Day 1: St Bees to Ennerdale Bridge

Weather: Heavy rain with westerly gale, clearing later

Distance covered today:25.2 km (15.7 mi)

Last night's B&B: Lulu's Bistro

% Complete: Cumulative distance: 11.9 %: 25.2 km Total Ascent/ Total Descent  967m/ 879m

GPS satellite track of today's route: Day 1 (click!)

And so, to work!  Time to get serious!  As predicted, the weather was appalling this morning, but was forecast to improve around lunch time. I set out as late as I reasonably could with a view to the day’s challenge, but it was still raining cats and dogs with a howling wind and I got it in the teeth; literally!  One might reasonably expect that a walk from the Irish Sea to the North Sea would require an easterly trajectory.  But no!  In the worst traditions of the designers of the National Trails, Mr Wainwright chose to send his devotees westwards from St Bees, which for me meant right into the teeth of the gale!  He comments on this devilish intent in his guidebook and helpfully points out that even after one has walked 5km, one will still be west of St Bees! His advice?  Ah well, never mind! The view was worth it!

It would have been beautiful if I could have seen any of it. One is supposed to be able to see the Isle of Man from here, but that is a joke. I could hardly see the edge of the cliff!  I did consider avoiding the whole experience and just heading eastwards to join the path at a civilised junction, but that stupid spirit that cunningly invades the psyche of all long distance walkers, just says no! Why?

Later in the day, I experienced another of the traits that Mr Wainwright has in common with the designers of the National Trails. Like them, faced with an option to traverse an obstacle ahead, where the alternatives are either to take a sensible contour path around the obstacle, or to confront it head on and go over the top, they always go over the top! The example today was Dent Hill and I suffered!!  

Given all this parallel thinking, it is interesting that Wainwright was no fan of the National Trails. The fact that the Coast-to-coast is not a National Trail and is not represented as an official path, let alone a National Trail, on any Ordnance Survey map, is an indication of this philosophy.  Wainwright explains it in his Coast-to-coast guide. He says he wants “to encourage in others with the aid of maps the ambition to devise their own cross-country marathons and not be merely followers of other people’s routes: there is no end to the possibilities for originality and initiative.” Long-suffering readers of these blogs may recall that over the whole of my LEJOG adventure, I too shared something of this view. I commented frequently about the loss of freedom experienced at the start of an official route and the sense of adventure and liberation when on my own, devising my own progress between the national paths.

The irony of course is that when Wainwright first devised his route, the Pennine Way was the most popular walking route in the country and was being physically abused by the sheer number of walkers. He saw his Coast-to-coast as a free and romantic alternative through even more attractive countryside.  The reality today is that around ten times more people walk the Coast-to-coast than the Pennine Way, and guess what?   The vast majority, including myself, slavishly follow his suggested routing alternatives!!  Meanwhile, the Pennine Way has been substantially restored and in its pristine, unpopulated austerity, is now probably closer to the ideal he supported.….

None of this helped me up and down Dent Hill, but I did it anyway, and actually, I’m grateful I did. Today’s walk traversed three distinct regions; firstly the seascape around St Bees Head, so redolent of the Pembrokeshire and Cornish coastlines; then the drab and sadly depressed industrial hinterland of the coastal belt of towns. As in Cornwall and Wales, the demise of the industrial revolution is everywhere evident.  Its demand for coal, iron ore, tin and copper has been replaced by very little, leaving these poor villages as nothing other than dormitories for those lucky enough to get a job somewhere else. Finally, over the peak of Dent Hill, like the switching on of a light bulb, I had my first view of Lakeland, an unspoiled kaleidoscope of beautiful moors and valleys, streams and forests; a delicious foretaste of what is surely to come tomorrow.

Assuming of course, after Dent Hill, that I can actually walk at all!

Sherry and Bill at breakfast this morning

I collected my pebble from the beach here, for transport to Robin Hood's Bay, by tradition

Heading out along St Bees Head

Fleswick Bay separates the North and South Heads

Exquisite formations

Gorse everywhere!

The end of the North Head

A sandstone quarry. What multi-millennial event laid down those white sands in amongst the brown?

The Heads from behind

A tribute to Coast-to-coast walkers. Thank you!

Depressed Moor Row

Wainwright everywhere!

2-up 2-down terraces in Cleator

Eerie Pine forests, reminiscent of Kielder

The Sellafield nuclear reprocessing plant in the distance

Looking back to the coast from the summit of Dent Hill

A startling change on the other side

Convoluted valleys on the way down

My first view of Ennerdale Waters; an objective for tomorrow

Profile of the day's walk. Apparently I started 134m below sea-level. It felt like it!