Rumination: Beating the Retreat 22/03/13

Taking a room in the Black Horse Hotel in Grassington was such a good idea, being able to end your walk and immediately jump in the shower, give your boots and gaiters a scrub and check your shoulders for only minimal amounts of bruising after carrying 8 kilos for 17 miles. Then being able to get in a couple of pints of Grassington Best Bitter, and Sausage and Mash for dinner, and chat with the staff about sharing someone else's name, share walking tales with the other patrons and to send word of my progress to my folks via the hotel's phone when my mobile refuses to play ball. And there's still time to peruse my OL2 and route guide to bone up on the coming day's route and to get myself familiar with the bad weather alternative avoiding Grassington Moor, before getting an early night with the weather still looking clear and me still having full intent to press on to Buckden.

Then, as the cliche would have it, what a difference a day makes...

Waking at 5.30am and taking a peer out of the window presents a completely different profile from the day passed, gone is the brisk spring weather, replaced by a fearsome blast of arctic weather coming in from the east, dumping three inches of snow on the town and it's already swirling and drifting in the wind. That puts away the idea of pressing on up Wharfedale because I have no desire to interact with the high moors and previously untrammelled paths in weather like this, because in my outdoors life so far:

• I have walked solo
• I have walked on high lands in poor visibility
• I have walked in fearsome amounts of precipitation
• I have walked in low temperatures

But, I have not done all these things at the same. A lot of walking is about steeling yourself to adverse conditions, but it is also about recognising when conditions are not conducive to your safety, and knowing when to beat a tactical retreat. Fortitude can only take you so far after all, and it's wise to make the decision before you realise it's too late, because we are already at the point of no return.

Rise to breakfast at 8.30am, and I'm going to consume the full spread of cereal, toast and Full English Breakfast as I'm going to need some energy resolve to get home again, and chatting with the landlord, he laments that this blast of weather is probably going to ruin his business for the coming week and pointedly says to me 'You are not walking, are you?, and I promise that I will be making no attempt to push any further into Wharfedale, but still entertain an idea of trying to walk to Skipton, close to the main road if conditions aren't too bad, I have paid to stay out here, after all, so I might try to make a day of it. So gather up my stuff and insulate myself as well as I can and check out at 9.45am, promising to make the Black Horse a base for future walking exploits and head out, with the landlord's reassurance that Grassington never gets snowed in as the Highways Agency's depot is at Threshfield, just across the river. I'm not out of the yard of the pub before I make the decision that there will be no walking attempts of any kind today, as the wind is extraordinarily fierce and the snow is blustering around in all directions, and drifting severely, and it's even worse in open spaces, just tracing a path would be almost impossible, even without the risk of whiteout or freezing to death.


What a difference a day makes...

So Grassington is departed to the sounds of people clearing their doorsteps, and a path is traced to the bus shelter at the National Park Centre, and great care has been take here to design a shelter which offers maximum protection from the weather without, which is just as well, because I've got a 40 minute wait before the bus to Ilkley leaves. Catching said bus, with only two other passengers, the driver warns us that we'll not be following the advertised route and will instead be taking the main road towards Skipton, and even that is currently at risk from drifting snow. So off we go, with weather blasting all round the place, but it seems a lot calmer when we pass below the 200m contour, but beyond Rylstone, the wind is blowing in full force off Hall Fell, and above Turn Croft plantation, the snow has drifted halfway across the road, and having to give way to oncoming traffic, we end up driving into deep snow and get stuck. Our driver then has to do phone relay to his boss to get us assistance to dig us out, and despite our best efforts to dig us out with the crook of my walking stick, it is only possible to tolerate being out in the knee-deep snow for about 10 minutes. As is is, we end up causing a traffic jam, which is unfortunate as the Highways Agency's snowplough is caught about a quarter mile behind us. There's no real danger whilst we stay on the bus but one of the other passengers will not stop mithering about the situation, so it's a relief when a guy arrives with a shovel and grit to dig us out in less than 5 minutes, and looking forward it seems that if we had stayed out much longer the drifting snow would have covered the road in pretty short order. So only stopped for about 40 minutes, and the driver puts the hammer down to get us back to Ilkley for 12.30pm, and he gets our unending gratitude for his toil, but he declines any monetary reward from us, which convinces me that you really can't give anything away these days.

So ride the rails back home reflecting on such a strange end to my early spring jollies, and to think that at this point of last year we were about to enjoy a week of temperatures of 25 degrees C, it looks like winter might be lingering around for a while into 2013, and I note that I have worn my winter coat for all of this year's exploits, when it didn't get out at all in 2012. Return to Morley, and it has taken over 3 and a half hours to make the journey home, and the winds are a bit calmer here, but the amount of snow is still pretty crazy. I make calls to parents to reassure them that I haven't wandered into the unknown, and to call The Buck in Buckden to tell them that I will not taking up residence in the evening, and am told 'Don't worry, we weren't expecting you.' It seems all roads above Kettlewell are impassable, so I've been lucky to get be able to get out as travelling a day earlier might have had me stuck at the top of Wharfedale, of course, if I'd travelled two days earlier, I'd have gotten in all three legs of my excursion done without any ghastly weather at all, It's just too easy to be wise after the event isn't it? So it looks like the Dales Way will have to be put aside for a while until I can be sure that most of the snow has cleared from the high ground and the risk of winter making a sudden return has passed, it looks like I'm going to have to do my days of travelling up Wharfedale by bus after all...

Next on the Slate: The Beeching Report 50th Anniversary walk!