Weather: ☁️☁️🌤️🌤️☁️
Food: 🥪🥪🥪🥪(4 out of 5, surprise cafe at our 750km point for 2nd breakfast and a good place for lunch in Penistone!)
Track: 🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧 (4 out of 5, beautiful trail through the Pennines, into a railway trail, along some ancient roads along the river and back on a very well maintained railway trail)
Hotel: 🛌🛌🛌🛌 (4 out of 5, spacious appartment in the town centre, with a good beds, shower and with washer and dryer!)
Name of followed trail: Trans Pennine trail
Special mention: The fabulous Sheldon group, doing the TPT to raise money for ‘dogs for good’!
After a nice quiet night we leave our campsite. Apparently free camping in England isn’t as frowned upon as we thought it was, because cyclists just go past, or wave when they spot our tent in the early morning.
We start with a beautiful part of the trail leading us through the Pennines. After passing the highest point of the English part of our trail, we descend into the valley towards an old railway track. On this track, an artist
created some fun tree carvings along the forested trail. At a bench we reach our 750 km point, we mark with gravel from the trail. A little further we find a little hidden café selling egg and bacon rolls. It seems a fitting celebration (and Mark is getting tired of muesli bars), so we go for 2nd breakfast!
We continue our way, making good progress, until we get to Penistone, where we do a little shopping and get some good Turkish eggs for lunch! Back on the track we meet a whole group of people in the same shirts. A lady on a horse, a lady in a wheelchair and a group of hikers. They ask if we’re also on the Trans Pennine Trail, and it appears we meet a group going in the opposite direction about halfway through the trail! Mary (the lady in the wheelchair) got this group together to raise money for Dogs for Good, an organisation that trains assistance dogs. We swop cards and websites. If your interested in their cause: https://www.justgiving.com/page/teamsheldon?utm_medium=FR&utm_source=CL
From the railway track we get onto a trail through a village into the fields. Not sure about this, but it’s a really cool part of the trail, on an ancient road that used to go to the settlement of Oxspring. There are some beautifully made drywalls and a cool bridge along this trail.
A bit further we meet a couple that asks if we’re going far with these big packs. Well…we kind of do!😅 Not today though, only a few kilometers left to Barnsley!
The trail gets on another old railway track all the way to our destination of today. When we get there, we go to a busstop to get to the city centre. There we check in to our appartment and get ourselves and the first clothes clean before we go for a well deserved meal!
750km, well done guys!