14.5 miles was the set walk for today, plus the mile to get back to the Pennine Way… And the forecast was not good.

But first, one of those odd little episodes. Just after 5:30am, Tricia and I both awoke thinking we could hear an alarm. In the fogginess of just waking we were not sure where the alarm was coming from … Not from our phones. We were both kneeling down listening to our cases at one point thinking that it was something from within. But no… Eventually we realised it was coming from a different room. We let it go for a while, but it was one of those alarms that would gradually get louder if it wasn’t switched off… And we started to get concerned about the person in the room. So I knocked on the door and went in…. The lady owner emerged from under the blankets muttered something about an alarm, and switched it off. I retired and went back to bed, I nodded off till 7am. It seems the lady owner had to get up to go to work. All I can say is she must have been a deep sleeper! When we did get breakfast someone else cooked it. Tricia and I decided not to say anything…

Out of the B&B and into the rain. And it rained on us all the time we were walking pretty much. The odd gap between rainfall when the clouds took a deep breath before pouring down on us again. The moors we went across today were covered in mist, and the walking path absolutely sodden. Nothing to look at, and being soaked through doesn’t make a good combination. We took refuge in a dilipadeted barn to have a drink and a banana. About 1:45pm, it stopped raining for 5 minutes, long enough to have some lunch. At that point we worked out that we were only about 3 miles from Ponden… This spurred us on. We had both shipped water into our boots. At some points the path were flooded, the streams that you would normally step stone across were over full, and grass areas were just marshy… Inevitably you end up getting wet feet. Braving the weather..

Eventually we came down into Ponden, and around the reservoir to our B&B. Nice lodgings. Our boots are presently drying on the landlady’s aga. :-).