St Bees

Here we are along the coast

Coast to coast day 1

Fortunatully johnny had kindly agreed to take us to the train station at 6am. Thankfully not before mark had made us a nice bacon butte and prepared  lunch for us for later in the day. The train was prompt  and after a quick change we arrived at St.bees train station at 10:00.

After dropping our bags off we thought we should head to check out the priory church before setting out properly. Before entering the church we finished off our bananas and left the skins on the bench until we returned. Inside the church was set up ready for a wedding. A very cheery lady who we shall call Beverly talked eagerly to us about our journey and also seemed keen to recruit us to her cricket team. Of all the beautiful features in the church Colin most liked the dead body and autopsy photos.

Upon leaving the church we discovered beverley clearing away our banana skins. Colin was very apologetic and tried to reclaim the skins to bin ourself. She was having none of it and insisted on taking them away for us.

We swiftly left St bees and after asking a holidaying family to take our photo at the C2C sign...20 photos later & many carefully composed pictures later Colin realised he'd met with a holidaying family related to David Bailey! We went down to the beach to begin selecting a pebble to carry across to Robin hoods bay...not a quick process with so many to choose from.

The original path had been fenced off but this was no issue to us...we're doing Wainrights route & a quick skip over a style meant the first of many photos of our first day's walking was taken.

Following the coast a quick diversion to the lighthouse meant having to walk through our first cattle herd...Richard nervously avoiding eye contact with them.

Mark's beautifully prepared lunch was eaten looking out over Fleswick Bay towards Whitehaven whilst sat on two well positioned boulders...but where they natural?

A 90 degree turn east after walking past a working quarry where Richard has promised to take Colin when he's in his wheelchair for a fun day out marked the point where we turned our backs on the Irish Sea and headed inland towards the Lakes.

Who should we stumble on round the corner but a huge garden tiger moth caterpillar crossing our path really rather quickly...we immediately christened him 'Colin The Caterpillar' We felt it only right to allow him to do his verge2verge journey in front of us before we continued. I then noticed a toad in the gutter and knowing it was in colins I spy book called him over to look. I was then horrified to see it was actually dead but blown up like a toad balloon out of the shrek movie. With my stomach turning over we moved swiftly on only to have to press up against the nettle filled verges on three occasions to avoid being crushed by increasing sizes of farm machinery.

We soon sped on and arrived in Cleator where we stopped of for an ice cream before heading up to the summit of Dent. From here we could look right back to the light house at St bees and infront of us were the majestic views of the Lakeland fells. behind us we could see the meandering route one M AW had taken us on and in the distance the hills of Dumfries & Galloway and also the misty outlibe of the Isle of Man. We stopped here for a while and applied sun cream not realising that our legs had taken it badly in the weather along the coast.

From dent it was a periously steep decent. Apparently this is the steepest section on the whole route and it was infact very steep. It was hard to stay upright. At the bottom of the hill a lovely stream and shady valley awaited. Grasses swayed in the wind and it as a really peaceful two miles to the first nights campsite.

Round a few final corners we came across loads of horses and several people pony trekking. A quick turn to the left and we were at the campsite. Colin was impressed with the speed in which my tent went up so after ten minutes we were able to grab the shower we had both been dreaming of the last few miles. When Colin was away I got attacked by a huge toad that hopped onto my foot and then stared at me until I shook it away scared I'd find it in my boot in the morning.

After a hearty tea we started talking to people around the campsite. Josh and Kieran got free food from everyone else as they arrived last out of all the days coast 2 coast walkers. It was a small friendly site...esentially in the owners garden.

After filling in the days I-spy spottings in our books we went to order breakfast only to realise that actually it's not the blisters on our feet that will be the issue tomorrow it will be the blistering skin on the backs of our legs that will need tlc...ouch!