I Think We're Alone Now

I think we're alone now
There doesn't seem to be anyone around
I think we're alone now
The beating of our hearts is the only sound
~Tommy James and the Shondells

Day Eleven, Bowes to high Force, 17.9 miles

The quietest of days are upon us now on the trail.  All of our early walking company is gone: Nigel decided to head home from Malham (yet to complete his sixth full circuit and choosing to return in better weather) Chris and Sam (father and son) departed after completing the southern leg of the walk at Horton-in-Ribblesdale, Judith and Nigel (different Nigel) said goodbye as they moved forward when we took a break day in Hawes.  Since then, it's our trail chatter (or truly, just the sound of our pounding hearts on a trail interval day like today).  We think of days like this as a  hamster-wheel pattern; that is up-up-up, then a breather on the downhill before we're up again.  Ah, but we're never really alone, thanks to the sheep 😉.

Quiet Trail

We're finding the Pennine Trail far different from our Coast-to-Coast walk at least in part because we see so few walkers out on the trail.  The Coast-to-Coast seems a bustling byway of walkers in comparison.  The Pennine Way also is not as well-maintained or marked in many areas (while the C2C misses signage in the Lake District, it is quite evident beyond -- and even in the Lakes, walkers often can follow fresh trails, if not the walkers ahead).  On the Pennine, many trails are thin or vague through vast open expanses (as was our experience today).  So, it may be of interest to know how we manage.  We walk with one map each -- I have a Harvey 1:40,000 trail map and Cliff has an annotated Grieg Map).  We also each carry a GPS loaded with the country map, overlaid with more than 300 waypoints that Cliff manually entered and a "breadcrumb" trail from Paddy Dillon.  To give us even more perspective, we set our GPSs on different resolutions: Cliff's is at a higher resolution to catch every turn and I track at a lower resolution to give us a bird's eye view of what is to come.  All together, this system is serving us well. 

Above Blakton Reservoir

Low Force Falls

Tonight we're perched just below the 70 foot High Force Falls on the River Tees.  Alone together and well.