Skipton to Ribbleshead 32 Miles - 27th April 2013

Just me and James again today.  Joel was supporting the Yorkshire 3 Peaks fell race and Jez was making his way up North to tackle the West Highland Way challenge!

Having spent two weeks travelling around sunny Cuba I wasn't particular ready for this and I was also suffering from a lower back injury but we needed the training so we went ahead with the route from Skipton to Gargrave onto Malham, up Fountains Fell down to Horton and onto Ribbleshead (the toughest part of the Trailtrekker route!!).

The weather couldn't make up it's mind today, it started with some drizzle and sun, creating a rainbow along Skipton canal but we had warm temperatures.

Rainbow over Skipton Canal

The sun soon stayed out and we had another glorious day for most part of route.  We reached Malham in 3.5 hours which was pretty good time for 12 miles and we were both still feeling quite fresh and spritely, so after a spot of lunch we pushed on past Malham tarn and up Fountains Fell at speed.

This might have been a mistake as we started to get very tired, my hip started really aching and putting load on my right leg really hurt so going uphill was not welcoming.  It also clouded over and started throwing little pellets of ice which actually really hurt when it hit you in the face so our spirits were a little dampened at this point!  But, we ploughed on....

By the time we reached Horton we had almost decided we weren't going to make the last 6 mile stretch to Ribbleshead, because our pace had dropped considerably the last mile or two from the bottom of Pen y Ghent down to Horton due to my hip and unless we picked up pace we would miss our train back from Ribbleshead to Skipton.

We were determined to do this though, so after a break we took to the route again and soldiered on and got to our train with 15 minutes spare!!!  We'd been walking for nearly 12 hours.  Needless to say it felt wonderful being able to put our feet up on the train but agony kicked in when it was time to get up and I was literally hunched over shuffling out of Skipton train station holding onto my hip!!!

Hopefully this was a one off, and the lessons learned were to make use of the regular breaks and pace ourselves sensibly but we did ourselves proud today completing a mammoth 32 mile trek!  James was a great support.

The next one will be the 38 mile night walk.... GULP!