“Walking for hours and miles becomes as automatic, as unremarkable, as breathing. At the end of the day you don’t think, ‘Hey, I did sixteen miles today,’ any more than you think, ‘Hey, I took 8,000 breaths today.’ It’s just what you do.”
Bill Bryson – A Walk in the Woods (1997)
In September 2022 I finally got the chance to attempt the 253 miles of the Pennine Way. I’m not about to generate some kind of ‘will-he-won’t-he’ fake jeopardy, so I’ll state from the start that I completed the hike in 17 days, south to north, solo and unsupported. This is how it played out…
PREPARATION
I was looking forward to using a new 50 litre backpack I had bought, with the lower capacity forcing me to be ruthless with my packing. Even so, it soon became clear that my junk was never going to fit in.
In the end I had to revert to my old, well-travelled 80 litre fat boy, resisting the temptation to fill the extra capacity with more stuff. It still came in at 14.5kg, not including water, which is more than I would have liked. That weight included a few throw-aways – these are items of clothing, t-shirts, underpants, etc. that are due for the bin, but I save them for hiking trips, get a day’s wear out them and then bin them, thus lightening the initial load on the first couple of days.
To avoid the ongoing rail strikes I travelled to the start of the PW on a Megabus, which is like a normal bus but MEGA!! (“Mega” means, like, really good, right?). This meant I had to go south to London first, making for a protracted travel day. Still, it only cost me £27 in total rather than £87 for the train, and with the bus less than half full and a soundtrack of the Beastie Boys, Santigold, vintage ska compilations, and The Clash’s Sandinista! album in its entirety (including the self-indulgent bits*) the journey was actually quite pleasant and peaceful. Spent Saturday night in Sheffield.
*Were they any more “self-indulgent” than listing the music you listened to on the journey?
Vole Explosion 
Leave a comment