Finally did it! A whole 50km in one go and in a half decent time too - I am well impressed with myself.

The hike was on Monday and by Tuesday night the after effects were beginning to wear off so it was obviously a good effort.

For those interested in statistics, it included a total vertical ascent of 1.9km (and as much down again since it was a circular route) and was done with just a basic day pack weighing in at 22lbs. I think for the next step up I need to perhaps 30km with 35lbs and then go for 50km with 35lbs, that would be a respectable achievement.

Some of the long slow uphill sections were a bit disappointing as I could really feel the strain, particularly around the 32km mark coming back up the far side of Pen-y-Ghent where my speed dropped to between 4.5kmph and 5.6kmph (my speed otherwise was around 8kmph). Can you tell I took the GPS the whole way? I did this to be absolutely sure of the distance covered, the range of speeds, the effect of terrain on speed and, interesting, the total stopping time which was about 37 minutes.

Starting from Clapham Station I took my usual route through Clapham village and up along the cycle route through the two tunnels to what is unimaginatively called Long Track. I like to take this path because there’s a good steep climb right at the beginning which opens up the airways well and gets you into the countryside quickly.

Long Track is just that, a long straight country road climbing up the hillside towards the rear cairn at what is known as Long Scar. This marks the highest point for some time and can be reached in about fifty minutes to an hour. I take my first break for water here as the view in all directions is spectacular, however on this particular day it was non-existent with visibility being down to about 100m.

The next waypoint on many of my hikes is the signposted crossroads at Sulber Pass. Here you can go left up Ingleborough, straight on towards Selside or right to Horton-in-Ribblesdale. I don’t usually stop here as there’s not really a good reason to do so, but many people do so it is dead easy to find. Turning right it’s about two-miles to the centre of Horton.

Horton wasn’t very busy, probably due to the non-descript weather, but the campsite was about half-filled with a detachment from a school cadets force by the looks of it. I got mistaken for a part of their training team - can’t think why, maybe it was the DPMs I was wearing Still, I make no excuses for wearing it - it’s good kit and it kept me warm and dry the whole day.

Passing through the town I turned into the second small track on the left just beyond the last pub which leads up to a junior school, through a wooded enclosure and then out into the countryside again. This is one of the few sections of the route that was by road.

Once I reached the top farm, I turned left and along the marked path up the side of Pen-y-ghent. This is a fairly long slog up the side being unrelentingly uphill the entire way with very few flat sections. Still, as the section to Long Scar, it gets the blood going! At the top of this track, on the crest of the hill you can either go left the last 100-metres to the summit or right along the Pennine Way down the other side of the hill. This, for me, was new territory; I’d never been down here before so, although I’d got the route set in my head I had a quick recap from the map.

The navigation’s a no-brainer just follow the track gently down and keep left where there’s a fork in the path and you reach the ‘main road’ in no time at all. I say ‘main road’ as it looks more like a track through someone’s farm. I turned left and tabbed along the road for just over a mile to rejoin the Pennine Way on its ascent up the side of Fountains Fell.

This was my real target for the day - a new hill to climb. Not that it is particularly special or even difficult, but it is right on the edge of the map and both looks and is in fact a long way from where I started. I wanted to see the tarn on top before turning back although with the weather closing in this proved all but impossible. I reached the top well enough, crossed into the Malham Tarn Reserve and then searched for it but only found what I assume was the southern edge of it having circled around it.

The route back was the same but in reverse. I thought about taking a slightly different way, possibly via Helwith Bridge but decided against it when I realised I might end up back in Clapham several kilometres short and I sure as shit wasn’t going to tab back and forward over a known distance to make it up!

http://www.memri.org/bin/latestnews.cgi?ID=SD194608

I can’t help thinking, when I read this, of the Life of Brian and the People’s Front of Judea, the Popular People’s Front and that Judean People’s Front.

That Salafi and Wahhabi groups are so fragmented and progressively more bogged down by in-fighting is a good thing.

What predisposes them such, I wonder? Or is it just the British way to keep to a small number of factions?

After the 1983 General Election, Thatcher said something along these lines when she commented that in Britain we have mostly had strong government whereas our continental cousins have more often had to put up with shaky coalitions. This has often resulted from the vote being diluted by the sheer number of parties contending the seats.