15th of June to 28th of June 2022.
Distance: 433.1km. 14 days.
Below me the waves are breaking against the cliffs. Ahead of me a green meadow meanders towards the horizon, only interrupted by the steep edge of the cliffs. In the horizon I glimpse the top of a lighthouse. Above me the sky is dominated by a solitary blue sky. And somewhere across the ocean lies Ireland.
At the beach at St. Bees, the start of The Coast To Coast Walk.
It is the first day of another long-distance hike and I feel kind of exalted. Not just because of the excitement that I know lies ahead of me, but it also because it is the first walk abroad after the outbreak of the pandemic. A moment long awaited.
Gorgeous walking atop the cliffs of St. Bees Head.
According to tradition, I have dipped my shoes in the water, and I have picked up a stone. The stone will follow me on the walk to the other side of England. There I will again dip my shoes in the water and leave the stone that I have carried with me. Many a stone has in this way found their way from St. Bees at the Irish Sea to Robin Hood’s Bay at the North Sea. The reason for this is The Coast To Coast Walk, a 303 kilometres long trail designed by Alfred Wainwright in 1973. Since then, the trail has grown in popularity and is now one of the most famous routes in the world.
Great views of the Lake District from Green Gable, Ennerdale below.
On the first day on the trail, most hikers are content to end their walk at Ennerdale Bridge, just at the doorstep of the Lake District. By then The Coast To Coast Walk has impressed the hikers with the cliffs of St. Bees Head and given them a foretaste of what to come with the climb up Dent Fell, rewarding them with a 360 degrees panoramic view. I chose to cross over the doorstep and walk to Ennerdale YHA on my first day, walking next to Ennerdale Water and over Anglers Crag with rewarding views of the Lake District. I had heard a lot about the Lake District, but little I had seen of it. Only in the light of the rays of the sun breaking through the clouds from Cross Fell when I hiked The Pennine Way back in 2019.
One of the rare occassions when rain appeared during my hike across England, here from Helm's Crag.
It is in Lake District you find the highest mountain in England, Scafell Pike with its 978m, but The Coast To Coast Walk does not take you to the summit of that mountain, or too close to it. However, if you wonder if there is a lack of inclines while making your way through the National Park, there is no need to worry. I walk over one pass to another as I moves from the one scenic valley to the other. Of these, Borrowdale may be particularly mentioned. Part of the hike feels just like being in the mountains back home in Norway, only that I am at a lower altitude. The landscape is bare, in an altitude where I would have been walking under the cover of trees back home. Those trees that existed here, sailed away a long time ago.
Grisedale Tarn appearing from underneath the clouds.
On the second day, I chose to cut the distance short. Not the total distance, but the part of the trail that I do. I walk only to Rosthwaite, where the descent to the small village is particularly scenic. On the way, I detour off the trail to climb up to the summit of Great Gable, to great views. When first having time in the Lake District, I wanted to make sure that I got to the top of one of the iconic Wainwrights in the National Park. I make similar detours on my hike through the Lakes, but when I later ventured near Helvellyn, the fog lay heavy over the mountains.
On the climb up from Patterdale.
In the valleys there are small pleasant towns and villages, and for many a wanderer, a long awaited watering hole after a day out on the trail. It is also in these small villages that I spends the nights in. However, in the last night in the Lake District I stayed at the luxurious Haweswater Hotel. Of the sole reason that it was the only place available for countless miles around. The evening cost me a lot and a subsequently longer walk than planned the following day, but the stay was nothing to complain about.
The ruins of Shap Abbey.
Haweswater Reservoir in itself is an interesting place. Formerly two small lakes that were dammed up in order to provide water for Manchester, which led to the two villages of Measand and Mardale Green ended up underneath the water. When the water level is very low, this is a very popular destination, where the houses of Mardale village can appear up from the lake.
The cairns at Nine Standards Rigg.
I gaze up at the ruins of Shap Abbey beneath a gloomy sky. In Shap, the Coast To Coast walkers has left the Lake District and entered a part of the trail that could be filed under the transport stage moniker. A walk made extra long for my part, but it is a pleasant walk over heaths, moors, undulating fields, The Pennines in the horizon and past the well-known stone barns announcing that the route is moving into the Yorkshire Dales.
Walking down towards Ravenseat from the Nine Standards Rigg.
The Yorkshire Dales is characterized by its undulating ridges with extensive peat bogs and heath, but there is also another distinct change after the rocky confines of the Lake District. Where that National Park is characterized by hard granite, the Dales are known for its limestone.
Sunset at Tan Hill.
From Kirkby Stephen awaits Nine Standards Rigg, which houses nine cairns in a long row on its summit. No one knows exactly who built the cairns and why they were built, but there are plenty of theories out and about.
A patchwork of colours at Gunnerside Gill.
The path after Nine Standards Rigg holds an infamous reputation for being especially boggy as they say over there, ‘put your gaiters on’ was a piece of advice I got the day before.This is one of the few sections on the trail I where I walk together with other hikers on the Coast To Coast Walk, Mike from Canada and Steve from the United States, and it is a pleasant company.
The remains of old mines at Blakethwaite in Gunnerside Gill.
The Yorkshire Dales is also home to the highest situated pub in England, the Tan Hill Inn. It is not located directly on the trail, but it is on The Pennine Way which, as mentioned, I have hiked before. When I spent the night there at that time, I had arrived at the inn in a thunderstorm and heavy rain, which even got on the national news the following day as the weather had caused a bridge in a nearby village to collapse (in Grinton, which I would pass by later on this hike). The Pennine Way and The Coast To Coast Walk crosses their paths in the small pleasant village of Keld, and the great memories from that time led to me again wandering across the heaths to enjoy a beer, good food and another night up there. For dinner I ate a Yorkshire pudding so big that I was unable to finish it off, ‘Unfinished business’ they should have called the dish. In the evening I could watch small lights in the dark far away as the runners of the Spine Race appeared.
The 'Nunnery Steps' after Marrick Priory.
Back in Keld, the trail continues to Reeth, where the walk goes through a wonderful and peculiar landscape formed by the old mines in the area. It is a patchwork of colours on the hillsides and I pass by the remains of the mine buildings, in valleys both narrow and wide. Over one of the hills the hike goes past a scenery only as bleak and pale as the leftovers of man can make it.
Richmond.
Richmond is the biggest town the Coast To Coast Walk passes through, it is also home to a castle, small narrow streets and the largest horseshoe marked in England (sadly looking mostly like a parking lot). The way there is of an easier character but provides a new variation in the scenery. For the pilgrims out there, the path towards Richmond passes by the familiar waymarks from the Camino de Santiago in Spain.
Walking through an acre in the Vale of Mowbray.
At the top of Whitcliffe Scar, the Coast To Coast walkers will find the spot where Robert Willance made his famous fall. This spot lies not directly on the trail, but I walk up to the top of the cliffs where his horse panicked and bolted over the edge and fell 61m down when thick fog descended. When he came to, he found his horse dead and his legs broken. As the legend goes, Willance survived by cutting open his horse to put his broken legs inside in order to escape gangrene while waiting to be rescued. He later became the first alderman of Richmond.
At Mount Grace Priory, the ruins of the church.
Between Richmond and the North York Moors, the last national park on the route, lies the Vale of Mowbray. Here you are a distant sigh away from the mountains of Lake District and the rolling heaths of the Yorkshire Dales. Instead, a cultural landscape forms the backdrop of the walk. A part of the trail that provides an opportunity to calm down a bit before the final undulating hills on the trail.
Verdant passage through the Clain Wood.
Strangely enough, in a way, this is also the section of the trail that contains the greatest danger of the hike. Before the Vale of Mowbray one may have lost his way on the moors when the fog has mercilessly wrapped itself around one or one can have sunk deep into a peat bog, but here before Ingleby Arncliffe the hikers has to cross a four-lane busy highway. An old American couple who came just after me made it across safely too, but had to watch one of the sunhats get taken by a lorry hurrying by.
On the heaths of the North York Moors.
The North York Moors is the last national park the hikers pass through before they can get rid of the small weight they have been carrying with them. Here, the heather is coloured purple in late summer. Out in the open moorland one finds old crosses, walks on where the old Rosedale Ironstone Railway line went, and it is here while walking on the top of the undulating ridge of the Cleveland Hills that one gets the first glimpse of the North Sea.
Inside The Lion Inn at Blakey Ridge.
At the foot of the Cleveland Hills lies Mount Grace Priory. I made my way down from the trail to the ruins of the old monastery that belonged to the order of the Carthusians. Here the monks lived as hermits and only met the other monks for prayer in the church, and the food they got was served to them through hatches so that they would not meet the person who came with the food. It is a world far away from the one that we live in now.
Robin Hood's Bay, The Bay Hotel and the end of The Coast To Coast Walk.
History repeats itself, also in shorter timespans. There are fewer available accommodations directly on the route through the North York Moors National Park. And like Shap earlier on the trail, there were almost no places to sleep to be found for miles around. I finally manages to get a bed in a remote bed and breakfast at Beak Hills. In quiet and peaceful surroundings, where I got the best sleep of my walk, but had to pay for it with another long hike the following day.
The ruins of Whitby Abbey.
I have used thirteen days on the walk and it has hardly been any rain during those days. In England, that feels like a stroke of luck. Not that it has not been raining, I do remember the walk up from Grasmere underneath heavy clouds filled with water, but it never lasted for a long time. On the last day, the worst of the weather was to come, but it made no more of it than two short and heavy showers, the last just before I arrived at the cliffs next to the North Sea.
With the North Sea on my left, the last part of The Coast To Coast Walk runs atop the cliffs towards and down to Robin Hood’s Bay. Over the North Sea, I can see the rain that passed over me continue its journey across the sea, it is a lovely sight. Eventually I look down upon the old fishing village.
Walking on the cliffs next to the North Sea.
At the bottom of the narrow streets of Robin Hood’s Bay, the trail ends at The Bay Hotel. And it is here the coast to coast walkers again dip their shoes in the water and throw the stone they have carried from St. Bees into the sea. One may have to go a little way out in the shoreline to be able to do it, the tide can be far out here. Or one can get it done before you reach the endpoint, at extra high tide the North Sea can flow into the lowest streets of the village.
Outside The Bay Hotel in the warming sun, I share the last stories from my journey with the other Coast To Coast Walk hikers present before we go our separate ways again.
Standing above Robin Hood's Bay, the end of a wonderful hike across England on The Coast To Coast Walk.
This is perhaps one of the most beautiful and varied hiking trails in England. From the cliffs of St. Bees it passes through the beautiful Lake District, before the heaths of the Yorkshire Dales with its moors and mines send you further through the Vale of Mowbray to the heather of the North York Moors. At last ending at the North Sea in Robin Hood’s Bay.
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