Wainwright’s Coast to Coast Hike Intro

(The next couple of paragraphs are repeated from the “United Kingdom 2019: Intro” post)

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

For the Wainwright’s Coast to Coast hike across England we could have camped along the way or fended for ourselves regarding finding lodging (which many people do). 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 that also made great pizzas. 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 just our day packs. C2C Packhorse turned out to be an excellent choice.  Here are the hiking and lodging schedules Packhorse provided.  The lodging schedule was very helpful with details such as directions to the lodging, contact names, phone numbers, whether they served dinner and/or required reservations, offered laundry service, whether they offered packed lunches for the next day’s hike, etc.

The sherpa service was important for 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. Finding lodging would have proven difficult or impossible….and for us, after hiking up to 18 miles in all sorts of weather and along often hilly and rocky terrain, the last thing we would have wanted to worry about was finding a place to stay.

 

We did the Wainwright’s Coast to Coast hike west to east as recommended by conventional wisdom. This this meant the wind would be at our backs, and the hardest part of the trek would be completed first. 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. It was actually more that this since we often were required to walk a little extra to get to off-the-trail lodging. We also carried a compass and a fantastic and priceless detailed guidebook about the hike by Henry Stedman. It’s chock full of maps, information on what to expect along each leg of the hike, path options, 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 the downloaded GPS tracking log of the hike, which we learned how to download from the above mentioned guidebook. 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 because I was holding my phone upside-down while navigating!

St. Bees, the Start of Wainwright’s Coast to Coast

July 13

With no place to drop off the Edinburgh-secured rental car in the small resort town of St. Bees, the starting point of the C2C hike, we spent our final night with the car in Carlisle, England.  Carlisle is the closest city from St. Bees that has car rental places and a train station.  Leaving the hotel we had an excellent breakfast at Brewed Awakening in the plaza outside the hotel.  Then we dropped the car off at the Carlisle Europcar place and took a taxi to the Carlisle train station for a 2:08 PM non-stop train to St. Bees.  We picked up the internet pre-purchased tickets, including daughter Suzannah’s tickets for the next day from St. Bees to London since there is no ticket outlet in St. Bees.  Suzannah had accompanied us on our Edinburgh and Glencoe leg of the trip but was leaving us after setting us off on our C2C hike the next morning.

 

On the train we met a nice guy named John from England and Australia who was also going to do the C2C hike.  He was meeting up with a hiking tour group.  Ultimately, we wouldn’t see John again until the final day of the hike on the other side of England at Robin Hoods Bay.  We believe we caught a glimpse of his 10-person hiking group about a half mile ahead of us one day, but we never actually leap-frogged along the trail.  John sat with the three of us for the hour train ride to the beautiful coastal town of St. Bees. We were treated to some nice views of the Irish Sea from the train.

 

We arrived at the small St. Bees train depot and walked about 150 yards to our inn, the Manor.

The busy but very friendly bartender, Andrew, checked us in. He gave us our C2C Packhorse info packet and reserved a table for us for dinner. This would turn out to be fairly typical along the hike: bartender greets us at the inn, checks us in, and takes our dinner order. There were 7 rooms above the pub.  Suzannah had a separate room, which we booked ourselves. We all walked the mile to the beach before dinner.  This was our first time at the Irish Sea.  The beach was absolutely gorgeous and expansive with its low tide.   We took our shoes off, walked in the Irish Sea, and marveled at the stunning coastline of cliffs and pasture towering over the beach. We found Wainwright’s Coast to Coast path trailhead for the next morning. (As noted earlier, this is an example of how the C2C was actually more than 192 miles, since on this first day we would be required to walk an extra mile from the inn to the trailhead.)

Emilie and I each picked a stone from the beach to carry with us all the way to the North Sea. This is a tradition for people completing Wainwright’s coast to coast hike. This also happened to be Emilie and my 28th wedding anniversary.   Spending it on a beach at the Irish Sea on a beautifully sunny day.

We ate dinner at 6:30 at the inn with our new friend from the train, John.  The food was average at best, but adequate.

This was Saturday night, and so quite a lively night for the few co-located pubs in town.  Lively in a room above the English pub on a Saturday night meant it was a loud night.  We weren’t sure who was louder, the people below us or the people at the pub across the street…it was close.  But things got quiet around midnight, so more than reasonable for a good night’s sleep.

Next: C2C Day 1&2 St. Bees to Lake District