St Bees to Patterdale: pt1
For a few years I have had my eyes on doing the Coast to Coast walk from St Bee’s in Cumbria, through to Robin Hood Bay in Yorkshire, its a 190 odd mile hike from west to east through the UK, and I had plans for me and Bo to hike, and camp along the way.
In may 2023 we hiked the Cumbria Way as a tester, and had a wonderful time, sadly I didn’t take a camera with me, instead choosing to film it with the intention of making a video for my YouTube channel at the time, something I am still yet to do!
So anyway, the plan was for Cumbria to be in the spring, and Coast to Coast at the end of summer, unfortunately I was both laid off from work, and knocked off my bicycle and broke my collarbone a short time after coming back from The Cumbria Way which put an end to those plans for that year.
Fast forward to 2024, collarbone is healed, new job acquired, annual leave booked, and off we go!
We arrived in St Bees at something like 6:30am, it was misty and overcast, and not ideal lighting conditions for the 100 speed Delta I had brought along with me but there were many miles ahead of us, and we needed the hours, our target was Ennerdale Water, 20 or so miles away.
The route itself was put together by Alfred Wainwright, and the starting point is located on the beach at St Bees, where you can touch your feet into the Irish Sea before departing up and around St Bees Head before heading inland. It seems to be somewhat popular for people to cut out the northern cliff walk in favour of taking the footpath past the lighthouse, I stuck to the path and i’m glad I did, there’s a wonderful view north towards Whitehaven, and there’s something very relaxing about walking alongside the ocean at that time in the morning.
Once we started inland the weather started to turn, reaching its peak unpleasantness at the time we were going up and over Dent, the first real hill along the way, it was strong wind and rain, fortunately my new poncho kept me mostly dry, Bo had her new coat too, but i’m sure she was still questioning what on earth we were doing!
Once the trauma’s of Dent had passed us by we made it into Ennerdale, making 15 miles so far, and found sanctuary at the Fox and Hounds Inn for some dinner, I had a beef hotpot with mash, and Bo had some well deserved sausages.
The priority now was finding somewhere to stay the night! We continued on, alongside Ennerdale Water, and found a secluded spot amongst the pine trees at the eastern end of the lake that was perfect, at this point it was around 6pm, and we had covered 21 miles on our first day.