Day 71 A Day of Waterfalls and Tan Hill Inn

Today we ended up at the highest pub in Great Britain. Unfortunately, that meant quite a lot of height to be gained in the course of the day so I’m rather tired now.

After an early breakfast with Brenda, I met Graham as planned (he had been detailed to provide lunch from the Spar shop) and we started our long day over Great Shunner Fell through Thwaite to Tan Hill.

First however, we visited Hardraw (har pronounced as in hawthorn not as in hard) Force, England’s highest single drop waterfall. You reach it through the grounds of a pub, and it is set in nicely maintained grounds, with picnic tables, and a coffee shop. You could stay there all day, and for a moment, even several moments, we were tempted.

Being made of stern stuff we eschewed the flesh pots, or at least the cakes, of Hardraw, and pausing only to chat to a dry stone waller about his craft, we turned uphill. We could see the path ahead of us for quite some way, ever upward but at least the gradient was gentle.There were a lot of people today, I’m not really sure why. And there were also more wild raspberries.

We walked up and up, admiring the cairns we passed and being thankful for the flagstoned paths.

They helped us keep our speed up until we reached Great Shunner Fell, 716 metres above sea level. There is a cross-shaped cairn at the top, with seats, but it was pretty full with a lot of people having lunch. It turns out that walking to the top is a popular day walk which explains the number of people.

It was too early for lunch for us so we wended our way downhill into the village of Thwaite. We could see a bench but there were two young lads on it. They very politely got up and said they were just leaving as they were walking to Tan Hill. We wished them well and sat down to eat our sandwiches. Immediately we were the centre of attention of the local sparrows who had clearly learnt that people sitting down meant food. We dropped crumbs for them, watching them squabble.

Thwaite also possesses a tea shop so after our Spar sandwiches we had an espresso (Graham) and a cup of tea (me) and some cake.

We were feeling pretty good post-lunch, ready for our walk to near Keld. The guidebook says Traverse boulder scree…some parts are still uneven underfoot. Too right. It was a slow and uncomfortable experience contouring our way round the hill. Some parts were laid waste by rabbit warrens-no vegetation at all- and some parts were just larger scree, but at least there was a path. Our excitement at the end of it was seeing the Air Ambulance land, the terrestrial ambulance was also around. They were still there as we left the village.

The highlight though, was the waterfall. The stream (River Swale I think) was very pretty and as we bypassed Keld we came upon the waterfall

We knew now that we only had a few miles to do before reaching Tan Hill. Yes, it was uphill, yes there were showers around, yes there were old mineshafts not to fall down but the path was good, the gradient gentle and we didn’t have our packs today.

We kept on, and on, we could hear thunder, we couldn’t see Tan Hill. We accelerated (only a bit, we’d done over fifteen miles by this time) and eventually, seventeen miles in we saw Tan Hill. Lit up and sparkling, it looked great although still quite far away.

As we arrived, someone waved to me from his car-it was Chris, the fourth man of the three camping lads. They had had a day off in Malham so hadn’t speeded ahead of me. They had got very wet putting up their tents in the rain. We had avoided the showers until, barely five minutes later, as we were putting up our tents there was a short sharp shower and we were attacked by midges. It wasn’t very nice. Still, we headed for the pub, ordered our drinks and a meal, and sat cosily in the back bar until we judged it was late enough to turn in.