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Ordinary People doing Amazing Things


 



Lions Go Cross Country 

 
 

In July 2010 Graham Williamson, and myself from Stour Valley and Peter Patrick from Witney found ourselves once again on a good slog of a walking trip. Last year the three of us had reached the summit of Kilimanjaro without any major mishaps; this year we stayed closer to home and did the Coast to Coast Walk, popularised by Alfred Wainwright and, more recently, by Julia Bradbury. It is 192 miles of walking pleasure, punctuated by interludes of pure torture. We three from last year, now aged 209 collectively, went off to do it.

Going from west to east to keep the prevailing wind at our backs (it wasn’t!) we set off from St. Bee’s in the sort of heavy, driving rain that only July in Cumbria can bring. We had left home the day before and with every mile passed the clouds had become darker and lower and by the time we dipped our boots in the Irish Sea and picked up a rock to carry to the North Sea we were in the middle of a deluge.

As we crossed the Lake District over the next few days the walk became difficult but really enjoyable. We travelled 10-13 miles most days and apart from a storm of biblical proportions that almost drowned us at Greenup Edge we had pretty good conditions. A lot of people from all over the world do this walk now and new friends were made every day. We had pre-arranged B&B accommodation and sampled the whole range from first class individual en suite rooms in a country pub with a great menu to plastic eggs in a shabby boarding house with a bathroom shared with the owner’s large family. Our days always began with a three course breakfast and we needed it to keep going. The Coast to Coast is described as a high level walk. This means in practice that when you reach a big hill or a mountain you go up and over, not around it. We reached lots of them.

 

Our 60 mile transit of the Lake District National Park took 5 days. The sixth day saw us walking through horsefly ridden fields to Shap, then over the M6 and on towards the foothills of The Pennines. We pressed on over the moors and hills through Orton and eventually on to the town of Kirkby Stephen, where we were to spend two nights in the Kings Arms. Kirkby Stephen was a welcome break and a chance to catch up with the laundry. The hotel was good, the food impressively epic but like in so many small towns, there is a section of the population aged about 20 who don’t sleep on weekends and insist on roaring at each other outside the bedrooms of places like the Kings Arms. Anyway, laundry done and somewhat rested we headed off via our high point of the Pennines, the very boggy Nine Standards Rigg, to the small village of Keld, in the Yorkshire Dales National Park. This was our halfway mark, it is also where England’s worst taxi driver operates, but more of that another time.

From Keld the walk became easy and pleasant as we followed the banks of the Swale for a couple of days until we reached the very pleasant town of Richmond, only the second and final town of any size on the whole walk. After Richmond came a walk of 23 miles in one day to Ingleby Cross. Now, 23 miles is a fair old walk at any time but we found that we had to walk the first 14 miles of it to find a place that sold food and drinks! Apparently, we were the lucky ones as when Julia Bradbury did the walk for TV even that place was closed. It is very surprising that many thousands of people every year are funnelled on this walk through small villages yet there are very few shops, cafes or pubs open to cater for them, someone is missing a trick.

 

Two thirds of the walk done now and we think the rest is simple but Wainwright never did plan simple routes. The final 4 days covered over 70 miles, mainly over the Cleveland Hills and through the bare moorland of the North York Moors National Park. It was a very hard slog and the finish line at Robin Hood’s Bay was so good to see. After dipping our boots in the North Sea and realising we had lost the rocks we had carried from St. Bee’s we retired to a very nice B&B to reminisce on what we had done. We agreed the Coast to coast walk was almost as tough as going up Kilimanjaro, but in a different way. Kilimanjaro was a lot of up but it only lasted a few days, whereas the Coast to Coast takes about two weeks and it is a tough daily grind. It was so good to wake up on Day 15 with the realisation that we didn’t have to walk anywhere that day. We met lots of good people on the trip, mainly doing the same as us. We found some of the best scones in the north of England and slept in some strangest places and we found that the walk, although very hard on the legs and feet, allowed us to forget for a while that we live on a crowded island.

It was fun and a great thing to do; we enjoyed it and were very pleased to survive another long walk without broken legs or blisters. Recommended to anyone sound of wind and limb!

Now to planning 2011’s adventure ....


 


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