What I really, really wanted was a hat.

The sun was on my head and my brains were beginning to fry. Just for a second there I thought I was Ginger Spice.

I had been looking forward to the Pennine Way, the point in the walk when the long horizons of the east coast were finally over and I was up and out in the emptiness of the hills. I had only stopped to shop for a sandwich and had left my rucksack for a couple of minutes at Middleton in Teesdale but when I came back my ‘Big Blue’ cap that I had kept clipped to the straps had gone. I back tracked to the B and B but did not see my beloved hat and I suspected foul play. I carried on going bare headed, feeling robbed.

I understand now the many religious customs that require the head to be covered. Quite simply it makes sense, particularly when you are out and under the sun in the scorching deserts of the Middle East. By the end of the day I was a convert, and for the rest of the walk I hid under canvas hats away from the rays. Sunstroke was an experience I did not want to repeat.

At first I really enjoyed the weather. The sun was out again and all my prejudices about the Pennines being grim and grey evaporated like the moisture out of the hills. I frolicked past the falls of Low and High Force and headed on up towards the very uppermost reaches of the Tees.

I had been up on this part of Teesdale fifteen years before when I had been a Biology undergraduate. David Bellamy had been a lecturer at Durham at the time and he had enjoyed leading parties into these sodden uplands. It was always winter when we came up here even if the calendar claimed it was June. I had learnt very little as my glasses fogged up and I got confused by the Big Man’s ramblings. Bellamy pointed out birds and plants that I could not recognise as I could barely see them. In fact, I am still very bad at identifying plants and find it embarrassing when people ask me about my degree in Biology.

Bellamy was just like his TV image. An unorthodox man who has been taken up by fame. One of my abiding memories of his field trip was when he had a gaggle of dripping undergraduates chew peat so that they could age it from its degree of grittiness. I remember chomping on a wad of the black stuff and hoping that a sheep had not peed on it in the last millennium.

Beyond Forest-In-Teesdale the Pennine Way begins to feel like it is reaching wild ground. The dale that contains the river closes in and Cronkley Scar rises high overhead like a rocky wall. The going got very tough at this point. Years of boots have polished the path across the broken dolomite columns of the river bed so that it has become as slippery as a wet marbled hallway. Through Falcon Clints I was down to a crawling pace gingerly testing my footing on the next rock. I was sweating hard and beginning to feel sun burn on the tops of my ears.

The struggle around this last curve of the river was worth it for the view. Up ahead pouring out of the hillside like a manic overflow pipe was Cauldron Snout - the highest of the many falls on the River Tees. I clambered my way up through rocks by the waterside and sat panting like a dog looking back on where I had come. The view up ahead was sadly disappointing. The blank faced wall of Cow Green reservoir.

I was a bad student in Durham and learnt little. Chris and I had been more interested in getting into the Music School’s recording studio. Bellamy did however impress on me the importance of the habitat of the Upper Tees Valley. He once called it ‘England’s Last Wilderness’ and cursed the harm that was done to this unique habitat by Cow Green reservoir. Upper Teesdale is full of rare and wonderful plants which have been left over here since the last Ice Age. Teesdale is an island of the arctic left surrounded by temperate England.

Arctic was hardly the word to describe Teesdale as I walked away from the dam. I was drinking my water too fast and had started to get strangely wobbly. I pushed on realising that I was starting to feel the effects of the sun.

I left County Durham and walked into Cumbria - leaving behind the story of the Tees that I had been following since I joined the lazy lowland river at Hurworth. It was hard to connect the Cauldron with that sunny wide place.

I had climbed up to over 1,500 feet and yet I had never had to push up a steep hill. The path flattened out into the moorland below Dufton Fell. It was hot, airless and completely free of shade.

High Cup Nick - by Gillie Cawthorne - with the kind permission of the artist

High Cup Nick is an amazing natural feature. A dragon bite snapped out of the side of the Pennines. The ground just drops away from the Nick into a semi-circular space that trails away from the tops all the way to Appleby. From below, the rocks appear to pile up like pipes, so that the surrounding ranks look like a colossal cathedral organ.

From Middleton over to High Cup Nick I had crossed the Pennines. It was an anticlimax to realise this region, this last wilderness, was really so small. I felt I had found something vital in its loneliness.

The path dropped down and I headed for shade.

I had gone cold by the time I reached the village of , and my stomach had cramped up. I was just beginning to see large purple splodges. The sun struck back at my lack of respect. My fellow walkers looked after me that night in the Youth Hostel. I felt like death warmed up as I shivered through the night.

Next morning I made my first appearance as the Technicolor Flowerpot Man when I walked out of Dufton Youth Hostel. The head gear I had been given overnight was a rather sad bleached bush hat which in a former life might have been red. Now it was a rather iffy shade of pink which the other walkers in the youth hostel had gently mocked. Given the way I felt after just one day of sun I would have happily have worn a dried cowpat on my head. I put on the bush hat and felt a little better.

I still felt rough pushing off into the tiny hamlet of Dufton and felt the need to sit down and rest in the morning sun. The prospect of climbing up from Dufton to Cross Fell -the highest point of the Pennine Way - left me wondering again whether I was doing the right thing.

In fine weather this is an easy part of the Pennine Way to navigate. The ridge that contains Cross Fell dominates the skyline and the peaks on the ridge are even distinguished for you by Great Dun Fell in the centre having a giant military ball built on top of it. A structure which, for a secret, is disguised as about as well as an elephant in a bowl of goldfish. I took comfort from knowing where I was going.

I was climbing. Real hill climbing. Legs lifting high, lungs working hard. I took time every so often to turn around and to look at the view all the way over to the Lakes. It was getting windier and I enjoyed the freshness on my face. Far from feeling ill as I expected I felt great, moving slowly from cairn to cairn.

I reached the top of the ridge on the peak called Knock Old Man and moved through an area which at one time had been extensively mined. The whole map of the area shows it to be full of shake holes and shepherds’ look-outs called curricks. With cloud coming down it began to look like the Pennines I remembered of old and I felt sorry for the poor beggars who had earned a living from these exposed slopes.

After passing behind the back of the ball on Dun Fell I walked across the ridge towards the domed head of Cross Fell. With its bald crown and sprinkled scree around its edges it looked to me like the top of a monk’s head. An aptly religious note for such a piously named piece of hill.

At just short of three thousand feet Cross Fell is a truly terrifying spot when the wind whips the weather in from the west. It used to be called Fiends Fell and as I looked into the strengthening wind I thought that this was a more apt name for a small corner of hell.

Right on top of the monk’s bonce some lovely person had built a shelter. A rough cross of stones which felt like the Hilton when I hunched down in it out of the wind to enjoy a blast-free lunch. As I munched I contemplated the harshness of the surrounding lunar landscape.

The flower pot hat had proved to be pretty useless in the wind and I had reverted to the nice knitted number that Judith had donated to me while I got wet in the Wolds. However, as soon as I started to descend over the other side of Cross Fell the weather improved in line with my descent and I was happy to do without the wool over my ears. I was moving into a long phase of the walk when I could not find the ideal hat to meet my every need.

After a couple of navigation errors I came to the rocky track that led to Garrigill from a stone shack which on the map was called Greg’s Hut. I got down on the rock hued road and walked in England’s Wilderness. Greg quite clearly liked to be on his own.

It was me and open moor. The open moor and me. After the farms and factories of the East Coast I felt that I had wandered into a different world. I walked on singing, scaring off the grouse. Apart from the track the only man made things I could see were the butts from which the birds were shot. For the first time in my life I was truly thrilled at the feeling of being on my own.

Back in Gainford, Sheila, whom I had stayed with, had defined for me what made an upland person. Someone for whom the brief notes of the moorland bird are superior to the endless meadow songs of the happy skylark. Sheila admitted she had the ear for the moors and enjoyed getting out in the loneliness. I felt challenged standing here by the toughness of the surrounding, by the hugeness of the humbling view which let me see right across to Cumbrian Mountains. Perhaps it is possible to love both the skylark as well as the curlew.

I passed a year on the ancient track as I came down to Garrigill on the banks of the South Tyne. I had passed from the arctic winter of lunch on Cross Fell, through a temperate Spring that afternoon and now into Summer in the protected valley bottom of the young Tyne.

I found my feet getting lighter as I got nearer to Alston. I found that I was desperate to see Pauline again. I wanted to share what I had seen. I wanted to make her laugh again. I found myself skipping along.

When I first met Pauline it was just after my series of operations. I found myself a confused, sardonic joker pitched back into the world of teenage parties. I had made myself happy sitting up on the high walls of Castle Loner laughing at all the fools falling in love. I was surprised when I found myself unable to stop looking at her. I was addicted to stupid jokes that made her laugh. I wrote poems about Pauline with images of gold. I struggled at night to find a word to describe the colour of her hair. I could not believe how happy I felt.

After the endless night of hospital, the light of her smile was almost too bright. I felt like a tube train moling its way myopically up into the light. After the noise of the dark tunnel I felt confused by the suburbia I had emerged into. I found myself in raptures over trees and birdsong. I listened to ‘Romeo and Juliet’ by Dire Straits. I think I went a bit silly for a while.

Suburban images also featured in my poems at the time amongst the gold. It was about this time that I wrote my first ode to the car crusher at Willesden Junction. I found it therapeutic to write about the twisted wrecks of cars. In my personal pantheon ‘the Phoenix’ started to rival ‘ the Broken Thing’ for ascendancy. I found myself being renewed. I also discovered the meaning of the word pretentious.

After two days of being high up on the exposed parts of the Pennines, Pauline and I walked together the next day in the shelter of the South Tyne Valley. This strip of the river meadows ran like a light thread through the darker weave of the wild hill country, providing a brilliant green strand to contrast with the russet colouring of the moor.

Unfortunately this valley has also become a transport corridor. A ruined railway ran in the valley, a memory of the days when lead was extracted from Alston and now the A 689 winds its noisy way alongside the Tyne disturbing the peace I had come to expect from the Pennine Way.

Pauline and I enjoyed the time we had together. This day was one of a series of meetings and greetings as she drove up to meet me for a weekend.

Beyond Slaggyford the Pennine Way ran along side the old railway for a section and then rose up the valley side to return to the moorland. It was hot by now on the moor and airless as even the Pennines could not attract a breeze. It was a relief therefore to find some hidden shade by Hartley Burn in which we could stop and cool off for a bit.

There are many things that you find out about your wife in marriage. One of my first discoveries was that like a Labrador, Pauline can not resist the sight of clean water. She will paddle given the slightest invitation. Hartley Burn was no exception and I sat on the bank watching her toes turn blue. I realised soon afterwards that I should have joined her in the water but I was too wrapped up in my maps at that moment to think that I ought to explore what was right under my nose. As of old, I was taking myself far too seriously. I was driving myself, still the human golf ball. The time had arrived to have a bit of fun.

I went moon-walking on the wide patch of gorse land which ran between the Forest Plantation and the Tindale Fells, bouncing along in five foot strides cushioned by the dried up banks of spongy peat. Under my feet a million years worth of dead plant matter compressed and then expanded providing me with the lift for another huge step. I bounced and bopped my way across the peat land singing "Johnny B Goode". at the top of my voice.

I experimented with ever longer strides, then skips and jumps moving on to an attempt at the triple jump which brought me down into a wet patch. I sunk right up to my knees. Just for a moment I thought that I would be sucked under.

It took me quarter of an hour to extract myself from the bog . I was then forced to fish around in the black ooze to locate one of my boots which had come off in the struggle. I walked more carefully after that for awhile and then went back to bopping and praising Mister J B.Goode.