TAN HILL INN

We fumble with the Primus in the half light not yet appreciating what Jean will later teach us that it's better to make hot drinks the night before and keep them in a Thermos for the morning. But for today we coax the unwilling machine into life and then head off south into an uncertain dawn. The peat bogs of Tan Hill soon pass and we are now running along the side of Kisdon, high above Swaledale with its wonderful field barns nestling into the hillsides and the view down the dale in the early morning light must be one of the finest sights in the world.

After Thwaite we start on the long plod up Great Shunner Fell and the sun is beginning to find some heat. (Several years later I will run this way again with my older son Dan but in very different conditions. Then it will be rain drilling into our faces, thick mist and growing dark as we make for Hawes on the last relay leg of the day as a small group of us try to run the Pennine Way as a relay over three days. On this occasion, at 19 already bigger and faster than me, without speaking, he will pick up the rucksack with the survival gear and will cut out the pace into the wet and threatening mist. He will run with a concern for my welfare though in any ordinary race he will be looking to beat me. I am relieved that when we go wrong in the dark it's me that finds the right gap in the wall and navigates us securely down into Hawes.)

But today the sky is clear and open and we revel in the long run down into Wensleydale. And so we make our way ever southwards through villages and hamlets and over hills with wonderful names. Semerwater, Cam High Road, Buckden Pike and so by dusk are struggling over the dreadful Jackson's Ridge. This is a featureless wilderness high on the Pennine Watershed, mile after mile of tussock grass and rough heather with no sign of a ridge in sight. More than one group of Tan Cat wayfarers and better ones than us too have given up here but we push on, Glyn navigating us neatly towards the Calder Valley. During the night we enter Todmorden by what seems like an extraordinary route which feels as if it's entirely through people's back gardens. It wouldn't surprise me at all at this point if we ran through someone's kitchen but remarkably it works very neatly and so we cross the river and make for Stoodley Pike.

As we reach Mankinholes to join the Pennine Way for a while my body rebels. It's now been on the go for virtually 24 hours and says, and has been saying for sometime, please can it have a rest. Glyn ignores this so I just lie down in the road outside the Youth hostel which is still inconveniently closed at 3 in the morning, and go to sleep. Half an hour later I'm woken feeling much refreshed and set off uphill for Withens Gate and the black peat moors of the southern Pennines. A second dawn brings some fresh life but despite the earlier sleep, the miles and the hours are increasingly taking their toll. Along the canal towpath near Marsden I experiment with running with my eyes shut as this is the first bit of level ground we've encountered for a long time. This almost has hilariously disastrous consequences as I open my eyes to discover I am about to run straight into the canal. This wakes me up for a bit but tiredness keeps creeping in round the back of my eyes.

By the top of Wessenden, just before the Pennine Way launches itself at Black Hill I know I've had enough. Time is ticking by and the support has been excellent but they will have to be back at work the next day and if I pull out now, as I'm slowing up badly, it leaves sufficient time for Glyn to finish and for everyone to get home for a night's sleep. Or something like that. Brains don't think very clearly when they have been on the go this long but something of this I am trying to explain to Tom Baker who is sat waiting for us in his empty car. Tom has kept the show on the road for the best part of 30 hours now, feeding at road crossings and running most of the night sections in support. I explain my plight to him and nobly offer to drop out so that Glyn can finish in reasonable time.

"Pity," he says, "there's no room in the car for you..." and drives off down the road towards Crowden and the next meeting point. Surprisingly quickly my brain seems to assemble the expression "unfeeling, unsympathetic bastard" and it's the other side of Black Hill and several more miles down the route before I calm down enough to realise that the whole show still is on the road and that Tom knew exactly what he was doing.

After this the miles seem to pass in an almost unearthly blur as by now we're beyond tiredness and are kept going partly by Tom and the support team and partly by a completely unquestioned sense of purpose built up by the preparatory work done over previous months.

Quite suddenly the Cat and Fiddle Pub high above the Cheshire moors comes into view and minutes later we're part of the small band of people who have made their way between the two highest inns in England in a single non stop journey. We've made good time too having covered about 120 miles over some of the roughest ground in the land, in 5 minutes under 38 hours. The landlord and other customers of the pub are totally unimpressed despite Glyn's father's attempts to whip up some enthusiasm. We are too tired to care.

Bernard Jarvis, Nottingham, August 1989.