Is the Pennine Way hard? An honest guide

The Pennine Way is the one people mean when they say a long-distance walk is hard, and the honest answer is that it is. Not because any one day is extreme, but because there are eighteen of them, over high, wet moorland, and some are a long way from the nearest road. Here is what the numbers say.

The numbers

Distance

255 mi

411 km, the main line, measured

High point

893 m

Cross Fell

Total climb

8,647 m

from LIDAR terrain; a floor, not a ceiling

The total climb is about 8,650 metres by our measurement from the Environment Agency's laser survey, and the highest ground is Cross Fell, 893 metres, the highest point in the Pennines. The biggest single climb is about 600 metres, from Dufton up to Great Dun Fell on the way to Cross Fell. Over the planner's eighteen days that is about 480 metres of climbing a day, every day, on days that average 14 miles. It counts only the rises our survey resolves, so ours is a floor.

What makes it hard

The ground. The National Trail calls it a hilly route and in places very remote, with wet peat bog on several days. Stone flags are laid over the worst of the peat, and in the rest you will get wet feet.

Cross Fell. In the planner's eighteen-day split the hardest day is Dufton to Garrigill, 25 kilometres with about 840 metres of climb, over Great Dun Fell and Cross Fell. The National Trail says the tops, Cross Fell above all, are serious in bad weather in any month.

The Cheviots. The last stretch, from Bellingham to Kirk Yetholm, is the longest without a village: the map has no shop, café or pub within a kilometre of the path for 40 miles. There are two emergency shelters on the Cheviot ridge.

Water. OpenStreetMap has sixteen taps within 400 metres of the Way, and none from Edale to East Marton, the first 67 miles. The water on the Pennine Way is in the villages below the tops: fill up wherever you stop.

What makes it possible

The villages between. The Dales, Teesdale and the South Tyne valley have villages with beds and pubs: Malham, Horton in Ribblesdale, Hawes, Keld, Middleton-in-Teesdale, Dufton, Alston. Most nights are in one.

The railways. Edale station is 600 metres from the start, and the Settle–Carlisle line calls at Horton in Ribblesdale, 400 metres from the path, and at Appleby. There are stations in the Calder valley and the Tyne valley too, so a day that goes wrong often has a way off. The finish is the awkward end: Kirk Yetholm has no station. Those are checked, with the dates on the guide.

So who is it for?

If you can walk 14 miles a day over rough ground, day after day, carrying what you need for a wet one, you can walk the Pennine Way in eighteen days; the National Trail says most walkers allow sixteen to nineteen. It is not the walk to learn on. The planner shows what any number of days looks like, and for each night it says where the count of beds came from and when it was read. A bed on a list is not a bed booked.

Build your walkPennine Way in 18 days255 mi · about 14 miles a dayOpen the planner →