I mentioned in where_she_walks_ with gratitude that I walked the Pennine Way in two stages. That wasn’t the plan of course, I had set out to complete the trail in 17 days from start to finish. Here’s what happened…
On 1st June 2023 my partner and I caught the train to Edale bright and early to start my Pennine Way adventure. My backpack weighed 16.5kg, a weight I hadn’t previously carried once during my training walks, but we were walking on familiar ground, having covered many miles around Kinder Scout and Bleaklow over the years. Now, I don’t want to put anyone off who is planning to walk the Pennine Way, but the first day is no stroll in the park. We walked 27.4km with 857m of elevation gain in 8 hours. Considering my normal pace is 4km an hour on average, it was slow going. Whether I blame the weight of my backpack or the fact that I’ve never tackled a long-distance trail before is neither here nor there right now. The fact is that I was pretty much in pain from Bleaklow onwards.
My partner was walking with me for the first two days and wore a knee brace throughout. Is it just me, or does anyone else downplay their own pain when other people are clearly in more distress? Well, that’s what happened those first two days. I wanted to appear strong and also be strong for his sake, as I knew he was struggling and one of us had to keep in high spirits. In reality, we were both in pain but there was no turning back for me, so onwards I went, my new friend Voltarol showing up every 4 hours to help me out.
I won’t lie, the next 9 days were physically painful and mentally exhausting. I remember concocting a medication schedule to get me through the day which was something like: take ibuprofen every 4 hours, top-up sun cream every 2 hours and apply Voltarol every 4 hours. Most of the pain was in my right hip and the only relief came from loosening the waist belt of my backpack, but that sent the weight and the pain to my back. I basically spent each day shifting weight (and pain) around my body to get through. On the plus side, the DOMS in my legs subsided after 3 days, so that was one less thing to think about.
Let’s fast forward. On day 9, my partner was meeting me in Middleton-in-Teesdale in our campervan and staying close by for the weekend. It was a much-needed opportunity to offload some of the weight in my backpack for a couple of days and see if that eased the now daily pain in my hip. I set out on 10th June with only the essentials for a day hike, leaving behind all my camping, cooking and sleeping gear. It was a beautiful morning and a great section of the trail, following the Rivers Tees past Low Force to High Force, where I noticed a niggle in my knee and so decided to put a brace on. An hour later, the pain had moved up to my hip. About 15km or so into the day’s walk, roughly half-way, the pain hit 9/10 and I sat down to consider my options. I was round the corner from the notorious Cauldron Scout waterfall, which I would have to scramble up to stay on the path, I had no phone signal, it was baking hot with nowhere to shelter from the sun and I was as close to my end point in Dufton as I was to where I’d started from. In my mind there was no choice, I just had to keep walking.
I’ll be completely honest, I’m not sure how I got through the next few hours. I covered 32.8km in 8.5 hours – that’s 5km further than our first day when we were supposedly on fresh legs, and I spent a fair amount of that 8.5 hours sat down crying. I did, however, craft a fairly effective pain relief strategy which involved using my walking poles as crutches to lift some of the weight from my legs to my arms. By the time I made it to High Cup Nick, I was so drained that I just sat and cried for about half an hour. I half limped, half fell down the hill to Dufton where we had thankfully booked a B&B for the night. It wasn’t until I had showered that I realised two things: I had lost a lot of weight (probably too much) in 10 days without noticing and I knew that I needed to stop walking before I did some serious damage to my body. Here ended my Pennine Way adventure…for now.
Thoughts on pain
I have zero medical credentials to my name, but what I can say with confidence is that we shouldn’t ignore pain. It’s a message from your body that something isn’t right and we should listen to it.
I managed my pain for 10 days but by then the skin/flesh on my hip was numb, yet the pain was still there internally. I definitely should have taken a rest day and realistically should have reduced my pack weight from the start. The good news is that nothing was medically wrong with my hip. I went to physio and was told I needed to work on my core so that I could carry the weight better. I started going to yoga the following week and by the time I headed back to Dufton a few weeks later, I was walking pain-free and feeling healthier than ever.
For anyone planning a long-distance walk, or any walk for that matter, give yourself time to build strength and stamina and most importantly, listen to your body.
Kate x