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| Jake, the author and Pietro at the start of the trail. |
If you are of a basic-enough level of intelligence to plan this trail at a time when the weather is fair, when at the end of a long day you can rest your feet by a warm fire, enjoy a cold ale and lap up the kind hospitality of the Yorkies; then you are likely more clever than we were. Walking with good company brings talking about nature, aspirations, laughing at old times, sharing stories, reciting song lyrics. It is a time to think, a time to reflect. An opportunity to distance one's self from the pace and demands of city-life. T oconnect again with nature and realign with ones inner compass. The Dales Way is widely regarded as one of the least difficult trails in England with easy miles rolling by one can shed the skins of their city life and soak up the countryside. The Dales are beautiful for city-dwellers. There is low light pollution giving opportunity to the awe of the night sky. A gentle, rolling landscape. Dotted by sheep, and patterned by the vectors of stone walls separating grazing spaces. Locals run some of the finest pubs in the country with local ales and hearty hot food sourced from the surrounding farms.
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| Pietro, in front of some sushi. |
This was the first opportunity to take my Konica Hexar AF out since repurchasing one at the beginning of the year. Three years had passed since I let go of my last Hexar. For some years I had been trying to discover who I was and this left an abscess for photography where I formerly had drive. I had hoped it would find me again in life and if gaining a photography degree and marrying a photographer wasn't enough, I begin to feel the calling to make some images again as my life stabilised. Those years were densely built on new interactions and new experiences at the expense of stability and a sense of control. The balance shifted as a sense of self developed. The scans that are included in this post are the first I have taken in three years and mark the very start of my growing want to make photographs again.
Partnering the Konica with some Ilford Delta 3200 was something I did many times earlier in my life. The combination of a fast film speed with a quick-to-focus camera and a high quality and low-aperture lens makes this setup really good in low light. The Hexar AF is essentially a high end point and shoot camera. It allows the user to engage with the practices of photography further than most point and shoots on the market, allowing full manual operation, however the camera's operation is clearly centered around being fast, being quiet and being accurate. It holds an infrared focusing system making sharp judgements of distance by spot focusing in the centre of the lens. Although it's hard to take an out of focus photo with the Hexar, one must consider that it's metering does not work in the same way. The camera meters based on the whole scene, compensating for the highlights. Without harsh direct light the camera can meter and expose based on the highlights and produce a very flat range when using the fast-film approach in low light. Without bright scenarios, you are guaranteed to expose with a lot of information in the blacks, but with the compensation of a lack of overall contrast. The scans in this post are unedited as received from the lab and are a good reminder of just how the Hexar AF thinks and why pairing it with a super fast film speed can give very washed out results in certain conditions.
Nevertheless it is good to be back on the camera and the call to arms is only feeling stronger as time goes on. Hopefully many more photographs to be shared on here in the future. All my photographs from the trip can be seen here: day one, day two.
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Although this trip was an attempt at completing the trail and not a successful one, I can't point fingers at the trail, without considering that maybe those cold fingers should be pointed instead at ourselves.
I will take the liberty in saying much to my surprise our first mistake was deciding to walk the trail in the first week of May. The very same month associated with the end of spring-time and the start of summer-time. Warm weather, less precipitation means a good time in shorts, with a light pack. Take less food and water, resupply whilst passing through the many country villages filled with warm, cheery people, happy to see some young fellas enjoying their beautiful natural surroundings. One thing they say is that you can't predict the weather. Which is only true to some extent as some people predict the weather for us all and that's their jobs. No fingers pointed. They did their job well - a fortnight before leaving, we knew the forecast was predicted to be raining and cold with the possibility of snow and so we anticipated the trip to have it's share of adverse weather. We brought our rain kits, our extra socks and comforts for staying dry and warm at night. As a general principle with long distance hiking, one should hike in something like a trail-running shoe as opposed to something like hiking boots. The lighter weight of these shoes has three main benefits, (1) it makes them much easier to be carried by your feet and legs with repetitive days of high mileage, simply by hauling less weight per step. (2) It makes the shoe a much more breathable vessel by using materials that allow more air flow as opposed to more-durable materials like leather, this helps the shoe and your sock to dry out whilst being worn and walked in - as opposed to carrying and holding water once wet, like a traditional hiking shoe may do. (3) It can provide a more comfortable experience for your foot, complimenting natural movement of the toes, foot, ankle and so forth through the design of the running shoes to have wider toe boxes, zero drop, and ground feel for that real nature-feelin'! This is not a post to convince you to hike in trail running shoes - it is a trip report... one that might have you walking to the supermarket later with plastic bags between your socks and shoes and rightly so. In principle the trail-running shoes are an effective way to repetitively hike long distances. If you have a comfortable, lightweight shoe that will dry quickly and compliment this with the laundering and drying of one's socks (this can be done by attaching them to the outside of the pack to dry during the day whilst you walk) then you've got a pretty good system for having dry, clean feet day after day on the trail. The only assumption this theory makes is that the weather on your trip will give you enough dry and warm weather to balance out the wet-weather. Allowing your shoes to drain, your socks to dry and your feet to adjust. Here's why I point a finger at ourselves, for we knew the forecast leading up to the trip. I trusted blindly that the world would work itself out for us. That despite the forecast, we'd manage.
This leads me to the second finger I must point at ourselves. Similarly, this one also involves a lack of prior-consideration on our part. As Covid-19 restrictions were being eased throughout the country we did not consider when choosing the dates of our trip that outside services were all that would be offered from the pubs and cafes along the trail. This compounded on the previous problem, for had the weather been warm and dry then sitting outside in the evening at a quaint Yorkshire pub would have been the perfect reward for putting down long days on the trail. Sun over the landscape, it's generous touch warming your skin. A pint of Timmy Taylor's Landlord or a Guinness quenching your thirst. In your hand a Wensleydale cheese and chutney sandwich... or a local sausage bap if you're partial to eating sausage. When each village has only one pub and has to consider the current restrictions on service and spacing of patrons, they generally require reservations and it turns out the locals have also been waiting months for a cold pint. We found every pub fully booked for their limited outdoor seating. Scarcely with space for a couple of ramblers, we were shown to the 'back of the beer garden', or the 'table on the end'. Commonly the extremities of these areas aren't graced with the umbrellas, awnings or heaters that the locals (with reservations) are enjoying. Instead they are the neglected areas, suited to a few poor beggar boys, desperate for a plate of potatoes and something to calm the cold. If only we felt we payed for the hospitality that we anticipated in the Dales and didn't instead pay for wet seats, no heating and an unnerving feeling of being out of place. These locals weren't to blame. It is us who arrived disheveled with hiking gear and our rain clothing and a mix of accents. Sadly I felt we weren't perceived as being necessarily reliable patrons amongst the well-known locals and wealthy country-side-livers. We found ourselves after long days on the trail, looking very much forward to the comforts that a pub can bring, however it seems having your home on your back really does warrant being treated like a band of tramps from skid row.
Oh, my heart it is just achin'For a little bit of bacon
A hunk of bread, a little mug of brew
I'm tired of seein' scenery
Just lead me to a beanery
Where there's something more than only air to chew
- 'Bread' by Henry Herbert Knibbs, "Songs of the Outlands: Ballads of the Hoboes & Other Verse," Houghton, Mifflin 1914.
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The Craven Arms, Gateway to the Ales. End of first day, we had a cold beer outside in the cold. The Craven Arms was a mythological destination for us on the first day, offering a mirage of respite. Sadly the heated and covered tables were booked, but we managed to get that half-dry table with the open umbrella seen to the left of Pietro.
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| The author, amongst the frosted ground. More on this below! Photo by Jake W-L. |
The combination of truly terrible weather and the inability to seek relief indoors left us wet and cold. It was under these special circumstances that our systems failed us. First it was the long-distance principle of hiking in trail running shoes, without subsequent warm and dry weather we were unable to have warm or dry feet for much of the day. Camp ended up being quite wet. Overnight negative temperatures left us unable to put our feet into our socks in the morning. They managed to freeze in their mangled forms, hung from the inside of the tarp to 'dry' over night. Socks were the first issue, but also frozen in form were our trail running shoes. Much to Pietro and I's surprise who were sporting a popular brand called Altra, we found our shoes corpsely rigid in the morning as opposed to Jake's La Sportiva shoes which seemed to somehow resist this temporary fossilized state. As soon as we were out of our bags and packing up we were ice cold. After an hour or so my Altra shoes seemed to regain their softened selves and the laces once again became complicit with being tied. Without the sun on our backs for a significant portion of the day, we would inevitably be camping again with wet gear to get inside of and wet clothing to change into. This all seemed to compound quite quickly, on the second day.
Pietro had left us in the morning due to unhappy legs and Jake and I hiked the remainder of the day in the snow, hail and rain. We walked the final three hours along a slanted marshland, where the hailstones resting on the ground had melted and deposited a substantial amount of rain water into the hillside. We had walked much of the morning with wet feet from the frozen socks and shoes, only to dry out after ten or so miles in the morning sun, however the weather changed at lunch and we finished the day with sore knees, and very wet feet again. I hadn't any spares at this point as my clothes-line had come untied on my pack, releasing my other two pairs of socks from their drying rack, into the trail somewhere. Jake and I cooked on our cooking-system which you can read about in this post (link to come) and used the remainder of our water to cook our food. We went to bed prepared for the cold and prepared to hike through it in the morning to eat, dry and resupply at a town some miles from camp that Jake and Pietro had visited on their first attempt.
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| A red grouse in the grass. It was not a good day for the grouse. |
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| Also not a good day for Pietro. His mind was moving forward but his legs were not convinced. We asked some villagers for help to navigate Pietro back to Edinburgh. The Dales Way takes Pietro down, again. TDW - 03, us - 0 |
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| The MLD Trailstar pitched after the marshlands; these dense tufts of grass created small pockets of insulation underneath us. The Trailstar and the grass are covered in frost if you look closely enough. This gave a white shimmer to the landscape in the morning sun. We hoped the direct exposure from the rising sun would help to shake some of that frost. It didn't work. (Above right) A frozen sock, hanging in an attempt to dry overnight. |
The day before had felt like the start of a compounding snowball effect that eventually resulted in Jake and I pulling out of the trail. Making it attempt number two at The Dales Way. Loosing Pietro, whom we hadn't seen for many months beforehand, marked the start of the second day with the somber reality that things maybe weren't going to plan. The snowball grew from many hours of wet feet and being pelted by hail. When we left camp atop the marshland we headed for a very needed resupply along with hot breakfast and coffee, intending to buy some dry socks and plastic bags for emergency waterproofing, refill our now empty water supplies and then have a solid day of hiking towards the final stages of the trail. We arrived after an hour or so at a train station to be told we were still two hours hiking from our intended resupply point, a village that Jake and Pietro had visited on their first attempt. Jake remembered fondly the cafe-store selling breakfast, coffee, outdoor gear and general supplies. Without the energy to hike another six miles, we waited an hour for a train down to this town. The town was quiet. The cafe-store was closed, presumably until further Covid restrictions were eased, along with the village pub. The only relief being the national park toilets were open. We made the most of the facilities and slumped down in the sunshine.
We had no water, wet feet, and were many miles from the next potential resupply point. We spent some time waiting on the main road of the village, asking passers-by for advice on getting to and from various locations. We aimed to bunny-hop a bit on the bus, passing some trail-miles to get to the next point where we could resupply, which we designated to a market town called Kirkby Stephen. We waited another hour for a train back in the opposite direction (further along the trail this time) and then walked the half hour from the train station of Kirkby Stephen into town. We motored in, being mostly downhill and delirium starting to sink in from lack of food and water, cold feet, and all the walking. The rain kicked in pretty quickly after, as we sat out the front of the only 'bistro' open. The bistro of course had no outdoor heating. We ordered a pint, and some lunch and watched the rain hammer down over the main street of the town. Although we had spoken about the amount of discomfort that being cold and wet brings, it was then we agreed we hadn't enjoyed ourselves really at all since Pietro had left the morning before. In a moment of heavy rain, dark skies and cold wind we made a decision to head back to the station after our pint and make our way back to London. We made it to Cumbria, so in technicality we made it out of Yorkshire, but Kirkby Stephen was as far as Jake and I could manage.
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| "If you don't like the weather, wait half an hour... If you like the weather, wait half an hour." - Jake, on hiking in the Dales. |
It's easier to blame the trail for all of this. This was not the trip we wanted, wearing shorts and t-shirts and motoring the miles down to be rewarded with a cold pint at the end of the day. It was deeply difficult to enjoy being out there, a true testament to the basic human need of warmth. A valuable lesson learnt and sometimes they just have to be learnt the hard way. Willpower had lost the battle. The trail had got the better of all three of us. It seemed that having good intentions, capable bodies, good gear and determination is sometimes not enough and that it's a good idea to plan your hikes with a consideration of the predicted weather forecast. Push it back a few weeks if you can. Next time we know what extra things to pack to make those frosted mornings more bearable and that without having the prospect of thawing your feet out by a wood-fire at the end of the day, it is really a difficult experience to enjoy. It was not the trip we wanted to have, but it was the trip that we got. I am not yet at the place where I can remember just the joyous parts of the trip, however I hope they begin to swell in my memory and displace the difficulties we faced. I also hope to forget the feeling of inconvenience we put upon many of the pub-owners of whom we looked to for some respite. I trust there's something in the trip that holds valuable. It's good to be out walking. Seeing new places. Learning about the land, the history, your companions. As always it's time to think and reconnect. If you're lucky enough to do that with others too, to share that journey and those conversations, it's a surefire way to feel alive. Although I am not a tramp, a vagabond, a rambler, there's something within the life on the road that is endearing and valuable to me in my time and context. I think vagabond and author Jim Tully wrote it well in his autobiography Beggars Of Life, 1924. He said -
"Tramping wild and windy places, without money, food or shelter, was better for me then supinely bowing to any conventional decree of fate. The road gave me one jewel beyond price, the leisure to read and dream... voices calling in the night from far away places."
"Beggars Of Life" - Jim Tully, 1924
The Dales Way is not a bad place, it's not the barren disaster that we experienced and I don't discourage you from going out and walking it yourself. Take my advice and go at it when the weather is good - this is not an accommodating trail for cold and wet weather. I'm not sure if we'll be back for the third attempt. I think that Pietro and Jake will be determined to break the curse and I could reconsider a new attempt in better weather. There was a real edge to Pietro and Jake having experienced the first half of the trail before. Some pre-programming if you will. Some ideas about where to stop, what to expect. If we do try the trail again and we're lucky (or smart) enough to get some good weather, then I think the trip we had in mind is still a possible and plausible trip. I've pointed the fingers of blame mostly at ourselves and maybe one at the local hospitality and one at the atmospheric effects of Earth but at the end of it all... I think we simply got unlucky.
The trail is not breathtaking, the landscape not unlike others, but their is a merit to being there and there is a merit to enjoying what the area has to offer. I can imagine putting the miles down in shorts and a tshirt, enjoying a cold pint at the pubs and this trail actually being a deeply enjoyable experience. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger, but sometimes you do wish it would just kill you instead. I've been lucky enough to do most of my trips in decent weather. It's not to say it can't be done, but sometimes you just have to learn those lessons the hard way. Until next time TDW!
More photographs to be seen from my posts:
⟿ The Dales (Cursed) Way in Photographs, First Day
⟿ The Dales (Cursed) Way in Photographs, Second Day
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