Halfway there!

Monday 4 June – Colne to Malham

And we would walk 500 miles
And we would walk 500 more
Just to be the twits who walked a thousand miles
To fall down at John O’Groats’ door…

(or something like that…)

Yes, today we passed the 50% distance mark!  920km, 575 miles to be precise. And tomorrow is day 42 of the 83 total that we are taking to get from Lands End to John O’Groats!  So we are very happy to announce that are now halfway through our Grand Adventure!  (Yes, we are amazed too!). When we first started, it seemed like a VERY long way, but it’s amazing what happens when you just put one foot in front of the other, day after day.

As we had needed to divert away from the Pennine Way yesterday afternoon, to get to our accommodation, the first part of this morning was spent heading back to rejoin the Way.  We elected to follow some very quiet country lanes to accomplish this, and it made for rapid progress amid the peace of the outskirts of Colne. Passing through Earby on the way, we picked up the Pennine Way at Thornton in Craven, and followed it for a couple more kilometres until it picked up the Leeds and Liverpool Canal. This was a nice little treat for us, and although short lived, we enjoyed the contrast between this and the moorland yesterday’s route had taken.

The Leeds and Liverpool Canal is the longest of the English canals at 127 miles and one of the oldest, with construction started in 1770 and completed in 1816. It crosses the Pennines, and has 91 locks. Originally built to carry coal, wool, and other cargo, it is now a purely recreational canal.

We juggled between canal path, Pennine Way and minor roads through to Gargrave, where we had hoped to visit a café highly recommended in our guidebook – the Dalesman Café – and were bitterly disappointed to find that it is closed on Mondays! Our second café choice turned out to have closed down last year, so we were left with a pub for a coffee / lemonade and a consolation slice of a beautiful rich Chocolate Brownie for “lunch”.

From Gargrave we again mixed country lanes and Pennine Way to pass through Airton and Hanlith, eventually arriving at Malham at about 4.30pm. On our way through from Gargrave to Airton we got stuck behind a rural traffic jam – a mob of sheep being moved along the lane between fields by a farmer on his quad bike – quite entertaining.

Throughout our journey today we were amazed at just how many footpaths there are in this area – it really is a walkers’ mecca. The countryside is of course very beautiful and we are close to a number of large cities, so there are many people to take advantage of all these opportunities. Malham itself is very much geared around walkers – our accommodation tonight, The Buck Inn, “welcomes muddy boots”!

Tomorrow we start one of the wildest, most scenic and certainly the hilliest stretches we will do in our entire journey – travelling through the Yorkshire Dales. It promises to be epic!

Distance today:   28km

River Aire, near Malham