Day 1 – St Bees to Ennerdale Bridge
Day 2 – Ennerdale Bridge to Rosthwaite
Day 3 – Rosthwaite to Grasmere
Day 4 – Grasmere to Patterdale
Day 5 – Patterdale to Shap
Day 6 – Shap to Kirkby Stephen
Day 7 – Kirkby Stephen to Keld
Day 8 – Keld to Reeth
Day 9 – Reeth to Colburn
Day 10 – Colburn to Lovesome Hill
Day 11 – Lovesome Hill to Carlton Bank
Day 12 – Carlton Bank to Farndale
Day 13 – Farndale to Glaisdale
Day 14 – Glaisdale to Robin Hood’s Bay
Conclusions
Day 0 – Introduction
Having clocked up several long distance walks over the last few years, my daughter Mel and I were beginning to see that the late, great Alfred Wainwright’s Coast to Coast walk was becoming the obvious next one to tick off. We’d been pretty curious about it for a while to be honest – AW was undoubtedly a man of outstanding taste when it came to walking but his heart seemed to be mostly in the Lake District and we’d hardly been there at all. He also famously hated the Pennine Way whereas we loved it – or at least we did once we’d dried out and recovered from the aches and pains! Anyway, it looked like a decent way to fill two weeks and makes an impressive line on a map so we set a date, did the research and the bare minimum of booking and gave it a try.
We got up bright and very early on the morning of Saturday 16th April 2016 so we could walk the 5 miles into Derby and catch the 7:44am train to St Bees. We’d booked the tickets some weeks before so already knew we’d be changing trains at Leeds and Carlisle, but in the event it also incorporated a bus ride from Appleby to Carlisle due to a landslide during the disastrous floods of the 2015-16 winter blocking the railway. It was all very efficiently organised though and we got there in plenty of time to pick up the rail connection for the last stage down the Cumbrian coast. We’d seen a fair bit of snow on the way through the Yorkshire 3 Peaks area which confirmed the slightly uncomfortable weather forecasts we’d been watching over the preceding few days but when we finally got to St Bees it was all dry and very encouragingly bright and sunny.
The Royal Scot at St Bees station. The landslip near Appleby meant that the Settle to Carlisle steam trains were having to run alternative routes for a while.
After a pause at the station (on the advice of a local resident) to watch a steam train pass through – The Royal Scot – we made our way down to the big Seacote caravan park by the sea and pitched our tents.
Pitched at Seacote caravan park, Mel was using her trusty Vaude Hogan Ultralight 1 tent. Behind her was my new and hardly used Nordisk Telemark LW 1
The remainder of the afternoon was spent exploring the Abbey and some of the village before dining at the Queens Hotel. The Manor House pub across the road actually looked like a more popular place and had a lively crowd around the tables on the front outside their Coast to Coast Bar, but the Queens looked more relaxing and was comfortably busy inside, and the food, beer and welcome were all excellent.
The weather was looking promising for the start of our walk the next morning. It was getting chilly though!
After an evening stroll down to the sea and the careful selection of suitably small pebbles to take with us to Robin Hood’s Bay we went back to the tents and settled down to listen to some music and get an early night ready for the big launch the next morning. Once the sun had set it became surprisingly cold, just like most of the subsequent nights!
I hope you enjoy the tale of our walk and if you’re planning to do it yourself I hope you find something helpful here. There’s a lot of information available online and in print about the Coast to Coast walk as it’s such a popular route, but I don’t think there can ever be too much; other people’s blogs were definitely the prime source of inspiration in our planning.