Fay & Ben were tackling this months scheduled challenge, walking round the Yorkshire 3 Peaks, starting and finishing in Ingleton. This Y3P route is a massive 5 miles longer than the traditional route.
Meeting outside Ingleton Community Centre, we started at 6:30am on Wednesday Morning. The forecast was reasonable up until around 5pm. Now that was motivation to get round this nearly 30 mile route in good time.
Spirits are high, the forecast is great, low winds, sunny with some cloud and about 10degrees on the peaks and 20degrees in the valleys. Blessed are we today.
Sam is in the Support Vehicle, bags are all loaded on board. Food, grub, water and motivation by the bucket load.
Ingleborough tick. Great start and we are in Horton for 3hrs. A determined effort. The café may not be open, but the SAAIGOutdoors van has brewed up coffee and Tea for us all.
The journey up Pen y Ghent was equally as swift.
The slog to Ribblehead. The temperature rose a little and spirits were still high. energy sapping “slog”.
Another break at the van, we’d got this far in 7hrs 45mins, a great effort and a worthwhile break was had. More tea and coffee, plus banana bread fuel.
I had noticed that both Ben and Fay had taken on less food in the last couple of hours than I would have liked. It is critical to keep that drip-drip-drip of carbohydrate, protein and other good “stuffs” going into you.
We set off for the Viaduct and Whernside. Then the long descent to Ingleton. Thankfully all downhill by that point.
Things started to slow, all my tricks and tactics for getting fuel into our challengers were being met with ‘glee-faced’ “no thankyou”.
Things started to slow a little and the weather looked to be drawing in, but onwards and upwards. One bridge at a time.
The fluids were still being taken on board, the summit drew closer. We’d done it, 3 peaks summited.
As we left the relative shelter of Whernsides seating, the rain began to fall, the clouds came in and all of a sudden, we were pulling rainproof tops from our bags. visibility was down to less than 100 metres. A spare pair of my gloves were passed to Fay, although making her hands look anything other than petite, they were warm. Happy days.
we walked down the backbone of Whernside towards Beezley stepping stones, for what seemed like an eternity. In actual fact it was a couple of hours!
The rain finally withdrew, along with the clouds, once we reached the top of the waterfall walk.
A quick hop over the Beezley stepping stones and past the Quarry, through Storrs common and we were walking back into the Community centre car park. Well done Fay and Ben. 12hrs 45mins, of total commitment and enjoyment.
Your company was thoroughly enjoyable and we hope to see you again soon in the Dales.
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