The Great Northern Bushcraft Conference – Part 3

GNBC – Edale – May 2017 – Sunday – Monday

Sunday

Waking up Sunday morning, i had a good look around with my blurry eyes, to make sure my tent was still standing, and that it wasn’t just a giant bivvy bag. Surprisingly all seemed ok. Upon exiting my tent i noticed that Colin’s tent had gone already, Colin had set up in the space vacated by Jay and his family whilst i was out walking. Id had a great chat with him in the evening, before he went to bed early, as he’d brought his young son with him. Asking the lads about Colin, they informed me that he’d been forced to pack away due to his tent pole snapping in the night, which had scared his lad, as the tent was half collapsed. Well thankfully the wind had died down quite a bit now, but the visibility was very poor. The cloud was very low, and was hiding the mass of Kinder, and covering the top half of the great ridge, it wasn’t looking good for another days walking………well if i wanted to see anything that is 😉    You may notice in the photograph above, the mess that was once Paul’s gazebo. His gazebo though wasn’t the only thing on site to get battered by the wind. As mentioned earlier, Colin’s tent got broke, a few other peoples tents also damaged, also i think a good few tarps on site had ripped, some people were using them as makeshift awning. Quite an expensive night. As the morning went on, the cloud did start to lift, but the sky stayed very grey. Most of our group was leaving today, many of them before dinner time, Mike and his dad, Craig, Andy and his lad Tom, Dave and his dog were all gone before 1 o’clock. This just left Steve and his wife, (who were also leaving but not till the evening) and me and Paul of our group. As well as most of our group leaving, quite a few others from the site were packing up or had already left. There was still a good amount of people left though who were staying for the last night, and i was sure we’d still have a great last evening.

So the time was around 12:30, and as the weather had continued to improve all morning, i decided i would do one last walk. I prepared myself some food and set off towards Edale. I had no idea where i was going to go, but i did have a rough plan, and that involved checking the train times. My plan was slowly formulating, and if the wait for the train was not too long, i  had decided i wanted to catch the train to Hope and walk back via the great ridge. Arriving outside the train station, i checked the timetable to see how long id have to wait. After a quick scan, i saw i only had about 25 minutes to wait so i decided to head on up to the platform.  Once on the platform i saw a familiar face, it was Shaine, who had left the campsite nearly an hour before me. He told me he’d missed his train by about five minutes and was forced to wait for the next one, the one i’d be getting. Though i was only going one stop down, and he was going all the way to Sheffield. With his company, the 25 minutes flew by and our train soon arrived at the platform.   It didn’t take long to get to Hope, after all it was only one stop down, so after saying goodbye to Shaine, i got up and waited by the door to exit the train. The first part of the walk is just about getting out the station and off the road, which is done at the bridge over the river Noe. The Path follows the river for about half a mile before cutting west through the fields towards Lose hill.  The weather had been steadily improving while i’d been out, with the clouds going from dark grey to almost white and fluffy, and with patches of blue sky appearing, the temperature had also risen. The path was starting to steepen now as the great ridge drew nearer, and before long i was at the base of Lose hill, and ready to make my way up.  It was quite a slog up to the top for me, as the section leading up to it had been all uphill as well, so i had a couple of stops to catch my breath on the way. Once at the top though, all the effort is worth it, with great views all around, over the vale of Edale and the Hope valley.   As you will notice from the photographs, it was very busy on the top, in fact, looking down the ridge towards Mam Tor, it looked like the entire ridge was busy. Such are the perils of walking such a beautiful and popular route on a bank holiday weekend. I waited on Lose hill long enough for most of the crowd to leave, so i could then record an update for my video, once done i carried on along the ridge. Having set off so late, it was well past dinner time, and i was starting to get really hungry. So my plan was to get to Back Tor, and hope that the large table sized rock was available, where on a previous trip i had seen a couple eating their lunch. I moved swiftly along the path, but being careful to keep a distance between the people in front and behind, to kind of give myself the illusion i was walking on my own 🙂 Arriving at Back Tor it was very busy, but there was no one at my chosen lunch spot, so i quickly shot some video footage and took some photographs before grabbing myself a place at the table like stone.  The views from here were pretty epic, i had a very commanding view of the rest of the great ridge to Mam Tor, and also amazing views over the Vale of Edale towards Kinder Scout.   I was really glad i chose this spot for food, as the views were so good, i almost didn’t want to leave. But leave i did, once my food was finished, and i started to make my way down Back Tor towards Hollins cross. After the downhill from the Tor, i made my way up the next rise, before then descending down again to Hollins cross. It was very busy here too, with at least two groups of D of E passing through in the short time i was there. I didn’t stop there long though, as i’d only been there the day before, so i quickly carried on up towards Mam Tor. I could already see that it was going to be very busy on top, as various dots on the horizon milled about. I didn’t get many pictures on my way up this time, as i  had already done this section, but just before the summit i couldn’t resist turning around for just one picture of the extremely photogenic ridge.  The summit, as expected, was very busy, but this time the wind was no where near as bad, and i didn’t feel the need to get off as quickly as the day before, when we were all but blown off. This time i got to soak up more of the views from the highest point on the ridge, whilst waiting patiently to get an obligatory Trig point selfie 🙂     I left the summit via the steps on the western side, and from there made my way to the path down harden Clough again. Its a pretty steady decent all the way down into Edale with nothing too steep or painful on the knees. Again, as i’d done the route the day before, i didn’t get many pictures, except for one looking down onto Edale with Grindslow Knoll in the background.   I arrived back on the campsite at about 17:30, after roughly a 9 mile walk. I’d had a really great time, and it had been the first time since October 2016 that id done the full ridge. I was however completely shattered, as 3 days of walking and late nights had caught up on me, and for the next half hour or so i sat outside my tent relaxing. After a good rest, i grabbed a few snacks and a beer then had a scan of the site looking for Paul. i found him sat with all the lads from camp Bazza, so i picked up my chair and went over to sit with them for the rest of the evening. We had a really nice chilled evening and a great chat, and i also brought an “Edale 2017” ferro rod off Scott as a memento of the weekend. It was really nice to sit with a great bunch of lads id watched on YouTube, but never met before in person, and they were all really friendly and welcoming. Well we sat and talked till around 10:30, when it decided to start raining, and that seemed to be everyone’s cue to go to bed, after a great evening, myself included.

Monday

I woke up Monday morning at about 07:30 to an almost complete white out, visibility was even less than Sunday morning, and all you could really see was our immediate field. I decided to put the kettle on for a much needed coffee, and i started packing all my gear away. As it was slightly spitting with rain, i got all my gear away first and left my tent till last.  It was at this point Paul got up, and after he had properly woken up, he helped me pack up my tent, and that was all my gear done. Between us we had a good litter pick of our area, and i took the rubbish over to where it was all being collected from. On my way back i had a great chat with Drew, one of the organisers, and we talked over various things and i also told him what a great time i’d had and that I’ll definitely be back in the future if the event is on again. Upon getting back to Paul, he’d got all his gear away, so i repaid the favour and helped him take his tent down too. With that, it was time for me to leave, after eagerly waiting for what felt like ages to get to this event, it was now over so quickly. Id had a truly amazing time, and id like to thank everybody who made it happen, from all the people who turned up, and to Drew and Lenny for organising with the farmer to use his land and making sure everything ran smoothly……..Thank you!!! 🙂

So that’s the end of this blog and the GNBC series, i hope you have enjoyed reading this, and if you made it this far then thank you very much. I will once again leave the links to the videos of this event below in case you have missed them befor . So thank you again for reading and until next time, goodbye 🙂

Regards Mark.

Links below to my videos from the weekend.

Gnbc Weekend video

Gnbc The walks

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