A good night, although there were people talking quite loudly when I briefly woke at 1:40am. I concluded it was the group of families near me and not the army trainees the woman at the site had warned me about!. Alarm woke me and I quickly made the usual breakfast and packed up tent etc. It was a dull morning, misty but not raining. At about 6am another walker, dressed in a black jacket set off from the camp site. I left about 20 minutes later and set off on the long climb up Great Shunner Fell. It is a good path, isn’t particularly steep and I made good progress. At one point the path splits, the right hand fork continuing on at a lower level and looking at the map going nowhere. As I climbed I saw a black figure stopped on the path below. He then turned and went back the other way presumably realising he had taken the wrong route. Later I noticed that he had turned again and was continuing upwards along the lower path. There were rabbits everywhere. As I came over the brow of one section four curlews flew up and rabbits scattered in all directions. If I’d had a shot gun and fired it then I would have almost certainly have killed a rabbit!! There was also a black one amongst them. I entered the cloud at around 400m. Near the summit I stopped to take a photo of some cotton grass. The whiteness of it was accentuated against the dull greyness of the mist. As I turned to continue the black jacketed figure appeared and overtook me. I followed him the for last few yards to the top which he reached less than a minute before me!! It was 8:34am. Given the total lack of any sort of view I asked the black jacketed man if he would take a photo of me which he duly did. I confirmed with him that it was indeed he who had left the camp site before me. He was with the group of army trainees and was meeting them at the summit. He said that he had taken a ‘diversion’ on the way up which I presume is an army euphemism for ‘taken the wrong route’! Where would we be without the army! I made fast progress downward and in less than an hour was nearing Thwaite. I met two groups of people who were just starting out (early they no doubt thought!) and both asked if I had already been to the top! One couple was doing the ‘Herriot Way’. A short climb out of Thwaite and then along the side of the valley. At this point I recognised Swinner Gill in the distance and ahead of me, and later Crackpot Hall came into view. I knew these from the Coast to Coast the previous year. The only problem was I still had to descend over 100m down into Keld and then back up again the same amount before I reached them. I stopped for short rest at 10:55 and then continued reaching Keld at 11:45 which marked the end of my walk on the Pennine Way. I would return to this point again in 2006 to complete my walk of the Pennine Way.