Mayday Exertions

To warm up for TT, Hollie and I thought we'd have a crack at the Yorkshire 3 Peaks Challenge - a 26 mile walk, covering three mountains (Pen Y Ghent, Whernside and Ingleborough) and taking in some of the finest scenery in the Dales.

We set off at 7:10am and made great progress towards the top of Pen Y Ghent past a veritable army of other walkers, mainly for a charity I'd never heard of called 'SEWA'.

Making good time, we hit the top of our first peak after 1hour and 23 minutes - good going so far!!

Not wanting to stop for long, we started off towards the Ribblehead Viaduct and Whernside beyond. In past attempts at this challenge, there has always been a bit where your feet are almost guaranteed to get wet, but after weeks of very little rainfall, the ground was more spongey than muddy!

We made great progress, and arrived at Ribblehead around 11:20am

We reached about halfway up Whernside, where the ridge startes, when we suddenly plunged into a howling gale. Never experienced wind like it, so it was exciting to me, but Hollie just wanted to get to the top and go down!

Awesome scenery, awesome weather! From the top of Whernside, which we reached at around the 6 hour mark , you could clearly see The Irish Sea and many of the lake district peaks including Scafell Pike! We then set off to Ingleborough, our last peak of the day, with it's distinctive flat top...

Ingleborough always seems to look scary and I really started to struggle up the zigzags, having to stop and rest a couple of times! As we neared the top, we were exposed to the wind again, which must have been at least 60mph! Great care was necessary as we moved up the last bit to avoid being blown over and landing on the jagged rocks, which is where Hollie cut her hand!

We made it to the top of this, our final peak, after 8 hours and began the long descent back to Horton, and the Pen Y Ghent Cafe, where our challenge began. The view from the top of Ingleborough was superb and we could see the sun shining off the Irish Sea as seen in the pic below where Hollie is touching the trig point.

After a very long walk, with Hollie and I both in pain from various minor injuries, we managed to get back to Horton in a very respectable 11 hours and 15 minutes, leaving us a full 45 minutes spare (The challenge is to complete the route in 12 hours!).

A truly heroic effort from Hollie and she deserves much respect having never tackled a walk like this before! I hope it stands us in good stead for Trailtrekker in a month's time!!