as a result of his observations and experiences as a prisoner in the Nazi concentration camps in WWII, and partly as a result of his psychiatric practice later in life.
In the concentration camps, he observed that those prisoners who held onto a sense of meaning amidst their suffering were more likely to survive than those who did not. And in his psychiatric practice, he noticed that what was missing, above all else, in the lives of many depressed and suicidal men and women was a sense of purpose: a goal or cause to which they could dedicate themselves wholeheartedly.
Frankl held that without a deeply felt sense of purpose even the most comfortable lives can feel sad and empty, and with such a sense of purpose even the most outwardly wretched lives can feel worthwhile.
‘Those who have a “why” to live,’ he said, quoting Nietzsche, ‘can bear almost any “how”.’
The precise nature of this ‘why’ varies from individual to individual. Life’s meaning can be found in raising a family, creating a work of art, advancing the cause of science, excelling at sport, serving the community, achieving financial success, or communing with nature. The essential thing, as far as mental wellbeing is concerned, is that the individual is committed to some freely chosen goal that is replete with meaning for him- or herself.
Of course, the pursuit of any worthwhile goal brings with it some tension. Nothing meaningful is ever achieved without a struggle. But, according to Frankl, such tension is an indispensable prerequisite of psychological wellbeing.
He writes: ‘Thus it can be seen that mental health is based on a certain degree of tension, the tension between what one has already achieved and what one still ought to accomplish.’
Frankl’s ideas summed up precisely how I was beginning to feel about JoGLE.
Had JoGLE been nothing but a succession of teashop walks, it would have been easy, it would have been comfortable, and it would have been horribly dull. But, instead, it had turned out to be difficult and challenging. And that’s what made it interesting and worthwhile.
For me, JoGLE contained precisely the right amount of tension between past achievement and future accomplishment. On any given day, I could look back with satisfaction on the miles I had already covered and the difficulties I had already overcome. And, at the same time, I could look forward with eager anticipation to the miles I had yet to cover and the difficulties I had yet to overcome.
For this brief period of my life, I had committed myself wholeheartedly to a single, freely chosen goal: that of walking from John o’Groats to Land’s End. And each day gave me the opportunity to progress towards that goal.
In a sense, JoGLE had become, for me, a taste of what life could be and what life ought to be. It had provided me with an escape – or, at least, a respite – from a sense of meaninglessness, which for years had cast a shadow over my life.
It began like this.
In my early to mid-thirties, I entered a new and unpleasant phase of life, which I wrongly assumed would be a passing one.
Each night, as I lay in bed waiting for sleep, with the day’s business and the day’s pleasures behind me, I would fall prey to a nagging sense of unease. I couldn’t identify any cause. I had no specific worries. I just felt vaguely depressed and dissatisfied. Even a little afraid.
The next morning, and all through the following afternoon and evening, I wo
uld feel perfectly normal again. But come night-time, the unease, the depression, and the anxiety would return.
At one point in Man’s Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl refers to a psychological condition he calls ‘Sunday neurosis’: a form of depression that affects people when the busyness of the week subsides and their inner emptiness surfaces.
Looking back, I would say that I was suffering from something very much like that. But at the time I had very little insight into the problem. I knew that when I had nothing to occupy my thoughts I felt sad. But I didn’t understand why.
All of this would have been of little account, and hardly worth mentioning, except for the fact that, contrary to expectations, the feeling never entirely left me.
There were times, for example when I took a break from teaching to study philosophy, or when I first achieved some small successes as a writer, when I thought it had gone for good. But once the novelty of a new project or a new interest had worn off, the void would reopen – and each time a little wider than before.
By the time, I set off on JoGLE, at the age of forty-nine, the sense of meaninglessness and unease had become chronic. The void had become a more or less permanent feature of my inner life, and I had begun to doubt whether anything could fill it.
But strangely and wonderfully, the simple act of walking through the countryside every day, and slowly making progress towards Land’s End, brought back long-unaccustomed feelings of cheerfulness and contentment.
We set off from Clove Lodge, the next morning, on a fourteen-mile hike from Baldersdale to the village of Keld. This began with a three-mile stretch across Cotherstone Moor: an extensive area of peat bog covered with low woody shrubs and tough grasses.
At the southern edge of Cotherstone Moor, the Pennine Way crosses the A69, and shortly afterwards crosses the River Greta by means of God’s Bridge, Britain’s finest natural limestone bridge.
It was a sunny, mildly breezy day, and Wendy I were tempted by the weather, and by the picturesque beauty of the rocky riverbank and the surrounding meadows, to stop and rest. This gave us ample time to admire the structure of the bridge, which, with its huge, neatly laid, horizontal slabs, looks for all the world as though it really has been constructed by divine hands.
From God’s Bridge, the path heads across Wytham Moor, Bowes Moor, and Sleightholme Moor to the remote Tan Hill Inn, the highest inn in the British Isles.
The moors here are boggy, criss-crossed by streams and covered in heather. Progress across them is often achingly slow because the track frequently vanishes into the heather, and because the ground is so boggy that there’s a constant risk of sinking waist-deep – or worse – into the mire.
Wendy and I had walked this section of the Pennine Way once before during a particularly wet summer, and had had a very bad – not to say scary – time of it. Consequently, I had been dreading this crossing for days. However, thanks to the unusually dry summer, this time around we crossed it quickly and easily.
I don’t suppose there has ever been, in the fifty-year history of the Pennine Way, a hiker who has walked straight on past the Tan Hill Inn. Nobody, surely, could resist the lure of beer, food, and shelter in such a wild, windswept, and lonely location.
Wendy and I stepped inside for a pint of beer and a packet of crisps, and then stayed on for a second pint of beer and an additional packet of crisps. Then, feeling slightly tipsy, and disinclined to exert ourselves any more than was absolutely necessary, we exercised our prerogative as End to Enders and abandoned the Pennine Way to follow a small road to our campsite at Keld, four miles away.
Keld is a pretty little village, nestled among some modest hills in the Yorkshire Dales, and has the distinction of being the crossing point of the Pennine Way and the Coast to Coast Walk.
Sadly, we timed our arrival there to coincide with a plague of midges of biblical proportions. So we were not sorry, the following morning, to pack up our tent and move on.
The eleven-mile hike from Keld to the small market town of Hawes began with a tiring section along the steep rock-strewn valley of the River Keld.
Here, a combination of fatigue and inattention caused me to take a slip on some wet rocks. In the resulting fall, the screen of our tablet computer, our main navigational tool, was cracked. Fortunately, it still worked, and, thanks to Wendy’s judicious application of duct tape, it lasted us all the way to Land’s End.
After stopping for coffee at the village of Thwaite, we set off across hilly moorland, then up and over Great Shunner Fell, one of the highest points on the Pennine Way, then through the tiny hamlet of Hardraw, and finally through meadows and pastures to our campsite, just outside Hawes.
Hawes is the highest market town in England. It’s situated at the western end of the Wensleydale valley, and surrounded on all sides by moorland fells. It’s a pretty little place with a handsome main street of stone-built houses, and with some nice little shops and cafés and inns.
We arrived during a spell of beautiful warm weather, and made the most of it by taking a rest day there, which we spent doing laundry, mooching around the shops, enjoying cream teas, and lazing around on the grass beside our tent. It was good.
Walking JoGLE had given me a new sense of purpose in life, and this had led to my feeling uncharacteristically cheerful and contented. Sceptically minded readers might object that walking from Land’s End to John o’Groats isn’t, in the great scheme of things, much of a purpose. Not like seeking a cure for cancer, or writing a symphony, or stamping out racism, or snatching sinners from the jaws of Hell, or something of that sort.
But that’s not really the point. As far as happiness and flourishing are concerned, the purpose to which an individual commits need not be of a kind that counts for much in the great scheme of things. It need only be freely chosen and replete with personal meaning. It can be a great or a small enterprise; a public or a private one; a long-term or a short-term one.
In Man’s Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl writes:
The meaning of life differs from man to man, from day to day and from hour to hour. What matters, therefore, is not the meaning of life in general but rather the specific meaning of a person’s life at a given moment.
And for me, at that time, the simple act of walking a thousand-plus miles from John o’Groats to Land’s End had become meaningful. Not in a grand and cosmic sense. Not ‘in the great scheme of things’. But meaningful to me.
The next section of the Pennine Way, from Hawes to Horton in Ribblesdale, was a fifteen-mile journey across rough pastureland and lonely moors. It was fairly easy walking, and included some long, easy-to-navigate stretches along old drove roads and old Roman roads.
It was cold when we arrived, and looked like it was about to rain. So we decided that, rather than cooking and eating dinner alfresco, we would treat ourselves to a pub meal and a pint or two of beer.
There are two pubs in Horton in Ribblesdale: The Crown and the Golden Lion. We strolled first to The Crown where we were greeted with a dazzling array of notices, printed on A4 paper, informing guests how best to conduct themselves with a view to the mutual convenience and satisfaction of all parties:
NO MUDDY BOOTS
NO DOGS
DO NOT SIT AROUND THE FIRE
DO NOT DRY YOUR COAT NEAR THE FIRE
NO BACKPACKS.
I can’t be sure, but I think there may have also been a notice saying something along the lines of: ‘WHY DON’T YOU WALKERS TAKE YOUR FILTHY BOOTS, SMELLY DOGS AND DIRTY GREAT BACKPACKS AND FECK OFF OUT OF HERE?’
In any case, we did feck off out of there, and had a gigantic and delicious Yorkshire pudding with roast beef, peas, and gravy at the slightly down-at-heel but perfectly welcoming Golden Lion.
The following morning, Wendy and I woke early to the sound of rain. I checked the weather forecast and saw that it was set to continue for most of the day. There was no point waiting for a dry spell, so we took down our tent in the rain, packed it into our rucksacks in the ra
in, and then set off walking in the rain.
From Horton in Ribblesdale, the Pennine Way takes a circuitous route to the village of Malham, and includes a steep climb over Pen-y-Ghent, an imposing fell that rises abruptly out of the surrounding countryside.
Pen-y-Ghent is considered quite a challenging peak. Wendy and I had climbed it once before, and remembered that it was rocky and exposed in places, and required a fair bit of scrambling. We didn’t fancy clambering over those treacherous rocks in the rain, especially not with heavy backpacks. So we elected to abandon the Pennine Way for the day, and instead take a thirteen-mile hike along small roads to the village of Airton.
I remember little about the day’s walk, except that we passed through some very tough-looking country and that it was very, very wet.
There’s no campsite at Airton, and so we splashed out and stayed at a farmhouse B&B. We were greeted at the door by an attractive young woman and two very lively young children. When the woman handed us the keys to our room, the oldest child, aged about four, informed us that it was a very good room because it had a very bouncy bed. Both children then accompanied us upstairs and gave us a practical demonstration of the elastic and gymnastic possibilities of our mattress.
The Pennine Way passes through Airton. So, the next morning, we re-joined it, intending to follow it all the way to the village of Cowling.
Unfortunately, after just four miles, as we passed through the village of Gargrave, I felt a stabbing pain in the small of my back. I tore off my rucksack and found that a thin metal rod, which formed part of the frame, had punctured the fabric and transformed itself into a lethal weapon.
It was impossible to continue like that. So we were forced to take a detour off the Pennine Way, and follow the Leeds and Liverpool Canal to the town of Skipton – which, as luck would have it, was situated just four miles away.