LEJOG Day 31 – Langsett to Marsden 18.26 miles. Cumulative 569.60 miles

The pub in Langsett where we were hoping to have dinner last night stopped serving food at 1700 hours, despite it being Saturday night on a bank holiday weekend, they didn’t have a chef for the evening shift. Lack of staff seems to be a common theme in catering establishments in each county we have visited and is a real shame for the businesses. Luckily we had an emergency meal so didn’t go hungry.

There was some development of the site facilities overnight which had some walls fitted, which confused one of the campers who thought he was going mad.

We had heavy rain overnight, which fortunately stopped just as we were getting up and we had a dry but cloudy day.

We initially followed bridle paths which took us to the Trans Pennine Trail, the trail has a diversion, as 1.5 kilometres of overhead power lines are being buried. This will remove seven pylons and improve the skyline. As we found with HS2 the project has been well managed to avoid disruption to existing footpaths and although a massive piece of work is underway it did not add much to our distance.

For the remainder of the day we followed the Kirklees Way, which took in the village of Holme which had a lovely takeaway serving pies and pasties, it would have been rude not to try their goodies. Lynn reluctantly shared her lunch.

After lunch a long climb took us to Wessenden Moor, where the Kirklees Way joins the route of the Pennine Way for a while and we find a spot we remembered from our southbound trip in 2016. We sorted a few deer both wild and farmed.

The route then follows a line of reservoir down before leaving the Pennine Way for the final stretch into Marsden for our nights accommodation at the New Inn. Chicken tonight.