Walking home
Nicola Hardy hikes from her Sheffield birthplace to her new abode in Cumbria
“I WANT TO ENCOURAGE in others the ambition to devise with the aid of maps their own cross-country marathons and not be merely followers of other people’s routes: there is no end to the possibilities of originality and initiative.”
So wrote Alfred Wainwright in 1972 in his pictorial guide
A Coast to Coast Walk – and almost half a century later I find myself striving for that same sense of individuality. This is more than just a walk; more than just miles and days and camps; more than the sum of its parts. It’s something personal, intimate and intangible.
It’s a pilgrimage – my long walk home.
I think about Richard, the backpacker in Alex Garland’s The Beach, who laments “I just feel like everyone tries to do something different, but you always wind up doing the same damn thing.” There’s nothing wrong with well-trodden trails of course – I’ve walked and loved many of them – but for this fortnight I’m after something bespoke. I want to taste that spirit of exploration. I want to walk a walk with a deeper meaning.
STRIKING OUT
My plan – concocted during the boredom of lockdown, and as an alternative to a Covid-cancelled walk across the length of New Zealand – is to hike from my birthplace in Sheffield to my new home in Cockermouth, north-west Cumbria. The route is plotted, with my trademark stamp of precision and obsession, on the komoot app. Ahead lies a 325km (202-mile) walk, over 10,000 metres (32,800 feet) of ascent and 14 camps, crossing the Peak District, Yorkshire Dales and Lake District. I’ll set foot on sections of four well-known long-distance trails – the Pennine Way, Ribble Way, Dales High
Way and Wainwright’s Coast to Coast – but this patchwork route is unapologetically mine and mine alone. It feels like a special, neverbefore-walked itinerary, and I love that.
The route is symbolic too. It represents the way my life has changed so dramatically over the past few years. Sheffield, my starting point, depicts my old life: where I was born, went to school, studied at university, worked in IT, and spent my entire adult life in a normal, city-based, office-centric existence. The walk itself
symbolises my journey since 2017: discovering a love of hillwalking, realising I want more from life than just sitting in an office in front of a computer screen, and, ultimately, navigating the tricky path (with gruelling ascents, rough terrain and progress-hindering storms) towards a new, different existence. And Cockermouth, my destination, represents my future: a life closer to the hills I love, with better balance, less worry and more hiking.
“I’m so proud of you – you can do this,” says my mum, giving me a cheesy thumbs up as torrential rain soaks the grey pavement on Leavygreave Road, Sheffield. Here at 2.58pm on 6 August 1984, in the old Jessop Hospital for Women, I entered this world and cried for the first time. I feel like crying again now, as I wave a rushed goodbye to Mum, who dives into the car with my dad to escape the downpour. This is hardly the sun-drenched start I’d envisioned. The skies are dark and menacing. Rain drips depressingly off the visor of my waterproof jacket. My feet slosh in puddles on the paving slabs and my 15kg backpack suddenly feels crushingly heavy.
A delayed train means I’m behind schedule already, so I march purposefully west past the botanical gardens, through Endcliffe Park and along Porter Brook to beyond the city limits, cheered on by my old friends Heather and Kate along the way. A few hours later, with darkness descending, I pitch my one-person MSR tent next to a wall on the edge of the Peak District. The grass is soggy and squelchy. A rain droplet trickles down my neck and I shiver slightly in the cold wind. Below me the bright lights of Sheffield flicker in the darkness – a teasing reminder that cosy beds and hot baths exist, yet I’ve chosen to hunker down in this dreary quagmire. “Was this a good idea?” I ponder to myself, worryingly unsure of the answer.
MAGIC MOMENTS
“I can’t believe it; I used to live near Cockermouth!” says David, a litter-picking Peak District national park volunteer I bump into the following morning. “But then I moved over here. It appears I’ve done the exact opposite of your pilgrimage.”
It’s a jovial encounter that dissipates last night’s lingering doubts, and I spend the day in a good headspace, ambling along the Stanage Edge gritstone escarpment to Ladybower Reservoir and beyond over Win Hill to an Edale campsite, taking photos and capturing komoot 'Highlights' (see p40) as I go. These are the hills I first ventured to when I took up hillwalking as a hobby; the places I cut my teeth as a rambler. I learned so many vital lessons here: the thrill of a pack of Fruit Pastilles on a summit, the pain of horizontal rain in your face, the anguish of a blister on your heel. It feels wonderfully apt that I’m spending my first full day of walking with these old friends.
For the next six days, joined by my companion Becky, I settle into the routine of a long-distance hike. The weather is mixed, often grey and dreary, sometimes utterly miserable, but I don’t mind. I enjoy the back-to-basics simplicity of it all. Walk, lunch, walk, dinner, set up
camp, sleep. Wake up, walk, re-supply at village shop, walk, dinner, tent, sleep. Every day my sole aim is to walk from
A to B. Every night my only goal is to find a patch of flat, dry, soft grass to sleep on. And in between – joined intermittently by friends Ben, Jess, Megan, Bryony, Adrian and Carla – I aim to make the most of this precious fortnight away from work.
We walk 25 to 30 kilometres each day, sticking loosely to the Pennine Way. We climb Jacob’s Ladder to Kinder Low, cross Snake Pass and ascend to Bleaklow Head, before dissecting Torside and Woodhead Reservoirs and heading ever north to Hebden Bridge via Black Hill, Stoodley Pike and what seems like innumerable other reservoirs and edges. Next we plod across the windswept uplands of Wadsworth Moor and Ickornshaw Moor, disturbed only by the gargling calls of the grouse, and press on into the Yorkshire Dales via the limestone amphitheatre of Malham Cove and the rocky summit of Pen-y-ghent. Sadly the clag all too often denies us views of these classic landscapes, but other moments – silly in-jokes, random wildlife encounters and inexplicable trail anthems (we can’t stop singing Eddy Grant’s Gimme Hope Jo’anna) – keep us entertained. “There’s a caterpillar in my tea!” shrieks Becky one morning. “You what?” I reply, bleary-eyed in my sleeping bag cocoon. "Hang on, my tent’s infested with slugs too!”
True enough, the bulbous, gooey gastropods are everywhere, leaving behind a trail of mucous grossness. I laugh so hard that the karmic universe listens and the next morning it’s my turn for misfortune. I wake to find my tent flysheet doused in bird poo, almost as if a flock of loose-bowled chaffinches and blackbirds all flew over my shelter simultaneously. Becky laughs uncontrollably this time around – and we’re both reminded of those calamitous, quirky little moments that make multi-day hiking so special. I don’t know it yet, but many more of these unexpected ‘trail magic’ snippets – especially one of my komoot followers leaving me a surprise congratulatory message and box of chocolates next to a gate – await along my journey.
HOME ON THE HORIZON
With Becky now back at home, the weather brightens up – and so does my mood as I skirt the bulk of Whernside with my friend Liz. The path traverses north-west and, suddenly, we’re greeted with a first sight of the distant Lake District fells. “I can’t believe it, I’m getting closer,” I say, smiling. Nine days and 200 kilometres on the trail have led to this moment, and it feels poignant. In my immediate vicinity is the quaint rural charm of the Yorkshire Dales – wobbly drystone walls, cottage-flecked valleys, rickety wooden fences and fields of placid Swaledale sheep. But in the distance is the looming drama of Lakeland: towering, rugged massifs with distinctive
peaks, craggy flanks and piercing arêtes. My new home.
From Dent I follow the Dales High Way to Sedbergh before taking a high-level traverse of the Howgills’ rounded, grassy knolls including Arant Haw, Calders and The Calf. After a wild camp in the swirling clouds above Bowderdale, I traipse across a no man’s land linking the Howgills to Shap, and – courtesy of my friend Eeva – indulge in some much-needed rest at the delightful New Ing Lodge. Suitably refreshed the following morning, I cross the threshold into the Lake District national park and spend the day heading southwest along the shores of Haweswater, steadily climbing up to High Raise and wild camping at a moody Angle Tarn.
As I sit in my tent’s vestibule, boiling up some couscous and sipping on a hot mug of tea, I find myself feeling a little underwhelmed to be in the Lakes. Something is missing. I’ve loved so many things about my walk: the clarity of purpose of an A to B hike, the sense of journeying through a landscape in an intimately personal way, the camaraderie of my wonderful friends, the serendipity of the people I’ve met along the way, and – of course – the beauty of the hills. But I haven’t yet experienced a pinch-yourself, take-your-breath-away kind of moment. The weather gods have cruelly denied me, masking every vista and hiding every sunset.
Two days later, however – after 45 hard kilometres to Patterdale, over St Sunday Crag, along Far Easedale and down Greenup Gill into Borrowdale, across Honister and Fleetwith Pike into Buttermere, and eventually up Whiteless Pike for a wild camp – that special moment arrives. Wispy clouds eddy over the Buttermere ridges and the setting sun infuses the sky with shades of peach, salmon and deep orange. Mellbreak holds Crummock Water in its embrace; Rannerdale Knotts rises like a sentry above the lakeshore; and the flanks of Robinson and Grasmoor soar paternally above it all.
I know I have 20 kilometres left to go tomorrow, including a nerve-jangling scramble down the slanting slabs of Hopegill Head. But this feels like the crux of my pilgrimage. Cockermouth might be where my house is, but this journey was always about walking home – and, here amongst the high fells, it feels like home.
“My destination represents my future: a life closer to the hills I love, with better balance, less worry and more hiking.”