United Kingdom 2019: Intro

For our 2019 summer road trip we went to the United Kingdom for about one month. The agenda included hiking and discovering the Scottish Highlands, exploring Inverness and Edinburgh, and then heading south to hike 192 miles across England from the Irish Sea to the North Sea along Wainwright’s Coast to Coast (C2C) path. That last part was Emilie’s idea, inspired by author Bill Bryson (that man will be the death of me).

Scotland

We started the trip in Inverness where we spent a couple of days tooling around in advance of catching up with our Backroads hiking group for a 5-day hiking trip through the Scottish Highlands, including the Isle of Skye.  We enjoyed the Backroads-led trip to Denali in Alaska the year before so much that we decided to go on another trip with them.  Friends we made on that Alaska trip were also doing this Scottish Highlands hiking trip so we were to meet up with them.  Our planning to arrive in Inverness 2 days before the Backroads trip was to allow for any travel disruptions and so to reduce the risk of not getting to the hiking group meeting point in Inverness on time.

Travel from Boston to Inverness via planes, trains, and automobiles went without a hitch.  So, that gave us two days to explore Inverness on our own.

After the hiking trip, we were to train it to Edinburgh for a few days, meeting up there with our daughter Suzannah.  After that we planned to rent a car and travel around Scotland doing some hiking, visiting Harry Potter filming locations, and visiting castles.  This would take us eventually down to Carlisle, England where would catch a train to St. Bees, England where we would embark on our 192-mile hike across England on the Wainwright C2C path.  Returning home was not part of our itinerary.  We figured we would make our way to London after the C2C hike but we wanted to leave those last days open for spontaneity.  We did eventually spend two days tooling around London before catching a flight back to Boston.

Wainwright’s Coast to Coast Walk

For the hike across England we could have camped along the way or fended for ourselves regarding finding lodging. Instead, we opted to employ a “sherpa” service. There were several to choose from but “C2C Packhorse” had consistently good reviews online so we went with them. The service included them pre-booking lodging along the hike at various inns, bed and breakfasts, or whatever worked. One night was spent in a B&B inside an art studio, and one night was spent in somebody’s private home. The service also included them transferring our duffel bags between lodgings each day. We were each allowed one bag for transfer. This way we could focus each day just on hiking with our day packs.

The sherpa service was important to us not just for the convenience, and certainty of lodging, but because this strategy ensured that each day we would have to hike, regardless of weather or aches because we had a reservation to make at the next stop. Turns out, most of the stops along the way were in small hamlets or villages, and finding lodging would have proven difficult or impossible….and for us, after hiking up to 18 miles in all sorts of weather the last thing we would have wanted to worry about or deal with was finding a place to stay.

We hiked Wainwright’s C2C west to east as recommended by conventional wisdom since this meant the wind would be at our backs, and the more difficult terrain would be completed within the first 3-4 days instead of the last few days. Each day we carried clothing for all weather (especially rain gear…this is England after all), lunch, snacks, water and first aid. We chose an intermediate pace of 15 days of hiking plus 2 days of rest. This meant an average of 13 miles of hiking per day. We also carried a compass and a detailed book about the hike by Henry Stedman.  It was chock full of maps and points of interest. Wainwright’s C2C path is not very well marked along the first half (hardly marked at all through the very challenging Lakes District National Park).

The most important navigation tool we had was a downloaded GPS tracking log of the hike. Information of dowloading this file was found in the above referenced book by Henry Stedman. Without this on my phone we most definitely would have gotten lost frequently. Fortunately, when we had no internet access the track log was cached so we never lost it. One piece of advice….always be sure to have your phone right side up when looking at a tracking log for navigation…we probably would have ended up in Ireland on one occasion if it weren’t for other people with us one day overruling my less than Magellan-like navigational leadership.

Next:  Inverness