Day 3

Today we walked from Diggle to Hebden bridge which was 30km with 613m of climbing.

We headed off this morning at 8:30am in high spirts with talk about how quickly we were going to do the walk today. This however stopped when about 15 minutes in, we all started to feel that our legs were numb and aching. This we think was the past two days finally catching up with us. Luckily it was gone not too long after and fortunately the pain didn’t return, at least not today.

Once we had done the inevitable morning climb we walked along a ridge for a couple of hours that had great views of the Manchester sky line. Due to the fact there weren’t many people near us we were able to listen to a lot of our audio book. This also helped ease tensions that were rising between me and Will, he didn’t seem too amused when I couldn’t answer any of his questions about Bridge that I was supposed to know.

However, the sound of the audio book was soon drowned out by the sound of the M62 that was approaching us (one of the few big roads that we have to cross on our walk). A bridge had been specially built for the Pennine way walkers to get us over this 6 carriage motorway. We weren’t however too impressed when we saw the bridge. It was a narrow bridge which was horrible because it made us feel very exposed to all the cars rushing by underneath. As we walked over it we had to hold on to each other to keep stable as it made us very dizzy with the loud sounds and fast moving cars underneath. The bridge seemed to go on forever but we eventually made it to the other side where it was nice to feel the ground again.

At around noon we stopped for lunch at this lovely pub on the moors that was extremely busy. After lunch it started to become very windy so we put on our rain jackets for warmth. This was a good decision as it started to rain soon after. On the ridge we came across Stoodley Pike monument that was built to celebrate the defeat of Napoleon. We climbed it to get more stunning views of our surroundings and to seek shelter from the rain. Probably not such a good idea due to the monuments history, in 1854 it collapsed due to a lightning strike.

We arrived in Hebden bridge at 4:30 which is one of the biggest cities we are going through, so we took the opportunity to get more snacks. Talking about snacks, I forgot to mention earlier that we found a snoopy dog food truck on our walk so we celebrated with ice cream which was a good way to relax right after the motorway.

We had Italian food for dinner and when we arrived back in our youth hostel we found someone else that liked to play bridge. This was amazing so we played a few games with them which was great way to end the day.

Best wishes,

The Battersby Boys