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Time: 6.5h. Up: 600m. Down 500m.
Distance: 22km. Difficulty: easy Day 1: St. Bees (0m) to Ennerdale Bridge (100m) After the first of many delicious but massive and doubtless artery-hardening full English breakfasts, we set off. Or rather, we try to. Where’s Dave? Dave appears after a little bit… seems he didn’t know we were going to leave right after breakfast. Dave clearly doesn’t realize that he is in the army (airforce!) now. I enlighten him. Then we leave… well, not quite. First there are the photos to be taken. Everyone, it seems, has a camera, and everyone wants their camera to take a photo. Sigh. Finally, we really do leave. We walk down the road to the beach and each picks out a pebble to carry across England to the North Sea where we will throw them in. This is part of a secret plan to invade Norway; we English have never quite forgiven them for their raids in the Dark Ages. Russell, as usual at the start of a hike suffering from over-optimism as to his carrying ability, takes several pebbles. Others, such as me, optimize for the wrong variable by looking for pebbles they like. Only a question from the eternally rational Sally saves me: do you really want to carry such a big pebble? Ummm… no. I find another smaller one instead. More photos, and then we are finally off. A lovely walk unfolds. At first along cliffs, then across fields, through a couple of villages, up and down a hill, and then along a valley to picturesque Ennerdale Bridge. Having organized the trip the maps are mine and clutching the first one protectively I embrace the role of navigator. Somewhat surprisingly, everyone else is ok with this. Must be something about the way I hiss and spit anytime anyone tries to take a map away from me. My precioussss. First navigational problem: about half way along the cliffs we are supposed to descend into and walk along the beach of the Bay of Fleswick. No bay. I hide my confusion from the others. Wouldn’t do to have them lose faith at this early stage; plenty of time for that later. Belatedly, I realize that there is no bay because it is high tide and the tides have remarkable heights along this coast: 15-20 feet being not atypical. Happily, I don’t think anyone else noticed. Actually, the map-reading all through the trip was frequently quite challenging, in part because the C2C isn’t an official marked path like the Pennine Way. Instead, it is stitched together out of many pre-existing paths, and what signposts there are seem to be put where locals have become irritated by people getting lost or going where they shouldn’t go. Thus the signs are primarily concentrated where the locals are (in villages) and not where you really need them (in the wild). This seems, however, to be typical of England, because there are not only very few C2C signposts outside of villages… there are very few signposts of any sort. Personally, I think the English are compensating for not having real mountains like the Alps by making it easy to get lost (along the lines of “See, you aren’t so tough, Mr. Hoity-Toity Alpine Hiker”). We eat lunch in the less than picturesque village of Cleator (the area has been in a prolonged slump since most of the mines and quarries, on which the local economy was based, shut down last century) and then tackle our first real climb of the trip. 300m (1000 feet) up Dent Fell. Much puffing and panting but a very satisfying view from the summit… and to the East the peaks of the Lake District loom. A steep descent (the steepest on the whole trip) and then a lovely walk up the delightfully named Nannycatch Beck to a saddle and then down to The Fox and Hounds in Ennerdale Bridge where we stay the night. The weather was fine (sunny and moderate temperatures), everyone did well (although Oliver was suspiciously slow), and we arrived almost exactly when the schedule predicted (as was the case throughout the trip). A close to perfect start to the hike! Summary:
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C2C: The Coast to Coast Hike