Day 3: From Standedge to Charlestown (Hebden Bridge) - 15 miles

After the rigours of the opening stages today was almost a rest day. The weather was a wee bit misty, rain threatened but hardly materialised, and the going was not too challenging, mostly level and firm along high ledges and moors, with the towns of industrial Lancashire just a little way to the west.

The day proved a much more satisfying walk than the guide seemed to promise. Perhaps the soot and pollution scarred degraded moorland of Tony Hopkins’s time has recovered a little since the collapse of the North West’s traditional industries. Or am I the eternal optimist? The book was first published in 1990, so, I guess, the fieldwork was done a year or two earlier.

I’m afraid that the Ammon Wrigley Memorial Stone and the Dinner Stone were passed unacknowledged before the views down into gentler country were forsaken for harsher territory.

The M62 announced itself several miles before it appeared. The wind carried a distant drone of traffic; sometimes seemingly just below the next rise, at other times lost amongst the course grasses of the moor.

To most people from Lancashire or Yorkshire, the masts at Windy Hill, just off the M62, are an ugly, if familiar, sight. On the descent from Axletree Edge, they are surreal. They front a congested ribbon of tarmac; six lanes of speeding, fume belching, traffic, brought from the surrounding conurbations and abandoned on the moor.

Of more immediate interest was the refreshment caravan parked on a roadside verge in front of the masts. Here tea, coffee, superb bacon sandwiches and scones are on sale. The proprietor had been working the pitch for many years. A good deal of his summer custom came from walkers along the way. Not this year though. The hills hereabouts had only recently reopened and few people were walking the paths. With no animals slaughtered, he, like hundreds of other rural enterprises, couldn’t claim a penny in Government support. I hope his business has survived.

On a misty Blackstone Edge, we met and walked as far as the White Horse pub with a chap who was just back from Peru.

“I walked the Inca Trail,” he said.

That put the logistics of a ramble along the Pennine Way into a proper perspective! There is always someone, is there not?

Dhoul’s Pavement, Roman or not, is unquestionably old. It is well worth a look, but it is a bit slimy and a lot slippery; some people reckon South American conditions are tough!

Stoodley Pike is one of those dominant landscape features. I’m not sure when we first identified it, but it was probably on Blackstone Edge. It never appears to get nearer, no matter what the distance covered. As a viewpoint, it is splendid. What is unchallengeable, though, is that it is a feature best seen from afar: close up it is downright ugly. It is interesting, striking and impressively sited, but not pretty. The moors seem friendlier hereabouts: less threatening, not quite so bleak, with Calderdale, far below, green and welcoming.

And welcoming Hebden Bridge is. It has managed the impossible, transforming itself from a declining, derelict post-industrial backwater to the Bohemian colony of today. We got there just as the rain became organised; it began to chuck it down.

We booked into the White Lion, an old and pricey Inn. The hotel has comfortable rooms, welcoming bars and serves good food and fine beer. Hebden Bridge has other pubs and eateries, all well worth exploring. A town not dominated by tourism, but one that knows how to accommodate its visitors.

Accommodation: White Lion, Hebden Bridge (01422 842197)

£35.00

The pub is expensive, but it’s nice to have a treat now and again. It had probably the best breakfast on the route and is in a great little town. I would recommend it to all with an empty credit card.