Taking on the Yorkshire 3 peaks challenge was both one of the hardest and best things I've ever done!
Always up for anything, 4 good mates – Kev, Dave, Pete, John and I thought it would be a great idea to climb three of the highest mountains in Yorkshire in one day! Hahaha you may be thinking, Mountains? What in Yorkshire? You’re having a laugh!.....I was sort of on the same wavelength here. I had a good idea a trek like this wouldn’t be easy and Dave had done it twice before and could only describe it as "relentless!" On the other hand I didn’t think it would be that hard either. I mean compared to the National three peaks (which I've never done either), this would probably be a breeze!
I’ve always considered myself as being semi fit really…..in and out of the gym over the years, spells of running, squash and all that good stuff! So I thought, well if all these other people can do it why can’t I? It would literally be a walk in the park I thought. All this said though, and not being too relaxed about it, I thought we should still put some sort of training in first, just in case.
This “training” involved all 5 of us twice walking approximately 15 miles across mostly flat terrain whilst stopping off in a couple of pubs on the way and downing around 5 pints of beer! Then me, Dave and Kev went up and down a long flight of steps from the top of the local cliffs down to the train station (Leigh on Sea). I think there’s around 135 steps give or take and we did around 10 sets on two separate occasions. Then a couple of other times we walked up and down a steep footpath next to Leigh church. Pretty good I thought, yes that would help a lot I thought…....
Setting off from Leigh-on-Sea to Yorkshire
On the 11th May 2018 at 10am we all jumped in Kev’s car and made our way up to Yorkshire. We had plenty of time to get there so we didn’t rush. The idea was to first get settled into the house we were renting in Ingleton, have some food, then nip out for a couple of beers and back for an early night. The house was in a beautiful location overlooking one of many streams winding their way down from the hills. It was a magical place, we had struck gold!
John had prepared and brought with him a pasta meal for our consumption for the first night, which went down very well indeed! Once we filled our bellies, along with a starter beer or two, we all went out to check out the local pubs. Our first pub visit was the three horse shoes. A great pub with the best pint of Guinness! Friendly staff and just a proper pub! Next on the list was the Wheatsheaf, which was just the typical chain pub, no real character but ok enough if that's the kind of place you're looking for. I've got to say the Guinness here was "shocking" though, so we moved onto the next place. A bit further up the road was a lovely little micro pub called the old post office micro bar. This was a great little intimate place, everyone inside was really friendly and made us feel at home!
As predicted we had more than just a couple more and our early night ended up being gone 11pm, which I guess wasn’t too bad for us lot.
The day of the three peaks (Sat 12th May 2018)
We were up at 4am for an early start as we planned to get to the car park at the foot of the first Mountain, Pen-y-Ghent by 6am. The short journey up to Horton-in-Ribblesdale was amazing. The early morning mist was hovering over the hills like a blanket and the sun was doing its best to burn through it, which made for a beautiful scene we will never forget!
We ended up arriving a bit later as we took a wrong turn (admiring the views too much I think) and got delayed slightly. With that, a quick toilet break and getting ready for the big push, we eventually started off at 7am.
The first Mountain - Pen-y-Ghent
It was pretty cold when we started off, so I thought I’d put my gloves and hat on to stay comfy. Within about 5 minutes of walking though, I quickly realised I had twice too many layers on! I was heating up fast, if I continued without removing some layers I would quickly end up wringing wet which could lead to issues when we stopped as I didn’t want to get cold…..So I stopped and quickly stuffed my hat and fleece in my rucksack and tied my jacket around my waist. This now meant I had to catch everyone up so I started jogging towards them. By the time I caught them up I was breathing heavily. I couldn’t believe how knackered I started to feel, and I hadn’t even started properly climbing this first mountain yet! Sodding hell I thought to myself, I hadn’t even got half a mile into it and I felt like this already……
At this point we were all starting to feel the burn on the legs and the chest. The morning sky was looking glorious though and we all felt alive pushing ourselves to the top, so on we went! You can see in the below picture the long path we had just climbed winding all the way down, back into the village!
As we neared the last section of the climb, we saw a young girl being escorted down the mountain with a cut on her leg where she had obviously fallen somehow. I remember thinking what a shame it was. I imagined what it would be like if one of us had the same problem and had to abort the mission. I would have been so pissed off if it was me!
So we carried on, pumping those legs getting nearer and nearer to the top. The last section was basically an actual mountain climbing affair! I didn’t think there would be any of this at all…..We had to clamber up large boulders weaving in and out. There were a couple of sections where I actually felt a bit scarred. There was only a very narrow path between the boulder and death, as the side of this path just dropped away down the side of the mountain! I knew I had to concentrate here and be really careful not to slip or make any wrong moves. Once I was over these I was home and dry, reaching the top full of relief! I clambered along to get out of the way from the people following me up to give them some room and waited for the others. Kev was already up somewhere, but I thought I’d wait for the others before moving on. Thought this would also be a good photo opportunity too.
Once we all got to the very top, it was a great sense of achievement. The important thing was we all got up in one piece and everyone was literally on a high! The atmosphere was electric with all the other walkers around us. So we took a good few minutes to have a rest, eat some energy bars, drink some more water and enjoy the views. This video I think captures the moment really nicely!
I thought to myself, great the hard work was done now. We had climbed all the way up in good time too, so all we had to do was get down again and onto the next mountain…….What I didn’t realise was how far this actually was! The trip down this gradual decline took its toll on my knees. The relentless shocking of the knees taking the whole of my body weight every step was hard going. Any slight uphill sections here were actually a welcome relief on the legs believe it or not. Also the distance we had to walk was very tiring, I think it’s about 8 miles from the first to the second mountain.
Luckily my boots were holding up so far and my feet felt comfortable enough, so no blisters to worry about just yet. Although I did walk a few miles with a stone in one of my boots…..I eventually stopped to take it out! By the time we got to the road, I started to feel really tired and my left knee felt a bit painful, which I’d had before at home but it generally came and went. This time it seemed to stay and not go away which was both annoying and slightly worrying, I thought I might struggle as we were not even half way through yet!
We eventually got to the general meeting place by the viaduct and the infamous burger van. This was a very much needed stop and we made the most of it. Pete needed the loo, so he walked up to the pub up the road while we got the teas in. It seemed ages until Pete joined us again. He came up with this story about having to buy a beer or they wouldn’t let him use the toilet……Likely story lol!
The others had a burger and I just stuck to my cup of tea which went down nicely. We spent around 40 minutes here sitting in the sun with a load of other walkers. The sun had climbed high in the sky by now and it was still a beautiful day!
Onto number two peak of the day – Whernside
Feeling refreshed and ready to hit "Whernside", the walk started off nice and casual. Until......we clocked the long rocky path heading off into the distance, winding its way up & up. You could see all the people making their way up in the distance looking like ants. This looked epic! The climb up this path was very, very tiring. The good news was that I had forgotten about my knee pain, it seemed to have gone which was great! I put it down to the long rest we’d had by the burger van. It was a warning I think, I had to make sure we had enough rests for the rest of the way.
I looked up at this grueling path once again, it seemed to go on for ever! Just when you thought you were near the top, you got to the brow of a hill and another massive section of the path just revealed itself, crushing all hopes of thinking you were nearly there. Eventually when we got close to the top we sat down on some rocks and took another break. Pete and John were lagging behind a few minutes as it looked like they were struggling a bit.
To get some scale of the distances here, Pen-y-Ghent is slightly to the left centre at the top of the below picture, we're almost at the top of Whernside where I took this picture from and to the right is the final mountain “Ingleborough”. Now that is some walk!
After around a 5 minute wait, Pete and John joined us. The first thing Pete said was that he was really struggling and didn’t think he was going to make it any further. He had loads of blisters and his toe was really giving him issues as his boots were a bit small. John was also finding it tough and as we still hadn’t got to the top of Whernside yet he was sure he wouldn’t be able to do the last mountain!
This was a real bummer, as we all wanted to finish this together. There was no point in Pete and John taking on the third if they could hardly walk, they would end up killing themselves! We discussed the options, obviously we all had to carry on until we got up and down this mountain as turning back wasn’t an option, that would have been too far. So we had to decide logistically what to do. We had left the car at the foot of Pen-y-Ghent, which was too far away for them to walk. There was a pub at the other side of Whernside which we thought would be the best place for them to go. The remaining three of us would then finish the third mountain and meet up with them afterwards. The only problem here was that we would probably need around 4 hours to do this! One option was for them to get a cab to the car, pick the house keys up and leave the car keys in the exhaust pipe for when we get there. Then they could have continued back in a cab to the house. In the end they decided they would just stay in the pub for a while then get a cab back to the pub near the house and wait for us to pick them up from there.
Arriving at the top of this mountain was pretty cool, the views again were great. There were a few people parasailing off the edge of the mountain which was both impressive and nuts at the same time!
Making our way down the other side of Whernside was becoming pretty hard work on the already tired legs. Pete and John were struggling anyway and this was no fun for them at all. We ended up at the top of what looked like a hellish decent over a very steep rock field which looked lethal! I started making my way down, picking the easiest route as I went. If I slipped I could end up in serious trouble. I looked back to see where Pete and John were but couldn’t see any sign of them, so I pushed on. Eventually getting to the bottom, luckily in one piece I wondered if this would be the case for all of us. This was going to be hell for Pete and John, I hoped they would be ok.
We did all make it safely down though and that last stretch certainly helped blow away any doubts had about not going onto the last mountain for Pete and John! We had a little break before we moved on, as there was still a way to go before arriving at the pub to drop off Pete and John. Actually it seemed a very long way, considering the last two mountains were supposed to be next to each other…….
Dave and I stopped to wait for the others for a bit and got chatting to this guy who was waiting for someone in his party too. He was telling us that he’d done the three peaks a few times and is planning to do them a few more times over the coming weeks. He was ex-army and assured us that tackling two out of these three mountains in one day was definitely an achievement to be proud of!
The last mountain of the day – Ingleborough
After saying our goodbyes to Pete and John, Kev, Dave and I started making our way up to the foot of Ingleborough. We needed to get up and down before it started to get dark as it was already about 4:30pm. We thought we were looking at another 4 hours but wanted to try and get closer to 3. The long gradual climb up stone steps, across wooden planks, more steps and even more steps was very hard work. The walking poles came in handy here as they helped winch me up the bigger steps as I went.
After a number of short stops on the way, we caught a glimpse of what was to come next. WTF!! In the distance we saw what could only be described as a stream of people climbing a vertical section of the mountain, weaving left to right, just like a ladder! There were people who looked like they were stuck as mostly they were all stationary!
When we got to the bottom of this climb we met up with some old boys we kept bumping into throughout the day. After the obligatory banter with them, we all stood up together to start this crazy climb…
At first I felt ok and managed to get a fair way up without tiring too much, but then I had a thought…..all I needed to do was to take a wrong step in haste and end up in trouble. So I decided it wasn’t worth rushing and made sure I rested every minute or so to preserve my energy. This worked well and we were all at the top within about 20 minutes. Well…….when I say top, I mean the top of this section. There was still a long climb to go and that looked even hairier! The narrow paths on some of this last section were very close to the edge of the mountain. Looking over the edge to the right, I noticed all the massive boulders scattered around. These looked like shingle from down below, I reckon each one of these pieces of shingle must have weighed around 2 tonne!
Almost at the top now, we had a spurt of energy for the last push. Stepping out onto the summit of Ingleborough was a lot different to the other two. The landscape was barren in comparison, as the ground was made up of mostly rocks, similar to a quarry I guess. We walked over to the touch in point, took our pictures and enjoyed the views. I can safely say that the views from this Mountain were the best out of the three. The 360 degree view went on for absolutely miles including the lake-district and the Irish Sea.
So….I guessed at this point we could pretty much say we’d done it! It can’t be too far back to the car from here I thought. I couldn’t have been more wrong! The trek back down and into the village was so much further than I expected. This last leg of the journey was going to be a full two hours. More relentless declines across more rocks, steps, slopes and more rocks. I was really starting to get tired now and honestly just couldn’t wait for this to end. The evening was drawing in and I felt a couple of drops of rain. I knew we would be lucky to make it to the car without getting rained on. Half way down Ingleborough, Kev was complaining about his ankle giving him problems and he was slowing up a bit, the top of my right boot was pushing against my leg and really started to hurt. So I had to stop for a minute to loosen off my laces to allow some space, what a relief that was. Should have done it much earlier……
We knew we were getting closer to the end, but still couldn’t see any evidence of the village in the distance, at one point I wondered if we were lost! But as Dave had done this twice before he was confident we were on the right track.
We came across a sign which said 2 ¾ miles to Horton-in-Ribblesdale, I was pretty happy to see this. Not long now I thought, an hour tops! We carried on, trying to see if we could make out any evidence of the village in the distance but still no……Dave and I stopped for a rest to wait for Kev to catch up and have a look around. The first thing I noticed was how quiet it was when we’d stopped walking. I’ve experienced silence similar to this before in Thetford Forest whilst out on the push bikes, but not to this extent. As Kev caught up, all three of us stood there motionless just listening for a minute. There was no breeze, none of the surrounding cows were mooing, no airplanes overhead etc…..The only way I could explain it was as if my ears had been removed completely! It was stunning and I felt privileged to experience this, what an amazing thing!
Over the brow of the hill in the above pic, we had first sight of the road where the car was parked. That was a great feeling, we were nearly there. We got to the bottom of the hill after negotiating through a load of sheep to find ourselves next to this very welcoming sign!
Well that was that, we crossed the railway at the bottom of this field and walked the 5 minutes up to the carpark where the car was sitting almost on it’s own with only a couple of other cars. The relief of taking my boots off and slipping on some comfy shoes was lovely. The timing was perfect as it just started to rain and it started to quickly get dark.
When we got back to the house after picking Pete and John up from the three horse shoes pub round the corner, we ordered an Indian from the place up the road. We were starving, but for some reason I couldn’t eat it all…..After having a good laugh at Eurovision on TV, we all turned in for the night completely knackered!
The morning after the 3 peaks
I found I kept waking up during the night for some reason, I should have slept like a log but I think my legs were still walking through the night! We all got up around 9 ish and a couple of the boys put together a great fried breakfast which we ate on the balcony overlooking the river at the back of the house. The sun was beaming down on us and it was great, what could be better!
This was a great start to our chilling out day. Lining our stomachs nicely before the beers started to go down later that day. After a good session out on the beers and eating lunch in the three horseshoes (best pub in the village), we came back to the house for a bit more chilling and more beer. We sat in the front garden this time as the sun was still shining there.
As it started to get cooler we went back in the house, listened to some music and drank more beer. It got to around 9 pm, so we thought it was about time we got back out to the pub, but to our surprise they were all shut! It was like a ghost town, wow we couldn’t believe it…..So then we thought we had better sort out food for tonight, so pizzas it was. On our way back down the hill armed with about 5 pizzas we purchased from the store which luckily was still open, we noticed the light on in the working man’s club across the road from the house and a sign saying all visitors welcome! Worth checking out we thought. Looking through the window we could only see about 5 people at the bar and even better we spotted a snooker and pool table in the distance. How could we not! So in we went.
After asking if it was ok for us to have a drink and play snooker, we made our way over to the full size snooker table at the back of the room and basically spent the next 2 hours playing….well trying to anyway. What a fantastic end to the weekend - Amazing!!
Final thoughts
I’ve got to say that this weekend away with some great friends doing one of the hardest things ever was the greatest experience! Yes we found it hard, yes it was pretty scary in places but I’m so pleased we did this. Not just the 3 peaks but the whole thing!
I would so recommend this to anyone who wants to challenge themselves. The only thing I would say though is don’t think this is just a stroll in the dales, it most definitely is not that in any way shape or form! A good amount of training and wearing the right gear is key to not only completing this but to be able to enjoy it. Would I do it again? Too right I would, we'll be back next year for round two!