Скачать или смотреть Back to the Pennine Bridleway - Day 4

This was a sort of in between day - in between the Brontë's Moors and the Yorkshire Dales, although the route did penetrate into the southern part of the Dales. Even the weather was in between – in between really good and not really good!

The day began with quite a somber feeling, brought about by the dull grey weather and the rather dull scenery.

I should really backtrack on the titles which I have given to the first three sections. The Dull Valley wasn't much of a valley and it was only dull by comparison to other parts of the Pennine bridleway; if I could have scenery like that within a few miles of my home it would be a ride I would do regularly. The Cold Hill wasn't really cold – it was just so windy that we didn't want to hang around in our sweaty clothes on the summit without any sunshine to keep us warm. Finally the Gut-busting Climb was less severe than several others on the Pennine Bridleway but it was the worst on this day and it was more exhausting for me because I was trying to go a bit faster. As for the Really Nice section (section 4), I'm not going to backtrack on that name at all - it was just that, and I'd recommend it to people on other routes that use the road through Austwick like the Pennine Cycleway and the Way of the Roses.

I did not take lightly the decision to follow the diversion from the main route after Paythorne. On the previous day we had stuck to the official route and encountered some sections that were quite hard to get through and where nettles (now very tall and inclined to flop over) threatened to engulf the path. After all the dry weather this year the off-road route might have been passable but to try and then fail to get through would have been very time consuming. The recommendation in the book seemed to be quite a strong one!

In Settle I was looking forward to taking Jay to the Old Naked Man cafe but the town center was very crowded and Jay preferred the quiet, car-free and picturesque backstreets. We found a small, quiet cafe which also allowed us to charge our phones and powerbanks. It was striking and sad to see how the visual appeal of this old town was defaced by the large number of cars parked in the center and in many of the otherwise attractive streets. That's just what the modern world is like!

Jay suggested that I should go on ahead after Settle because I had been doing quite a bit of waiting for him at gates, on summits and the like. I didn't mind waiting (also known as "resting") and I liked his company but I was aware that it would be very challenging for him to fit in both off-road loops during the time we had available and I still wanted to do them. We had previously had several conversations about where Jay should go and it was already more or less decided that he would stop following the Pennine bridleway tomorrow but that I would continue to do so - so separating this afternoon fitted in with that.

We had a very nice and comfortable evening at Silloff House Campsite. It was a very fine way to end our enjoyable partnership on the Pennine Bridleway.

Now, a note about the statistics (speed, time, distance, height gained etc) on my rides:

I usually have two sources for this data:

1- a phone app called Zeopoxa

2 - my Garmin navigation device.

These two sources often provide very different data. I usually quote data from the phone app because I think that gives a better impression of what the ride was like. On this occasion there had been a malfunction with the app (probably caused by me not turning it on!) so I have quoted the data from the Garmin.

The phone app tends to overestimate the time taken (and therefore give a lower speed) because it only pauses when it is sure I have stopped and in order to detect this it needs a good GPS signal. The Garmin tends to underestimate both the time taken and the distance traveled because it decides that I have paused if my speed is less than about six miles per hour – which it often is when I am riding or pushing in hilly country; this results in a higher average speed which ignores my sow pushing. They can't even agree on the height gained which may have something to do with the frequency of GPS measurements by the hardware but may also be a result of the Garmin not recording all of my slow climbs. Technology - doesn't it make simple things complicated?

Ok, this was a good day with nice memories! Thank you for watching, I hope you've enjoyed it, and thank you for reading all my waffle!