A NIGHT HIKE on Kinder Scout? In winter? Alone? Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time. What could possibly go wrong?
This is a tale from almost four decades ago – from the late eighties. It takes place upon Kinder Scout, the highest hill in Britain’s Peak District National Park, although to call Kinder a hill is to grossly misrepresent it. In truth, Kinder is a mountain in all but height. Rising to a mere 2,087 feet (636 meters), what Kinder lacks in altitude it more than makes up for in ‘attitude’.
To oversimplify Kinder, the mountain is a big, wide, boggy plateau. Surrounded by steep slopes, and covering some fifteen square miles (thirty-nine square kilometers), Kinder’s summit plateau is one of the most unusual upland landscapes in Britain. Covered by sucking peat bogs and a maze of deep drainage channels, scattered with outcrops of coarse-grained millstone grit, and regularly smothered by thick clags, Kinder is a mountain where novice hikers can easily come unstuck. Or even stuck, especially after wet weather. Many of the bogs are very deep.
Fortunately, I wasn’t a novice. I was nineteen, had been walking the hills of the Peak District for four months, and I ‘knew’ what I was doing. I’d visited Kinder three times, had survived each boggy adventure, and had fallen hard for the mountain. Compared with London’s tame suburbs where I’d grown up Kinder was another world, a place of wide open space and freedom, to me a true wilderness, and I found it utterly irresistible. I couldn’t get the mountain out of my head. Kinder was, it’s fair to say, my first true mountain love, and what I wanted more than anything was to get to know it as well as I possibly could, in all its moods, by day and by night.
And so, when a late January Friday-night forecast for clear skies coincided with an almost full moon I came up with a brilliant plan: I’d go on a night hike. What could be better!
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I set out after a full day at college in Derby. I rushed to my digs, wolfed down dinner, pulled on heavy boots and gaiters, shouldered my rucksack, and marched two miles to Derby’s train station. A seven p.m. train took me to Sheffield; an eighty-forty-five train delivered me to Edale directly beneath Kinder. On the Edale train I couldn’t sit still. Soon, I couldn’t even sit. Once the train had entered the Peak District I could only stand, my face pressed against smeary glass at the train’s doors, straining to see craggy hill outlines through the night. When the doors opened at Edale I practically exploded through them.
And only then… only once the train had rumbled off down the tracks, only once I’d stepped away from bright station lights, only once the blackness of night had surrounded me, did the reality of what I was doing sunk in.
Gulp, I thought – or words to that effect. What had seemed to be a brilliant plan in bright sunlight suddenly seemed notably… questionable. There was a reason, I now understood, why few people went hillwalking by choice after dark: the darkness itself. It surrounded me, borderless, impenetrable, full of unknowns. Gulp! What had I been thinking?
I’d planned to head straight up the closest approach to Kinder and get to grips with the plateau right away… but I couldn’t quite bring myself to do it. Instead, I delayed, opting for a valley route first. I’d start with a few easy miles, get used to night hiking, break myself in gently, and only then climb onto Kinder from the valley’s upper end.
Following my headtorch beam I navigated across small fields where sheep quietly slept – until I passed by. At my arrival they jumped up and trotted off, baaing in disapproval. From farms a short distance below dogs barked angrily. I hoped they were indoors, or chained up. The darkness had me on edge. It was strange, unfamiliar, hard to process. I felt rising guilt, too, at being out on foot when others weren’t, as though I were breaking some rule, as though I were a naughty child who should have known better. In my mind I could hear society’s stern admonishments: THE NIGHT IS NOT FOR WALKING!
And yet, I felt something else stirring inside – something good – although I couldn’t pin down exactly what it was. An emotion? An instinct? An innate recognition that we belong outside in the night as much as we belong in the day? The night – anxiety-inducing though it was – was also undeniably beautiful. The smells were especially fine: cold and damp and laden with intoxicating aromas. The stars weren’t too shabby either, a multitude of them blazing as I’d never before seen stars blaze. The moon wasn’t yet risen and I half-wished it wouldn’t. The stars overhead would dim when the moon arrived.
I walked slowly, happy to delay what I’d come to do, but eventually, inevitably, I ran out of valley. Shortly after midnight I reached the valley’s upper end and passed the last farm building. The path began to climb. I sensed rather than saw steep ground crowding in on either side. The arc of starry sky narrowed. Soon, I reached the last drystone wall and the last gate, and finally stepped onto open country; the hallowed moors of the Dark Peak, glorious access land – a prize won for all walkers by the heroic access warriors of the thirties.
I continued through the night. Uphill. Sweat came quickly, despite chill air. I pulled off my gloves, hat, and the heavy wax jacket I wore, and stuffed it all in my rucksack. Every so often I paused, looking up towards the plateau’s edge. Confusingly, its distinct hard-edged silhouette appeared to be softening the closer I drew to it, blurring. What was going on? It didn’t make sense. But when I topped out the climb and finally stood on the plateau the cause was revealed: fog, and a real pea-souper, the notorious Kinder clag.
So much for the forecast! I thought. Clear skies my ass! Fog swirled all around, lit by my headtorch beam, a blizzard of tiny droplets, reducing visibility to a mere ten feet. It was beautiful, sure. It was awe-inspiring. But I cursed it.
I pulled my coat, hat and gloves back on. Squared my shoulders. Stuck my chin out in determination. Set off into the fog.
For the next hour and a half I walked extremely slowly along the southern edge of the plateau, feeling my way… feeling deeply unsettled by the clag… feeling out-of-place and increasingly out-on-a-limb, threatened by the blank nothingness of the fog. It enveloped me, a wettening mass that soaked my wax coat and made navigation tricky. Despite painstakingly careful map and compass work I lost the path repeatedly, wandering off it into boot-swallowing peat. Back then, there were no gritstone flags that couldn’t be lost, no distinct path. In the late eighties the route was a heavily-eroded multi-braided mess of churned up peat. In the dark it blended seamlessly into surrounding bogs. My progress slowed to a crawl as I lost the path, found it, lost it again. Minute by minute, I felt more and more lost – even though I knew I wasn’t, not really. Minute by minute, anxiety grew more intense. Ancient instincts that had evolved to warn me of imminent danger began clamoring for immediate attention.
I walked alone in the black-black fog. This was not the experience I’d hoped for.
But then – at two a.m. – a reward came: an experience beyond any I could have asked for. A breeze sprung up, brushed my face, stirred the air, set it into motion… and it tore the clag apart, pushed it downwards into the valley. In an instant moonlight flooded the moors, impossibly bright compared with the darkness I’d been enduring. Kinder and the hills beyond were revealed, everything lit silver: the gritstone tors, the heather, the peat hags, the seeping bogs, the surface of the fog below filling the valley rim to rim, the hills across the valley. A silver wonderland! I’d never seen anything like it. I’d never been on a mountain in moonlight. I’d never been above the clouds. The sight was extraordinary, magical beyond words. I gaped, awestruck. Wonderstruck. Whatever happens now, I thought, it’s all been worth it.
The miracle only lasted five minutes, but it remains etched in my memory. It’s as magical now thirty-seven years later as it was at the time. Some moments cannot be forgotten.
Too soon the breeze died. The fog shifted again, began boiling upwards. It reached long fingers towards me, grasped the plateau’s edge, and in moments Kinder was once again consumed.
I walked on.
Another two hours passed. Progress was appallingly slow. As before, the blank foggy nothingness began to feel oppressive. Doubts and fears returned. Once again, ancient instincts clamored for attention. The clag pressed down, insubstantial and weightless but psychologically heavy. Moisture soaked my face. The air was so filled with water it wasn’t like ‘normal’ air. Walking through it was almost like swimming. It felt… alien. Unnatural. Wrong. Tension grew further. The longer I spent alone in the fog the more disconnected from the normal world I felt, the more disoriented, the more uncertain, the more on edge.
Twice I jumped in surprise when grouse exploded upwards from near my feet. “Go back-back-back” they cried. I swore at them. Swore at myself. Why had I thought this was a good idea?
And then, somewhere between the darkly named Druid’s Stones and Madwoman’s Stones, it happened.
I heard a sound following along behind.
Footsteps.
The fear that had been a low-level accompaniment to my hike suddenly exploded in intensity. Every cliché came true: hairs on the back of my neck standing up, blood running cold, heart suddenly pounding, a hollowness inside, a feeling of extraordinary weakness…
My senses sharpened, narrowed, focused on what I’d heard: the footsteps. They were soft, barely there, but there all the same: footsteps, unmistakably. I stopped dead, stood utterly still, and reached into the night, probing it, straining to latch onto and identify what I’d heard. But the sounds had stopped. Had I imagined them? Please, I thought, let that be the case.
A full minute passed. I stood motionless, not moving a muscle, barely breathing. I heard nothing. It had to have been my imagination, a result of being on edge for so many hours. I was imagining things. You silly bugger, I thought.
Relieved, I began walking again but – oh horror! – the footsteps resumed. They came from somewhere close behind. They were soft. But clear. They seemed to match my steps but occurred a brief moment after them. They were following me.
Oh shit!
Heart racing, I stopped again, and once more the steps also stopped. I turned, shone my headtorch into the night, reached out with every sense, hearing especially, but again I heard nothing. Just dead, dead silence. I wasn’t sure what was worse: footsteps or the sudden silence. The silence was profoundly threatening.
It had to be my imagination. It couldn’t be anything else. There was nothing on Kinder that would follow me in the dark. There were no dangerous creatures that could harm me. This was England after all! A predator-free land. No wolves or bears. No saber-toothed tigers! There wasn’t such a thing as ghosts or demons or monsters. I was nineteen, an adult. Aside from the religion I’d been brought up to believe, I’d cast off all other irrational superstitious nonsense. There’s nothing to fear, I told myself. But fear still gripped me.
I began walking again, striding faster as though to ‘get away’, and the sound of steps came again, following, stalking, and louder this time, pushing me ever-closer to panic. No-no-no-no, I thought in desperation, this isn’t happening! This CAN’T be happening!
But then I had another thought, and it brought instant relief. It set me laughing: at myself, at my foolishness.
“You know what it is?” I said aloud, reassuring myself with the sound of my own voice. “It’s only peat falling off the back of my boots.”
It wasn’t footsteps; it was small clumps of peat sticking to my boots than flying off them with each step. And it was the night, accentuating the sound. I’d thought the worst because hours of foggy claustrophobia and put me on heightened alert. I’d been primed, ready for the tiniest thing to set me off.
I’ll prove it’s just peat, I thought. I’ll take small steps and then we’ll see. And so I did. I stepped with exaggerated slowness for a full minute and I heard no sounds behind. “See,” I said. “You silly wazzock. You goofball. Scared of the dark like a five year old!”
Massively relieved, shaking my head in bemusement, I paced on normally and sure enough the sound of footsteps resumed. But it was all good. It was just peat. Flying off my boots. There was nothing to fear.
I walked on… and yet, as the minutes passed, the anxiety returned. The fear returned. I still felt followed, felt increasingly watched. My amygdala had been too stimulated. Too much adrenaline coursed through my system. My heart hammered from it. My instincts still screamed. Sheer force of will couldn’t suppress the fear. It grew stronger with each step I took and with each footstep behind me that I heard. Soon, the sound of the footsteps grew louder and louder in my hearing and became utterly impossible to ignore or dismiss.
On the edge of panic, in absolute whirling desperation, I stopped again and this time – oh no-no-no, shit-shit-shit – the footsteps continued for several seconds before they ceased.
Which meant it wasn’t peat flying off my boots. I couldn’t possibly be or the sound would have stopped when I stopped. It was footsteps. Something was following me.
It’s… it’s… it’s my torch light, I reasoned unreasonably as I spiraled into panic, it’s my torch that’s the problem. It’s following the light! Whatever it is, my light is leading it on.
Turn off the light! I thought in near madness. TURN OFF THE BLOODY LIGHT!
I reached up, extinguished the beam, was plunged into total blackness. The risen moon, somewhere overhead by now, had no brightening effect on the fog. I couldn’t see a thing. Not even my hand held right in front of my face. Certainly not anything else, living or dead. And the blackness was worse. I couldn’t handle it. Frantically, I fumbled the light back on.
And then came the final straw: breathing.
It came from directly behind me. Twenty feet off, maybe. Breathing! It was deep. Heavy. Throaty. Rasping. Ominously slow. I swung my torchlight towards it but, unexpectedly, the breathing sounds suddenly came from another direction, from off to my left. Then from my right. And then, along with the breathing, I heard the sound of heavy steps being taken, rustling heather too, moving towards me…
And that finally did it. It was more than I could take. It broke me. Full terror overwhelmed me.
I took off, running. I fled from the spot as though my young life depended upon it. I raced through heather and across bogs, sprinting as fast as I was able to the plateau’s edge, then continuing onwards gravity-assisted down steep grassy slopes and through bracken into the closest side valley, Jaggers Clough. I ran and ran and ran until I burst free of the clag, and I kept on running, and I didn’t stop until Kinder Scout’s haunted summit plateau was miles behind.
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Later, of course, once the new day had dawned and sunlight lit the world, once reason and sanity had returned, I questioned what had occurred, what I’d heard. It had all been in my mind, undoubtedly. And even if it had been real, even if I had heard footsteps and breathing, I saw that there must have been a perfectly rational natural explanation.
Sheep, I thought. I’d wandered into a flock of moorland sheep. They’d been curious. They’d followed me. That was all…
But did I plan another night hike on Kinder?
No, I did not.
