Trans Pennine Trail

Trans Pennine Trail 2011

Friday 1st July to Sunday 3rd July

Shortly afterwards, we crossed over a bridge, as you can see.

Somewhere around this point we went past the Earth Centre, but unfortunately it was closed (not that we would have stopped there, of course).

The memory I have from this is Doylie asking me if this was definitely the way. I had to laugh since this was pretty much the biggest sign we had encountered along the entire journey. I guess it didn't say Southport. But it was the right way. This shot was at about 2.30pm, i.e. five and a half hours in.

There follows a gap of about two hours in the photos, so bear with me while I try to piece together the events. We had a choice of routes when we reached Brampton, and we took the northern route since it looked less complicated. It headed towards Barnsley and we had to pay attention for a sign sending us west since we did not want to end up in Barnsley. At this point, we were travelling almost exclusively along trails and off-road pathways. At one point, we came to a road which needed to be crossed, which I think was near Silkstone Common looking at the map, and it was at this point that Tom went his separate ways, rightly fearing the more uneven nature of the rest of the day's route. It turned out that we would not cycle with him again on this tour, but more of that later.

There then followed some pretty steep forest trails which were bumpy and narrow, firstly a long way up as we moved to avoid cyclists coming the other way, then some downward sections, then uphill again. It was pretty hard going. We then came to a small split which gave us the choice of two routes. We chose the uphill route with the thinking that we should get it out of the way first. There was twisted logic in there.

This was some of the scenery around that time - we could see the evil Pennines in the distance.

More hills to look forward to. It was pretty scenic but we didn't care much. We'd been cycling for nearly 8 hours.

The photo below is reminiscent of the type of route we were on as we accidentally passed through Penistone (or Penis Town as we occasionally called it), but is . Andy and Phil sent a relentless pace at the front (to me anyway), Gaz hovered somewhere in the middle, Doylie a little behind him and me off the back (I knew from my training experience that if I pushed it too much more I would suffer for it - we had the main hills yet to come).

We were all tired but I was exhausted, out of food, almost out of water, and trying to find a shop. The trail was raised went through the Penistone so it didn't spring upon us as we thought it might; however, I began to see the warning signs when I saw maps on the trail for the town of Penistone. I asked a couple of passers-by and they told me of a nearby Tesco. We had not refuelled since Bentley, which was around three or four hours before, and past Penistone there was nowhere we could stock up until we reached our destination.

My slowing down to speak to locals only compounded the distance between me and everyone else. I tried yelling but they couldn't hear me; eventually, I got Doylie's attention who dropped back to chat, but that just meant he was as far back as me. He went ahead to pass on the message but by that point it was too late; we'd missed Penistone by about a mile. We weren't riding as much as a team as I'd have liked, and it wasn't much fun chasing dots. It spilled over when they finally waited for me as I vented my frustration and Gaz got a bit exasperated in return. But reunited, we carried on with our relentless challenge.

In the shot below, they had let me catch up and, indeed, I was in front, only getting that far ahead due to not braking immediately when I realised people were stopping. We were waiting for someone to make a phone call - Phil, I think.

Anyway, we continued on, a little closer together (which did please me) and came to this sign, which spelt trouble. Mainly because the TPT map referred to the short climb to Woodhead Tunnels being rewarded by a long downhill to Dunford Bridge. Sounds good, except we were effectively doing it in reverse. So we had a long uphill from Dunford Bridge. Couldn't be that steep, though, could it?

Erm, yes. The best way to see how steep the road was is to look at the wall to the left of the road. That is some angle. I looked on in shock (and took a photo) as Phil powered off (he loves his hills), with Andy following Gaz. We were soon down into our lowest gears (bottom gear for me). The first bit was pretty much the steepest - Gaz got off to walk near the top of the mini-climb. I refused to walk, but I did stop for a breather at that particular point.

After making it up that initial slope, I looked back. It somehow didn't look as steep.

Still, all this enabled some great views.

A bit further up and I looked back again. It began to look like we had become far. Around this point we stopped for another breather. Phil called the owner of Hiker and Bikers, who reassured us that there were only 25 minutes to go, and that it was "all downhill" once we got to top of this road. That reassured us naturally; however, as it turned out, that would only have been true if at least one of the following held (and possibly more): 1. We went the right way, 2. We travelled only by road, 3. We had a car.

Hmm, still a bit to go then. That's Andy way on ahead, and Doylie a little behind him. So where are Phil and Gaz...?

Aha, there they are. They had decided to walk the rest. I was again determined not to do the same, although there was a fairly comical moment as I slowly overtook them whilst in the bottom gear, going slightly quicker than walking pace. Soon the road levelled off and enabled some slightly quicker speeds.

We took comfort from the fact that the surrounding hills were no higher than the one we were on (broadly speaking), so it could only be downhill from here, right?

Suspiciously, the terrain became increasingly less well-defined. But how can we have gone the wrong way? We'd missed no signs.

I can't exactly say that we were making smooth progress, but we were at least getting somewhere. Until we came across a group of bulls and cows on our path. We spent the best part of five minutes debating what to do next, but none of us had the guts or energy to charge them (there were massive bulls, for chrissakes!), so that meant only one thing...

We had to take the low road. I say "road", I of course mean a field full of thistles and cow pats. Over nine hours into our day and we didn't know whether to laugh or cry at the surreal nature of it all.

We tried to work out how far we had to go. Looking at the map, there were three reservoirs yet to pass, and those were still, rather depressingly, in the distance. We were absolutely shattered by this point. I could no longer generate saliva, having long since run out of water (I think a similar story was true of the other four). After this, we had a number of very rocky descents, which Doylie revelled in, but the rest of us struggled with holding on to the brakes since we were so tired. A telling moment of our mental degradation was, having hurtled down one such hill, we were greeted with yet another uphill stretch. Gaz's expletive echoed round the hills. He was a broken man. As we have established (at length), I was already gone so I was less prone to such emotion by that point. It was just a case of pedal, pedal, pedal. The distance was only finite.

We crossed over a road, tempted by it as we were, for some rocky off-road terrain, but eventually got to a point where we didn't know where to go. We could see that the trail was on the left side of the reservoirs, but we were on the right side. Somehow, we had missed the turning for this. So we decided to hop on the road, cross the reservoirs, and get back on track. It was a bit hairy at times, particularly when a motorbike hurtled past at 50-60 mph, but we were soon on the traffic-free trail again. Pleasingly, it was a long (long) shallow descent which we made decent pace along.

And suddenly we were there. The trail emptied into Hadfield and after a bit of confusion, we found our destination. Tom was already there, of course, having taken the road route (and having shared alcohol and war stories with the Hikers and Bikers owner). We were completely gone - and Andy wanted a pint. I headed up to the room, downed several small glasses of tap water, and then lay on the bed, waiting for the pain to stop.

Eventually, we summoned the energy to go for a Chinese. I made a decision to avoid alcohol given that we had another hard day again and I did not want to feel as I had done on the second day. Every little helps. The rest of the boys went to watch the fight (Haye vs Klitschko) - which was, I understand, a bit of a disappointed - but all I wanted to do was lie down. The room was far too warm to sleep yet, and the locals were still revelling on a Saturday night outside, but that was fine.

Here is our place for the night, Hikers and Bikers above the Café Royston. This is taken from the following morning but you're not to know that...

The fourth and final page can be found here.