A wonderful place to be a walker

Saturday 9 June – Tan Hill Inn to Middleton-in-Tees
Sunday 10 June – Middleton-in-Tees to Dufton

Yesterday saw us leave Tan Hill Inn on its high lonely road, cloud and mist in the valleys below. The day was a mix of lanes, stony farm paths and footpaths across moors, no great scenic highlights, more a ‘fill in’ day. Not enough to write an entire blog about! We did however have a sumptuous dinner – at a restaurant specialising in French cuisine, a surprising and unexpected find in Middleton-in-Tees. And our B&B, Brunswick House, was oh so comfortable.

But today – ah, today! We were keenly anticipating it as all our reading had described several highlights – Low and High Force, Cauldron Snout and High Cup Nick. (Bet you can’t guess what each is from their names!) Today was also an oddity as we would actually finish further south than when we started, a sign of just how much the originators of the Pennine Way thought of today’s sights. It would be a long day, some 32km, but for once not all that hilly.

We set off westward along the Tees valley, walking through hay meadows adjoining the River Tees, a shallow but wide and fast-flowing river. It was a glorious morning, almost too hot in the sun, though around us we could see clouds starting to build.

The first highlight was Low Force around 10am, actually a low waterfall (‘force’ is from the Old Norse ‘foss’, waterfall), pretty in itself, but dramatically overshadowed a couple of kilometres upstream by its bigger brother, High Force, plunging some 22m through a narrow gorge.

The forecast had mentioned a high likelihood of showers from 11am on, and almost to the minute we could feel the first spots of rain. Would it amount to anything more? At first we thought not, but then the thunder started from a rather dark cloud to the north. Sure enough, soon the rain set in and out came our full wet weather gear, for the first time in weeks. We weren’t looking forward to the prospect of lightning and thunder and heavy rain continuing, particularly once we were on higher ground, but resigned ourselves to a wet day.

In fact, after half an hour or so of fairly heavy rain, it stopped, and with the exception of a couple of light sprinkles in the afternoon we were blessed with reasonable weather.

We were still following the Tees upstream, and by now were in a narrow valley with crags and rockfalls both sides of the river. The sun came out in time to warm and dry things, ideally timed for us to have our packed lunch by the river. Not far around a bend came the sight of Cauldron Snout, a fairly impressive waterfall, fed by water from a massive reservoir above. The path now became a short, steep scramble up rocks alongside the waterfall, fortunately not as hard as we were expecting or as scary as the climb up Pen-y-Ghent, much to Val’s relief!

The path took us up and away from the upper part of the valley, now the Maize Beck, before rejoining it. We then had a very gentle rise up to a low saddle,  until we suddenly emerged on the lip of High Cup Nick – a massive glacier-formed valley, ringed on three sides by steep cliffs and escarpments, with steep shingly slopes underneath descending to a narrow valley far below us. It was absolutely stunning and fair took our breath away! Worth every hour of the long walk to get there.

We sat for many minutes in the late afternoon sun, just admiring the view, before reluctantly setting off along the top of one escarpment, to begin our long descent to Dufton village and its YHA, our home for tonight, arriving at 6.15pm tired after a long day but very satisfied.

Distances: Saturday -26km, today 32km.

High Force:

Lunchtime!

High Cup Nick