England Coast to Coast Trek (Part 1): From the Irish Sea....

This is the first of three reports on our 200 mile Coast to Coast walk across England, covering the 63-mile segment from St. Bees to the village of Shap.

Map sourced from www.contours.co.uk

The Coast to Coast Path traverses northern England for over 190 miles starting in St. Bees at the Irish Sea and finishing at Robin Hood’s Bay at the North Sea. Our plan is to walk this distance over eighteen days with a handful of rest days here and there. With side trips to pubs for sustenance and some backtracking due to the high likelihood of getting lost, we anticipate we will be walking over 200 miles. That’s if our bodies hold up. 

Our first test wasn’t a physical one. Instead, it was one of patience and stress management due to our travails of getting to this part of England in the first place. After enduring the aggravation of flight delays and cancellations out of O’Hare (go figure), we were re-routed through Munich, Germany then, eventually, to an overnight stop in Manchester, England. To add to our discomfort, there was no hot water in our downtown hotel for what was a much-anticipated shower. Clean, but chilled, the next morning had us on two separate trains that eventually delivered us to the small village of St. Bees, forty-eight hours after we left home, where we wearily checked into our rustic, yet comfortable hotel. And this one had hot water.

After relaxing a bit, Mary Kay soon found a nice quite corner in our hotel’s pub to read and sip her soothing cup of decaf. I, on the other hand, spent the better part of the evening on a bar stool sipping my soothing glass(es) of beer while talking with the bartender and a couple of customers about the finer points of Brexit, the politics of our respective countries, tourism’s and the nearby nuclear power plant’s economic impact on the region and, of all things, Antarctic expeditions (it’s a long story).

St. Bees to Cleator

Following tradition, we each picked up a pebble at this Irish Sea beach and plan on carrying it with us across the width of England where we are to throw it into the North Sea upon completion of our trek. Tradition also had us get the heels of our boots wet at this beach. To properly bookend this trek, we will then get the toes of our boots wet after reaching the beach at Robin Hood’s Bay some 200 miles and three weeks from now.

The strong winds buffeted us as we climbed from the beach to the headlands above. Long stretches of the trail hugged the cliff-sides not far from the drop-offs to the rocks far below. We were thankful the winds blew us away from these precipitous edges rather than toward them.

Out at sea, banks of low hanging clouds with hanging veils of rain marched their way toward shore. For most of the morning, we were able to dodge these rains, either quickening our pace to out-run them or slowing down to let them pass far ahead of us. By the afternoon, after the trail turned and we headed inland, we weren’t so lucky and found ourselves drenched on more than one occasion.

While our trail guidebook and map sheets were critical in helping us navigate the twists and turns of our route, there were some gaps in route-finding instructions. One of the roads we walked down dead-ended to a gated-off lane where a farmer and his family were leading their cows to the nearby barns. It was unclear from the books and maps as to which way we were to turn. 

 

The guidebook and maps we are using to navigate.

While puzzling over these books and maps, the farmer called out to us, opened the gates, and walked with us while showing us the way through his maze of barns, sheds, and the building that made up his and his family’s home while assuring us that we were indeed following the correct course. I think if this was to occur in the U.S., we would have not been met with such friendliness, but instead would have been greeted with the business end of a shotgun and a shout for us to “get off my g*#@*#d land!”

By design, this first day’s walk was a relatively short one, nine to ten miles or so, so as to get used to the rigors of our days ahead when greater mileage will be called for. Despite this so-called short day, we were weary near its conclusion and had to stop for a break in the village of Moor Row, only a mile and a half short of our hotel in Cleator, where we found refreshment in the form of coffee and sweetcakes at a small store tucked in between a row of otherwise non-descript houses.

Cleator to Gillerthwiate

The sun shone brightly on this glorious day. Temperatures were in the mid-fifties. For us, this was perfect hiking weather as we entered the Lake District, an area renowned for its treeless mountains, deep water lakes, and overall beauty.

Soon after our start, signs warned us not to proceed past a gray steel gate that blocked our way. Forestry operations were underway up the designated route and the loggers didn’t want any hikers out and about in their work area. A well-signed detour took us down small country lanes, the pavement of which was only one car in width, and added about an extra mile to our planned 11 mile day. The good thing, though, is that this detour took us around what would otherwise have been a steep climb up and over Dent Hill.

The other bonus was that these lanes were bordered by hedgerows overgrown with bushes full of ripe, fat, and juicy blackberries. What would go for $2.99 a pint back home was here free for the taking, and in unlimited quantities at that. We paused frequently to pick the fruit, taste their deliciousness, and slowly watch our fingertips turn purple from the effort.

When the pavement finally ended, a muddy and rocky trail took over. After years of boots and bikes, erosion caused it to become its own stream. The rising sun glinted off of the running water creating a glare that made it difficult to discern one path from another. This resulted in us getting turned around a bit when we took a wrong track where the trail braided into numerous branches. Fortunately, we discovered our error after only a few hundred feet. We cut across a soggy, sheep-filled meadow to connect back to the correct route, but not after getting our boots soaked.

After refreshing ourselves with sandwiches and snacks at a shop in Ennerdale Bridge, we turned to follow a shoreline path down the southern side of the Ennerdale Lake. This gem was spectacularly situated amongst hills and mountains located at its flanks. However, this was no casual stroll. When we finally reached the end of the lake, our feet and ankles were sore from having to walk on and over an infinite number of rocks, roots, and boulders all having an infinite number of sizes and shapes designed to easily make one trip, slip, or fall.

We reached our remote hostel by mid-afternoon. Tired and trail-weary, we quickly agreed to take the receptionist up on her offer to upgrade into a private room. We just weren’t in the mood to share our sleeping quarters with other hikers after our long day of trail walking.

Though tired, we were feeling good about the mileage we have covered so far on our first two days. However, any notion that this was something noteworthy was quickly dispelled at dinner. Seated nearby our table was Phillip, a fifty-something year old man from Brighton who was walking solo. We learned from him that he just finished in one day the twenty-plus miles it has taken us two full days to cover.

Gillerthwaite to Longthwaite

We are big believers in the karma gained when we “pay it forward”, the practice where instead of paying back a person who has just helped you out with something, you instead commit to doing something nice for someone else at sometime in the near future. And we do just that anytime we are presented with an opportunity to do so. This morning was an example. 

Our hostel’s manager, upon learning we would be staying at another hostel later tonight, asked if we could deliver a package for her. It seems someone had left behind a small wallet containing a driver’s license, a couple of credit cards, and a fistful of cash. Given our remote location, the only expeditious way to deliver this was by us, or someone, walking it out to the next village in the valley up and over the mountains.

She made some calls and was assured that if we took the wallet to the next hostel, it would then be delivered by a courier via a mountain road to the more-than-likely frantic owner who, at this point, was a day or so ahead of us. We happily obliged knowing it was not only the right thing to do, but that it would add to our growing stock of karma credits.

Mid-morning, we stopped at an intervening hostel to have a cuppa and chat with the resident manager. We learned this was one of the most remote hostels in all of England. Joining us was Phillip, the long-distance walker from Brighton we had met last night.  He took off before we could finish our coffee. I had to call out after him when it became apparent he was heading down the wrong trail. I only knew this because this confusing spot was clearly warned about in my guidebook. The hostel’s manager thanked me for helping the man out saying that he has to do so likewise for many others during the course of a day. He said most have the same guidebook we have, but that they don’t bother to read it.

MK and the hostel manager go over directions and advice. 

The steep climb from here took us up about 1000 feet over the course of one and a half miles. At the pass, we enjoyed the lack of any winds and the views of the far-off lakes below us that weren’t yet obscured since the clouds overhead hadn’t yet descended to our level.

Many day-hikers were coming up the trail as we descended down into the next valley. Near the base, a slate mine was in operation. Nearby was a museum, and attached cafe, that extolled the benefits and uses of all things slate.

Down into the valley proper, we found our hostel nestled in a grove of trees and adjacent to a clear running mountain fed stream. Before doing anything else, we happily handed over the wallet to the manager who would see to it that it would be advanced to the rightful owner. 

Our hostel in Longthwaite in the Borrowdale Valley. 

Longthwaite to Grasmere

We said goodbye to Phillip at the breakfast table. He was about to set off for another marathon day, this time walking 17 miles to the village of Patterdale, which was our destination two days from now.

Phillip, from Brighton, England. 

The morning clouds, full of rain and mist, hung low, obscuring the ridge tops high above where we would be walking later in the day. We started out, though, traversing through the Borrowdale valley in overcast but relatively rain-free skies following the Stonethwaite river up slope to its eventual source high above us.

Sheep graze along the trail everywhere we have been. 

The river formed numerous waterfalls the higher we ascended. The overnight rains at these higher elevations helped create and add to these torrents. The trail too was full of water. Boggy, boot-sucking mud and mire made for very slow going.  

The cloud ceiling had lowered and had obscured any views as we reached the pass. In fact, seeing anything beyond 25 yards was very difficult. Navigation was almost impossible. Get turned around up here, and you'd be lost until things cleared up days from now. We split up, yet kept each other in sight, so as to increase our odds of finding the handful of rock cairns that marked the direction of the trail and which were critical for our wayfinding. 

At one point, I could see the white coat of a grazing sheep off in the murkiness. I watched as it started to move on. My gaze looked past this ghost sheep in the direction it was walking as it began to disappear in the fog. It was only then that I was able to discern the next cairn, the next critical marker in our course over this pass that I would likely not have seen had it not been for this mysterious animal.  

MK points the way to the next rock cairn. 

Found one! These cairns were critical markers showing the way over the foggy pass. 

After a lot of hunting and searching, we found our way over the pass and down into the valley toward Grasmere. While our pace was pathetically slow, others were yet even slower. We passed groups of hikers as we descended. One couple, from Toledo, shared with us their story of getting lost up at the pass. In fact, at one point, they got so turned around, they went in a completely wrong direction back down to the valley they had started out from. If not for another hiker’s GPS unit, who had fortunately come by at a pivotal moment, this couple would likely still be wandering around up on these mountaintops.

These walks in these conditions is not like what you would experience on the paths back home in your local park where you can average three to four miles an hour. Here, because of the rocks, roots, bogs and streams, we are finding our pace to average out at a little over one and sometimes as high as two miles an hour. Our eight to ten-mile day today took us a little over six hours to complete. We were tired. We were hungry. All we wanted to do when we staggered into our hostel was to eat.

And eat we did, over the course of one evening and all of the following day, for we chose the village of Grasmere for a so-called “zero” day, a day off without gaining any mileage down the trail. In fact, we probably consumed enough food and calories to more than make up for all that we lost during our past four days of hikes.

This was also the last of our stays in hostels. From here out, inns and B&Bs would serve as our overnight lodgings.

 

The hostels we have stayed at have been very nice, almost luxurious. 

Although, its apparent their plumbing might need to be upgraded. 

We could barely hear the receptionist when we checked in for she was very soft-spoken.

“We lock the doors early. If you come back late, perhaps because you’ve spent too long at the pub, use the key fob and the sensor will open the doors,” she said, barely above the sound of a whisper.

“Well, we’re not the pub-going type,” we said, with normal sounding voices. “We’ll be back in plenty of time.”

“Oh. Then maybe you’ll be out stargazing or something.” She said this with somewhat of a wink and a sparkle in her eye as if to say it’s okay with her if we might choose to be out and about doing something naughty late into the evening.

The next day, we joined the hundreds of tourists who descended on the town and milled about on the small streets and narrow lanes. Grasmere was once home to the poet William Wordsworth and many had made the pilgrimage here to see where he worked and lived.

 

Dove Cottage, where Wordsworth did his work. 

Quaint Grasmere.

I’m not a student of poetry and know nothing of the man’s work, other than the quote he had about Grasmere that we saw on a variety of signs on street corners and in the shops:

           “The loveliest spot that man hath ever known”

I guess that if one uses the word "hath" instead of "has", it is considered high brow poetry. 

Instead of investigating his poetry further, we spent the better part of the day walking in and out of shops, bakeries, and gift stores doing the tourist thing. In time, I was getting sleepy and was in the mood for a nap.

I'm generally not a big fan of gift stores, but some of them I actually liked. 

I can be overbearing at times and a bit too intense, so I made a suggestion. “I think I’m going to go back to the hostel for a short snooze,” I said to MK. “Maybe you’d want to do your own thing and take advantage of a chance for some alone time?”

“OK!” She responded, “I’ll do that. See you back at the hostel in an hour or so.” And off she went.

Was it just my imagination or was she too quick to agree to this?

Grasmere to Patterdale

A cold front passed through overnight and brought with it some rain, temperatures in the 40s, and a strong, gusty wind. The skies cleared just as we got underway but the cold winds continued to howl. Fortunately, the wind was blowing from behind us and served to propel us somewhat up the Tongue Gill valley toward Grisedale Tarn at the pass and then down into the Patterdale valley.

The views as we reached the top were spectacular. We stopped from time to time to soak in the beauty for to linger too long meant getting chilled to the bone. There were times when the winds, using the profile of our bodies with our backpacks like a sail, pushed us around so much that it caused us to lose our footing as we stepped up from rock to rock up and over the pass.

On more than one occasion, our trekking poles saved us from a terrible spill onto the rocks. MK’s trekking pole nearly bent in two when she used it to self-arrest preventing what would have been a very badly bruised shin and knee. I was able to bend the pole back in place so that it would remain serviceable for the remainder of our trip.

These poles are essential pieces of gear for walking in terrain like this. We have used ours on treks throughout the world. And they show it, being scratched, dented, and now bent. The look like they’ve been through a war or two and have become a possession jealously guarded. They've become a tribal artifact of sorts.

The winds picked up and the cold deepened on our descent. We stopped to eat our lunch in the lee of a shuttered mountain hut. Other hikers who had caught up to us chose to do so likewise for there were no other spots on the exposed mountainside where one could get out of the wind. We said hello and chatted a bit with a group of four older men from Manchester when they, after noting our accents, asked us where we were from. And this was from men whose northern England accents were so thick that it was at time difficult to understand them.

The conversation then shifted. “How long are you planning on taking to walk this Coast to Coast path?” one of them asked. He was wearing shorts and a thin t-shirt, its fabric stretched to the limit from his ample belly. He didn’t seem bothered by the cold.

“Well,” I said, repeating what I have mentioned several times already to others that have asked, “we are taking the ‘age-appropriate’ length of time and plan on …”

“Seven days?” one of them interrupted as we and the others laughed.

“Ha! No, no. We’re taking eighteen days along with a handful of rest days here and there. How about you guys? How long?”

“Four years for us!” another one replied. He was wearing a cap with a Route 66 logo. “Us mates get together each year and do a three to four-day segment. We’ll finish this thing some day!”

We said our goodbyes and continued our descent. Near the bottom, an older couple were slowly walking toward us from the opposite direction. “Is this weather what passes for late summer here in northern England?” I asked in good humor as they drew near.

“Up here, at these heights, there is no summer!” He too was wearing just a short sleeve t-shirt. His wife was similarly dressed. “But, we don’t notice it anymore. We’ve been coming up here and walking these mountains for over fifty years. We got married down at the hotel in the valley back in 1964. And we weren’t two child brides back then. So that should tell you how old we are.”

“You two look great!” MK exclaimed. “You look to be in great shape”

“Well, don’t be fooled,” he said. “Our knees are shot, the heart needs work, my lungs are causing me trouble, and my wife is hard of hearing. She’s nearly deaf as a stone! But other than that, we’re doing okay.”

By mid-afternoon, we reached town and our B&B, an old farmhouse with three rooms upstairs converted into guest quarters with a shared bath down the hall. The thick masonry walls and low-beamed ceilings gave it its rustic charm. Although I on more than one occasion bumped my head hard on the beam leading out from our room. I must confess that I used the Lord’s name in vain out loud at around the third time I did so. 

Patterdale to Shap

A long time ago, six months or so to be more precise, when I was outlining and planning our routes and stages for this walk, I lamented and stressed about today’s leg, wondering if it was something we’d be able to physically accomplish.

You see, the official route of the Coast to Coast between Patterdale and Shap is a seventeen mile hump up and over a high mountain pass, across long stretches of exposed open lands, down along the rocky shoreline of a large reservoir, and then many road miles before finally arriving in Shap. While we can normally knuckle down and take on the physical challenge of a long day’s walk, I knew that this one would be too much for us to tackle.

So, after further research while back at home, I discovered an alternative route, one that is still all of fourteen miles or so, but one that is at lower elevations, less climbing, and with less exposure to the elements.

Gillian, the Patterdale Store proprietress, helped us out with maps and weather forecasts for our alternative route. 

The village of Patterdale.

And this research paid off.  The weather forecast called for heavy rains and gale force winds up in the mountains along this original route. Not that we needed more convincing, but this fact alone convinced us to take the lower elevation alternative route

After an hearty “full English” breakfast, we set off from our Patterdale B&B to the small village of Glenridding, about two miles away, where a ferry boat was taking passengers down the length of Ullswater Lake to the pier at Howtown. Once there, we would set off on a twelve-mile hike that would skirt around the mountains and highlands of the original Coast to Coast route taking instead a gentler course over modest hills, across green, sheep-filled pastures, and through bucolic little villages.

 

The ferry boat that would take us to our trailhead.

The men from Manchester. 

Other hikers must have figured out this alternative way as well for there were many waiting to board the boat when we arrived. We were pleased to see the four men from Manchester were there getting ready to board while having fun and joking around just like they did when we first met them yesterday while on the trail. What a fun bunch of guys.

The map I bought back at the shop on Patterdale, marked up for us by the kind and very helpful proprietress, showed us the way across the open lands along and then away from the lake. Various paths crisscrossed the area making for some confusion.

Once underway we came across another couple, walking about on a day hike, who seemed turned around and asked if we had better information than what they had on their simple map. There was no way they would have found their way without using the information from our more detailed map that we happily shared with them.

These open lands afforded views of the mountain tops and highlands back along the original, more treacherous route. The peaks were shrouded in deep, menacing clouds. It had to be just terrible up there. In fact, we would later learn from two hikers who had staggered into our hotel that they took this higher route. They were constantly in the rain, got thoroughly soaked, and battled winds so strong they nearly got knocked over a time or two.

 

Dark and foreboding best describes the route high up in the mountains, a route we fortunately did not take.

Meanwhile, we enjoyed a mix of sun, a pleasant sun shower or two, and a sprinkle here and there along our alternative route. On more than one occasion were we treated with a spectacular rainbow over the land before us.

 

We saw rainbows on numerous occasions. 

After ten miles, the beauty before us became invisible as our focus turned to how tired and fatigued we were getting. The path became more of a dark depression in the grass across the pastures instead of the more typical gravel or dirt trail.

The path became nothing more than a faint track across pasture land. 

We had no idea what kind of animal this was - something of a cross between a sheep and a pig. 

Eventually, we reached the outskirts of Shap where we found the ruins of an ancient abbey. After poking around a bit, we dragged ourselves into town buoyed by the promise of a hot shower, a belly full of food, and the knowledge that we have just finished walking the first third of our 200 mile trek across northern England.

For Part Two of our journey, please go here.

For Part Three of our journey, please go here.

A music video of our 200 mile hike can be seen at the end of the Part Three post.