Who'll Stop the Rain?

Day Six: Malham to Horton in Ribblesdale, 14.5 miles

Long as I remember the rain been coming down
Clouds of myst'ry pouring confusion on the ground
Good men through the ages, trying to find the sun
And I wonder, still I wonder, who'll stop the rain?
~Credence Clearwater Revival

So, seriously, it still is raining along the Pennine Way.  Today, we didn't even take our cameras out of our packs.  We set out from Malham in a drizzle that turned to light rain as we tread the 400 stone steps to reach the top of Malham Cove, a majestic natural limestone amphitheater.  Thank goodness someone else got a good shot on a sunny day, so you can see the Cove in all its grandeur (and so can we ;-).

The experience along the top of the Cove was a combination of navigation and balance beam workout as we maneuvered along the slick channeled limestone before setting off to the two tough climbs today: Fountain Fell and the infamous Pen-y-Ghent (the lowest of the three peaks of Yorkshire -- site of many running, walking and cyclo-cross events).

It was a fast-walking day (due to weather) during which we ate lunch on the route (while walking that is).  The idea of standing and eating a sandwich in the cold and the rain is incredibly unappealing.  The highlight of the day was watching two modern day sheep herders on ATVs with their clever working dogs riding on platforms just behind them.  At regular intervals the shepherds drove wide patterns and directed their dogs off the platforms to channel virtual rivers (all my imagery is watery right now) of sheep through narrow cuts in the stone walls.  It was fascinating -- and had our hands been working properly (not frozen from the wet and the cold), we may have attempted a video.  For now, you'll have to simply imagine the scene of ATV's buzzing along rolling boggy terrain up and down the ridges, dogs balancing like pros atop their motorized surfboards, then outrunning the ATVs at times once on the ground.  We've decided we may like to be proper English sheep farmers just so that we too can have really cool surfboarding dogs.

For the last challenge of the day, the walk up Pen-y-Ghent, (thanks to being earlier in the day) was clear, but very windy.  With winds gusting at 40+ MPH it was more than once that I found myself clinging to the slippery stone path in pockets to keep from being blown off the side of the mountain (ok, this is no doubt an exaggeration on my part -- but it was a bit harrowing).  When we reached the summit at 2,277 feet, we scooted straight across the peak to begin our long descent as the mist swirled in to cover the top of the mountain.

We reached the village, Horton in Ribblesdale, by 3:15 in the afternoon (a 6.25 hour day) -- glad to take hot showers and get dry!

Again, a photo shot by someone who saw the feature (Pen-y-Ghent) in the sunshine.

Horton in Ribblesdale -- a small and quirky village that seems to thrive on the attraction of the Three Peaks.