The Three Peaks

25 miles and 5,000ft of climb in 12 hours? Hmmmm...


The start and (left) the finish. In about 12 hours we can have a pint...

I had been meaning to do the Yorkshire Three Peaks for years - and I mean years. I'd done two in a day several times in varying combinations but never the Full Monty. I always seemed to have the fitness but not the time, or the time but not the fitness. All in all it was a study in procrastination, and when the late opportunity of some September leave presented itself, which would be only a mere three weeks after completing Hadrian's Wall (which would be a good - though not ideal - training exercise), I grabbed it. It was now or never... Saturday, 20th September 2008 would be the day.


Danny and I had spent the previous Wednesday warming up with a low-level 10-mile walk around Clapham and Austwick, then on the Thursday meeting with Phil in Settle we did a 14-mile walk to Malham and back. Friday would be a rest day of sorts, but there was something that we needed to do in the morning first. I was familiar with most of the route, apart from the section between Pen-Y-Gent and Ribblehead. This is one of the trickiest parts of the route because of Black Dub Moss, a notorious peat bog stretching for nearly two miles towards High Birkwith and firmer ground.


St Oswald's church, Horton-In-Ribblesdale


Crossing it would be a tiring, slow and foot-wetting experience at the end of a normal summer, but after almost two months of near-perpetual rain it promised to be even worse. We, however, had a cunning plan...more of which later.

Pen-Y-Gent (2,276 ft) in the morning mist

Danny, Debbie, Phil and I set off in the breaking dawn light at 6.30am from our quarters at The Golden Lion in Settle. Our plan was to meet Lesley and Dan (who had decided to camp at the start point of Horton-In-Ribblesdale) at the village's famous Pen-Y-Gent cafe for a 7am start. We arrived at 6.55am, but there was no sign of them. The normally tranquil village had the atmosphere of Daytona Beach at Spring Break - literally hundreds of (mostly young) boisterous people putting on their boots and rucksacks at their cars or on the campsite, an almost surreal sight given the hour.

Eventually we located a rather hassled Lesley outside Horton's Golden Lion pub, where she and Dan were to spend the Saturday night. Her car had been boxed in at the campsite and she'd only just been able to move it, this on top of a night of virtually nil sleep due to the "C**** on the campsite" as she put it, who after a long and raucous night had seemingly decided to eschew any form of sleep and simply head out on the walk. Ahhh, youth...

Lesley, Dan and Debbie take a breather (photo: Danny Goh)

We finally got under way at 7.20am, and headed for Pen-Y-Gent through the morning mist. Initially we going at a cracking pace which I immediately knew we would never be able to keep up. With so many groups, everybody was trying to create their own bit of space by speeding up but this was neutered by a significant number who were simply going fast to show off. It was going to take a long time for the field to thin out.

Ingleborough, the final peak, from halfway up Pen-Y-Gent. Still over 8 hours away...

Fog at the bottom of Ribblesdale

The masses making their way up

Debbie marches on towards the rising sun

The final climb up the first peak

The last bit

Debbie at the top

We reached the trig point on Pen-Y-Gent after only an hour and a quarter, which was fairly good going - if we were going to do the walk in under 12 hours then we were most definitely on schedule. But it was early days still - we might have managed to bag one of the peaks already but we'd only notched up two and a half miles. It was a long, wearing way now to Whernside - but this was where our cunning plan came in. Rather than a slow, squelchy trudge across the notorious Black Dub Moss, on our reccy the day before we had found a shortcut from Tarn Bar, close to Hull Pot on the Pennine Way, to the Ribble Way, a little-used route further down into the Ribble Valley. Although it would add half a mile to our journey it promised relatively firm going, dry feet and a break (for a while at least) from the increasingly irritating and chavvy behaviour of some of the other groups.

The descent from Pen-Y-Gent

The masses make their way across Black Dub Moss. We had other ideas...

Video: The start and Pen-Y-Gent

Along the Ribble Way - and a difficult descent for Lesley

Although there were a few muddy bits along the Ribble Way caused by cattle, we made good progress - only an awkward beck valley held us up significantly. We met with the main route again at Birkwith. By this point according to my GPS we had done 7.4 miles, according to the GPS of one of the groups we came across they had done 6.8 miles by the same point. The detour had cost us half a mile but no time (the group in question had summited Pen-Y-Gent with us), but had saved us a great deal of effort across a bog and ensured we still had dry feet - result!

Ribblehead. Food!

We reached Ribblehead at noon - still making good time. It was extraordinarily busy with cars and people, even allowing for the rescue vehicles groups position here (many of those that had started looked the worse for wear and would choose this opportunity to retire). The field was now beginning to thin out considerably.

Video: Along the Ribble Way and Ribblehead:

The famous Ribblehead Viaduct


Long train comin'...


As we walked from under Ribblehead Viaduct towards Whernside the reason for the large number of vehicles became clear - there were literally dozens of people positioned all around with cameras on tripods - big, professional cameras and also video cameras of a similar ilk. Apparently a steam train was due in about two minutes, an extremely fortuitous coincidence. On turning around we could see the smoke trail in the distance. A train in the burgundy livery of the London, Midland and Scottish railway (who, appropriately, ran this Settle-Carlisle line until 1948 when the railways were nationalised) thundered by. Not many photos as I was filming - see the video clip below!



Tarn on Greensett Moss


Atop Whernside (2,415ft) L-R - Phil, Danny, Debbie, Lesley, Dan

And so onto the last one...

Ice-cold pints of orange squash at Philpin were extremely welcome

Video: Steam Train & Whernside

We reached the top of Whernside at 2.15pm, still bang on the money for our 12-hour target. If we could get to the top of Ingleborough by 5pm, then we would be almost certain to achieve this, with only a 5-mile, 2-hour downhill walk to Horton-In-Ribblesdale after that.

After a wearing, steep descent from Whernside we stopped at Philpin where the farm runs a refreshment stall. I downed a very welcome pint of iced orange squash, then set off up the hill towards Chapel-le-Dale. As we walked up the long, steady incline towards the foot of Ingleborough proper I began to find the going very hard and began to fall behind the others. I began to shuffle rather than walk, and my rucksack began to feel very heavy - almost to the point I felt it was pulling me over backwards, trying to bend me double. I tried putting more effort in but there was nothing there, almost akin to pressing down on the accelerator on a car but the rev counter slowly going down. I shuffled up to the bottom of the steep climb that awaited us up Ingleborough - best described as its North East Face or wall, a slightly meandering, fairly rocky scramble gaining you 700 feet of altitude and leaving a comparitively gentle ascent of 300 feet to the top. The others had already been there for five minutes and were getting up to begin the climb, along with the other groups we'd been running with almost from the beginning.

Towards Ingleborough (2,373 ft) - and my batteries were running low

Ingleborough: the north-east wall. 700 feet from bottom to top, then a further 300 to the summit. (photo: Danny Goh)

I got my walking poles out - time to deploy all the weapons in my armoury. I extended them, then gripped them - there was no strength in my arms. I felt trembly, and a feeling of hunger began to rise in my stomach. I recognised the symptoms -I was hypoglycaemic, that state of low blood-sugar level referred to by Marathon runners as "Hitting the wall". It normally affects such runners at around the 18-mile mark - a look at my GPS showed 19 miles. I still had some food in my rucksack, but the vast quantities of liquid I was consuming combined with intense exercise had supressed my appetite. My fault - I should have forced it down. I was now alone looking up at the line of people snaking their way up the mountainside. The front runners would soon disappear from sight over the crest. I had a packet of dextrose sweets that I'd bought from the Pen-Y-Gent Cafe after our reccy the day before, I dug them out and ate half of them. The last of the climbers were now making their way up to the crest. I was alone in silence. This was without doubt the low point of the walk, despair beginning to rise at my condition and the feeling of abandonment making things even worse. What to do? I didn't want to give up, but could I make it up there? How could I let the others know how I was anyway? I felt certain that if I could just get up this bit I could do the rest. I looked back down towards Chapel-le-Dale - the next batch of groups were about half a mile away slowly making their way up. I gripped my poles, and moved towards the slope.

The steep climb

The dextrose sweets had some effect, though not too dramatic. The poles were making the scramble hard work, so I gripped them in one hand and climbed with the other. I set myself a target of a cluster of rocks, went for it and then rested. Repeat exercise. Halfway up I began to feel sick so I stopped - one thing I didn't want to lose was the dextrose tablets I'd just eaten. The nausea soon subsided and I continued. I was nearing the top, head down, when I heard a voice ask if I needed a hand. I looked up to see an Indian man with a Krishna forehead mark sitting on a rock above me. Hallucinations are sometimes a symptom of Hypoglycaemia - but no, he was real! He revealed himself to be part of a 56-strong party from Harrow, north-west London who were fund-raising for a school in their district and had raised the remarkable sum of £110,000 between themselves. They had started in the dark at 6am with head torches and were just summiting now - a fantastic achievement considering most were non-walkers before setting themselves the challenge.

From whence we came - Whernside viewed across Chapel-le-Dale from Ingleborough (photo: Danny Goh)

Danny and Dan were waiting for me - Debbie, Phil and Lesley had gone on to the summit 700 yards away. Now there were two short rocky slopes between us and the top. Upwards we trudged, meeting the others on their way down. Dan ran ahead to bag the summit and then catch up with the others - Danny would kindly stay with me. Finally the summit plateau came into view, and the gentle gradient to the trig point. We'd done it! We basked awhile in the golden evening sun, taking on photographic duties for the Indian party. It was now 5.50pm, and getting back to Horton inside 12 hours was looking unlikely. Still, we set off back along the path at a relative canter, although I knew we weren't going at nowhere near the 4 miles an hour we'd need to stand any chance - we were just too tired.

We've done it!

Danny's mascot, Mr Spider

The Indian team from Harrow celebrate their success (photo: Danny Goh)

The walk back to Horton from Ingleborough was interminable. The paths were also a bit of a challenge once we got off the hard of Simon Fell, with mud baths to be circumvented or jumped across ditto the lumps of limestone exposed by the erosion - all in all a bit of an obstacle course and not conducive to speed. Psychologically it was hard too as due to a small ridge it is impossible to see Horton until you are almost there, save for a brief glimpse of the far side of the village when you are about a mile away.

The sun had almost completely set when we got back, and under the clear skies the temperature was dropping markedly. We walked uphill(!) over the aforementioned ridge to be greeted by the railway station and the lights of the village. "Look! There's some more!" said a girl as we walked into the car park. Certainly there weren't many behind us - probably more than half of those who started must have dropped out at some point. It was now 7.55pm, and would be 7.58 before I could get to the cafe. 12 hours and 38 minutes, the hypoglycaemic episode had cost me - the others (by now in The Crown) had managed it a whole hour faster in the end. Still, at least I'd done it - only now I'll have to do it again!

Looking back at Ingleborough as the sun goes down - still nearly an hour to go until we were back in Horton

Video: Chapel-le-Dale to The Crown, Horton-in-Ribblesdale
(via Ingleborough, of course!). Recovering with a pint of Black Sheep...