The Three Peaks, Yorkshire
19th - 20th June 1999
Pen-y-ghent
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Armed with the knowledge that our trek to Phortse would be one of the most
physically gruelling things that we had ever undertook, the team starting
long distance trek-training in earnest. One event that took our fancy was
the Yorkshire 3 Peaks Challenge. The challenge (It’s ongoing and anyone can
join in) is to scale the 3 highest peaks in Yorkshire namely Whernside,
Ingleborough and Pen-y-ghent (walking between them) in the shortest
possible time.
Climbing into the mist
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We assembled ourselves at the Railway Inn which nestles under the
famous arches of the Ribble Head viaduct on the Settle to Carlisle railway
on a dark but pleasant night
in June 1999 and planned to set out bright and early the next morning.
Fortifying ourselves with copious amounts of Theakston’s we were confident
that we could complete the challenge and get back within 7 hours. The next
day dawned foggy and dank, so foggy that we were actually unable to see the
great bulk of Whernside from the hostel. Undeterred, we pressed on and
pushed on so fast that we found ourselves up, over and on to Ingleborough
in record time. The rain stopped periodically and we had time to
look around the stunning surroundings and wonder at the sanity of the
runners we saw attempting to run the 3 Peaks Marathon.
The last summit
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The walk between Whernside and Ingleborough was taken steadily and by
lunch-time we thought we had everything sown up. We hadn’t actually
bargained for the next 4 or so hours that it took us in the torrential and
driving rain to walk between Ingleborough and Pen-y-ghent, getting caught
in monstrous mud, drinking enormous cups of hot chocolate by a wayside
café and losing the plot a little due to sore feet and wet gear. All
in all we actually completed the challenge, proved to ourselves that
we could navigate in very bad conditions, got very wet but didn’t
manage to do it in 7 hours. We got back in the dark and had very
large meals accompanied by even larger mugs of beer. Cheers!
Adele Wright
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