Wednesday 30 April 2014

Day 02 : Crowden - Standedge (23km)

Total distance covered so far : 48 km

Something of a grey old day. Not much sunshine today. So the world wasn't looking quite as glowing and lovely as yesterday. The hike turned out to be rather longer than 'billed' too. My own silly fault for not actually measuring it on a map. Tomorrow is another day. Older and wiser.

Here's the pictures from today.

 

 
A very still morning at the reservoir
Lovely avenue of trees! Too bad somebody sh*t there an I put my boot init!!!Yeah! Really!! KMT!
 
I really don't need telling that twice!!
A very, very scary drop again!
Black Hill! Thank goodness for the paved path!
 
The path here goes up! Vertically up!
There's a path right there behind me! It goes very very 'up'!
Here's a nice bedtime story for your kids!

 

 

A Full English breakfast...

Oh yuuummeee! I'm on holiday and a part of the pleasure is waking up to the smell of bacon sizzling in the kitchen knowing that a Full English is coming my way! What could be nicer? I'm hiking all day so there's no reason to worry about the calories (is there?) so bang it on down and let's get going? Mmmmmmm!

And that's exactly what I did this morning. Great! Finished breakfast, packed my bag, paid my bill, got a lift to the Pennine Way where I left it yesterday and started hiking. Tummy nicely full and feeling very satisfied, if a little bit portly!

The way immediately crossed a reservoir and pass through a peaceful avenue of trees, which for all their peaceful appearance are actually not that far from a main road so the reflecting silence of the morning stillness on the water was rather battling with the intermittent traffic noise from the road.

My boot did find something rather unsavoury on the path on the woods there but that's another story...

I was ambling along, brooding on the peaceful views of the reservoir at the woodside when I realised a weird noise was gradually intruding on the peace and I was dragged out of contemplation to wonder what it was. It got rapidly louder and turned out to be one of these...

And if I could speak pig I'd say I was hearing screams of total terror! The still of the morning was torn by that very horrible sound. I'll still be alive to have dinner tonight but the pigs in that lorry won't be! My morning stroll by the still water was the same morning that for them was a horrific final trip to the abattoir! They seemed to know it....

My bacon and sausage from an hour before seemed not to be sitting very comfortably inside me all of a sudden....