Transcript

461 Holly Worton ~ Adventure on Wainwright’s Coast to Coast Walk 

HOLLY WORTON: Hello adventurers and welcome to the Into the Woods Podcast, episode 461. This is your host Holly Worton, and I am back with another solo episode.

Today I am going to talk about adventures on the Coast-to-Coast Walk, because I just got back for the Coast to Coast. It feels like ages since I have done a solo podcast episode but, for you, it is only two weeks and that is because I pre-recorded those two solo episodes, obviously before I left. I feel like I am still landing from this trip, so these are really my first impressions and I spent quite a long time putting together the notes for this episode, so I am really looking forward to sharing this with you. And I am also aware that my kind of deeper thoughts are going to come when I write a book about this trail, because I really, really, loved it, I had a great time, and I am excited to share it with you. So let’s get started.

First of all what is this trail?  You may or may not have heard of Wainwright’s Coast to Coast Walk. It is one of the most popular and well-known long-distance trails here in Britain and people come from all over the world to do it. In fact we met a guy from Australia who was doing it, I have seen videos from people from all over the world; we saw a couple of Americans. When I came back, I started looking for YouTube videos of people who had been on the trail while we were doing it and I found another couple of Americans who were doing it the other way around from the way that we did it. So this is a very popular route.

What is it? A Coast-to-Coast walk was devised by Alfred Wainwright and his guidebook to the route was published in 1973, so this trail is as old as I am! Which is exciting.

So who was Wainwright? If you are not from the UK, you might not have heard of him. He was a British fell walker, guidebook author and illustrator.

What are fells you may be asking? Fells are the mountains and hills of the north of England, so the Lake District and the Pennine dales. And this is a word that comes from old Norse, the old Norse language, which of course was spoken by the Vikings. And the Vikings, which I didn’t know this until I actually moved to the UK and started spending time up in the North doing walking stuff, the Viking Age, when the Vikings were hanging out and invading Britain, lasted approximately from 800 to 850AD. They first invaded in 793 and their last invasion was in 1066. This is interesting and it is notable because a lot of place names in the North of England are derived from old Norse, so you will come across a lot of words you might not have heard before, like beck, which means stream; dale which means valley; and tarn, which means lake. And there are so many other ones. A lot of place names and natural and natural elements (lakes, valleys, and streams) have these old Norse words.

So where is Wainwright’s Coast to Coast Walk?  It goes from St Bees Head in the West, on the west coast on the Irish Sea, to Robin Hood’s Bay in the east, on the east coast, on the North Sea. And it is about 192 miles long which is just over 300km.  And there are many different variations of this route, which is why it is kind of hard to pin down exactly where it is, because you have a lot of options, which I will talk about in a few minutes.

So how is Wainwright’s Coast to Coast different from other trails? I really enjoyed this trail, it is so different from everything else I have ever done, partly because I had never done a long-distance walk in the North of England. I had always done walks in the south of England, in lowland conditions, I have always either national trails or kind of the smaller local trails. This is different it is not – yet – a national trail. They have been trying to get it made a national trail for a few years now, we will see, but for now it is an unofficial trail. It goes across the entire width of England from west coast to east coast, and most notably you pass through three national parks, so you pass through the Lake District, the Yorkshire Dales and the North York Moors, which is exciting because you are going through three very different types of scenery and wildlife, and you have such a variety of views and experiences. We saw red squirrels for the first time, and I saw a red deer for the first time, there were birds everywhere, it was just absolutely wonderful. It was filled with wildlife and filled with lambs, it is lambing season here now and there were so many different breeds of sheep that I had never seen before. From coast to coast it was just sheep and lambs everywhere, in addition to the native wildlife. So it was just really lovely to see both agriculture and wilderness, just wonderful.

Another way that the Coast to Coast is different from other trails, at least in my experience, is that there were so many honesty boxes. And this is something that I have not seen much of on other trails in the UK, and on the Ridgway (you might remember if you have read my book, there is a church that offers tea and cake and coffee) and that is really nice if you are tired, and you want to pop in and get a snack. There are a couple of churches along the Coast to Coast that did this, but there were just people who set up honesty boxes, so you would be walking through a little village and you would see a little stand with a cooler and you would find juices and other drinks and there were some farms that had a summer house set up with a kettle with hot water for tea and coffee and they had a refrigerator and snacks, both savoury and sweet. I have never seen anything like this before, it is fantastic, because you would be tired, and you would want a break and sit down and put your feet up and then you would come across this place where you could do. It was fantastic, I really, really, enjoyed that. A lot of these were marked in my guidebook, but some of them were a surprise. And of course they come and go because these are volunteers who are doing this and you pop your money in an honesty box and have a seat, eat your snacks and then go on your way.

Another thing is that it is easy to camp along the whole route which is not always easy on some other trails. Wild camping is not permitted in most of England and Wales, but it is generally tolerated or accepted in the Lake District. And of course as long as you are camping in a place that no one sees you, no one is going to know. So as long as you are being smart about how you do it, it is also possible to wild camp along large parts of the route. Another thing, as I said, it is not one fixed route, it has got lots of alternative routes. So there are places where you get to, say, a lake, and you can go around the right hand side of the lake or the left hand side of the lake and you have got sometimes a high route and a low route and you may have all these decisions to make based on weather conditions, temperature, time of year, because there is one section where they are trying to manage erosion, so depending on the time of year you may have to choose one of three different routes. I liked having the alternative routes because we could choose based on what kind of adventure we wanted to have and based on how we were feeling each day and based on the weather.

So when did I walk the Coast to Coast and why? I did it from May 1st to 15th, so it was 14 and and a third days of walking, it was just kind of a short morning on the last day.  We were planning to wild camp for much of it and we wanted to be sure that there would still be water available to filter for drinking so that is why we did it at this time of year. If we had done it in the summer, first of all it would be way to hot for my preferences and second of all there wouldn’t have been as much water for the days that we were wild camping and we needed to filter water. And in the Lakes, there was still a lot of water, there was water everywhere and that was one of the things that I loved about the Lake District, there were so many streams and waterfalls and rivers and lakes of course. It was just wonderful I loved it.

Why did I hike the Coast to Coast? Basically because two friends invited me to go with them and so I thought it was the perfect opportunity to do the trail. Now, prior to this, I had been aware of the Coast-to-Coast trail, but it wasn’t really on my list of trials that I wanted to walk. And I have got a blog post which I will link to in the show notes, it is called My Walking Bucket List which I actually need to update, but it wasn’t on that list. I was aware of it, and I had thought oh that’s nice, but hadn’t really gone beyond that but having this opportunity to do it with friends meant that I was excited to do it! We have been talking about doing it since late last year, I don’t know if it was October or November of last year. Originally there were supposed to be four of us going and then one person was unable to go and so three of us started the trail.

This was a big step up from my usual adventures where I usually walk every day for a week or so, or less, and I stay at B&Bs. This time it was two weeks, instead of one, and we were camping all along the way, so that meant that I had to carry more stuff – more on that in a minute because I carried too much stuff! But this was a big step up in terms of adventures and I knew, I have known for the last couple of years, that the next time I did a trail I wanted to camp it instead of staying at B&Bs, but I was originally planning to do the Dales Way, which I would still like to do, but this was different.

So how did I feel about this trail? I was really excited to do it, because again it was new and exciting. It was definitely a step out of my comfort zone for the reasons I have mentioned, and it was also a bit apprehensive about going with other people, particularly people who were taller and stronger than me and had more experience with this kind of thing. I was afraid that I was just not going to make it or get stuck, or I don’t know, I had a lot of fears. So I was a bit nervous about the trip but also really excited. I remember we had a zoom call before we went up to St Bees and I remember feeling what another friend who didn’t go on the trip calls ‘nerve-cited’, it is like you are nervous and you are excited at the same time. Like a child before Christmas and you are like, oh it is going to be exciting tomorrow but also kind of nervous. So that’s how I felt.

And it went really, really, well. I am so glad that I made this trip a priority even when lots of other things were going on in my life that meant I might have to miss out on this trip. I was kind of touch and go for the last couple of months as to whether I was actually going to be able to go, but I was stubborn and I stuck with it, and it happened.

And it went really well also in the sense that it was good to share this experience with other people and I am really happy that I did it with the people that I did it with. I think I got really lucky by having my first group adventure with really good people. And I will be extra picky in the future about choosing other people to go with if I do decide to do something like this again, because there are so many things that could go wrong in terms of group dynamic and you have constantly got to be adjusting plans based on weather and fitness and recovery and reality and I think we did a really good job of that and I think we got along really well and I think that was really lucky. So I went with these people who were very easy to get along with and that is something that I will be looking for in the future if I decide to do this with other people. I learned a lot about just, you have got to constantly be evaluating stuff especially on a trip where you are camping, and you have the luxury of staying in different places and different nights and not having to walk to a different location every day (like I used to when I was doing B&Bs). I think I got really lucky with going with the right people and again I would be very picky about that again in the future. So my advice to you if you are thinking about doing a new adventure with other people is really make sure you can get along with these people and that they are easy people to be with, they are not the kind of people who are going to get upset with little details and they are just flexible and… I don’t know easy, you know what I am talking about, some people are easy to get along with and some people aren’t!

So what was it like walking with other people as opposed to other solo adventures? And I think this is something that was very different. So first of all I think there was less time and space for inner reflection which was fine, it just meant that it was a different experience. I am so used to being out on the trail on my own for hours on end and being in my own inner world, and this was very different because obviously I was sharing the experience with other people. I also ended up stretching outside of my comfort zone with longer days. Now when I first started thinking about doing a trail by myself and backpacking, I was thinking this is a stretch for me, it is going to be a new fitness level, so I am going to have to keep the days really short, maybe ten-mile days, that’s what I was thinking. And if I had gone alone, I probably would have coddled myself by planning a longer trip with 10-mile day maximum but that is not how it worked out, because I was with other people, so we had longer days. And thanks to that I now know that I am capable of more than I thought I was. So we had a couple of longer 20-mile days and that was really challenging with a big pack and that’s good. I did it, I am fine, I survived, and I now know that I am capable of putting in longer miles that I thought I was. So that’s really good and that is something that I got from doing this with other people, as opposed to doing it alone.

I am also fearful about solo wild camping, and I have never actually done it, but I felt perfectly safe doing it with other people. So that means that I now feel safer about going wild camping alone, especially in remote places like the Lake District, because there is no one else there. The two nights that we went wild camping we were the only ones there and especially one night we were up quite high near a tarn (that’s a lake) and there was no one there. I mean we saw this guy wild camping that we knew that we had crossed paths with on the trail a few days earlier, he was further down in the valley, kind of by the river, but we were just all alone up there. So that makes me feel really safe and I think that I now feel safe enough to give it a try on my own. So we shall see, and I will update you about that – I will let you know when it happens.

What to take?

So I think it is always important for me, whenever I come back from an adventure, to evaluate what I did well and what I could do better. So there will of course be more in-depth reflection on this in the book as times goes on and I have more time to integrate the experience, but for now, one thing that I dd well was to buy merino wool. Now if you heard in last week’s episode with Katherine and how it is very kind of smell proof and it stays fresh and I have to say, I was a sceptic and now I am a convert. It is really, really, good. So I bought merino wool sleep thermals that were very snuggly, and I bought mixed blend merino base layers. So those were what I bought first. I wasn’t sure that I wanted to commit to the expensive pricing of merino wool, so I bought these base layers at Decathlon that were merino wool under the arms, and there was a back panel that was merino and the rest of it was synthetic, so that meant it was cheaper because only half the shirt was merino and it worked really well, it was great. I cannot believe how fresh those shirts stayed compared to things like my fleece, which was synthetic, and it didn’t smell great. So that’s making me realise that I would like to update/upgrade and get a merino wool hoodie or something to replace a fleece as a mid-layer because that would be really practical, and it wouldn’t smell (fleece always smells because it is synthetic!).

Another thing that I did really well was taking flip flops for camp shoes. Now I usually have flip flops with me or some other pair of shoes for camping but, this time, I packed so much, and my pack was so big and I thought, should I bring camp shoes, should I not? And I did and I am so glad I did because my feet were in a lot of pain throughout the entire trip and having those flip flops really made a difference, I was able to put them on in the evening and just walk around and let my feet air out and rest and stretch out. That was really, really, good. So definitely I am bringing camp shoes forever.

Poles? I found poles to be absolutely necessary, in part because I had a huge backpack. Now I have seen some videos talking about the Coast to Coast saying you don’t need poles. However, I think everyone I saw had poles and I have to say I could not have done it without poles, then again that’s partly because my pack was quite large and heavy, but you have got so many ups and downs, especially in the Lake District, I could not have done it without poles. So, I did well in bringing poles.

Also with my water system, I brought both a bladder and bottles for water and that was really good because I could use the bladder as I was walking, and I would only fill it up with half a litre each day and then I would use the bottles when I was sitting down and having a break and I would just down more water then. So that was really convenient, and I liked having both systems, so that was good, because in the past I have only brought one or the other, but not both.

What could I improve on? So packing, my backpack, which you may have seen on Instagram, it was huge, and it weighed 21 kilos with all my food and water. So I could have improved on packing. There were some things that I doubled up on which I shouldn’t have. So usually when I go on a walk, I bring my iPad with a keyboard and I type up all of my notes from the day and that means when I get home I have, usually, 20,000 words already written for the book, which is great. But this time I didn’t want to have another device to charge, so I thought well I will bring a journal. But then I thought, I don’t know how much space I am going to take up in writing and so I thought, I better bring two journals. But, no, no, no, that didn’t work, and I ended up posting the second journal back home to me when I saw a post office about day five. So I would leave behind the second journal.

I brought a long-sleeved base layers that I didn’t need and I added it to my pack at the last minute and the only reason I added it was because we had really cold nights, in the last three days leading up to the trip and I just got scared and thought I needed to be warm, but I didn’t need it. I also brought a second pair of reading glasses which I did not need and the reason I brought them was because my husband said, you should bring a second pair of reading glasses, because we had just watched this video of this guy on the Coast to Coast who lost his main glasses and his backup glasses. So I didn’t need those. I also bought a second water filter, so I had a Sawyer squeeze which is what I use most of the time, but I also had a brand new Salomon flask that comes with a filter and I filled it up once to test it out and I didn’t need that, I could have just used the Sawyer squeeze. There were three of us with water filters, if mine had failed I would have had two other ones to use as a backup. I also brought a second power bank, and I did that because we were all bringing two power banks and I didn’t realise that there would be so many opportunities to charge my stuff on the route and I doubled up on a lot of things that I shouldn’t have doubled up on. They said don’t pack your fears and that is kind of what I did, so don’t do that.

I also brought an emergence bivy that’s kind of like a silver blanket in a bag, but that wasn’t necessary because I had a tent and a sleeping bag, so if I had broken my leg or injured myself and I needed to sit and wait until mountain rescue came, my sleeping bag would be a lot warmer than the emergency bivy bag thing.  It is something I bring on my day hikes, but I did not need it on this trip, and it is not heavy, it is very small and lightweight, but I didn’t need it so I should have left it at home. Finally, midge spray, so there was one Coast to Coast video that I saw that mentioned midges being a problem and so I brought midge spray and a net, I didn’t use them the entire time because it is not midge season, which I know they don’t come out until the summer, but still I brought it.

So there were a handful of things I didn’t need. The weight of those things I don’t think would be more than a kilo, but it took up space and it was extra weight so I would definitely leave those things behind. And I am going to looking to upgrade some gear.

The stove that I usually use is the Jetboil Minimo, which I always liked, but it is big and it is bulky and it is kind of heavy. So I could upgrade that to a Pocket Rocket which has kind of been on my radar for a while but I have never felt the need to get it, now I feel the need to get it.

Compression bags, so the guys that I was travelling with had really great compression bags for their clothes, and a good compression bag for their sleeping bag, whereas I just used the compression bag that comes with my sleeping bag. Now, if you are compressing your stuff obviously that is not going to magically make them lighter, but it will make them smaller. So it would have meant that stuff would have fit in my pack easier and it wouldn’t have been as big and bulky,

And backpack, I had an Osprey backpack, which I love, it was really comfortable. The bag was heavy, it was way too much for me, but when it was on my back it felt great. I had some chafing on my hips, but aside from that it was really, really, good, but it is heavy, I think it weights 2.2 kilos when it is empty. So I might be looking into getting an ultra light pack and I have been looking at Atom Packs, and I will link to all of this in the show notes, I don’t know for sure yet, it is an investment, but I think I want one, so we will see.

And finally foot care, that was my big mistake. Keep your feet dry, which I know and I would take different measures to keep my feet dry in the future, I don’t know what I need to reevaluate this and think what I could do better. I would like to bring next time more KT tape for prevention and aftercare, I found KT tape to be really useful on this trip, even more so than Compeed, for spots where there was friction and rubbing and also blisters for taping things up. And I am going to be re-reading Fixing Your Feet, which is the book that I recommend to everyone and has really changed the way I look after my feet in adventures and events, but clearly, I really messed up on this trip because my feet got wet, and blisters and my feet were painful and in a lot of pain from the backpack. My feet were the worst part of this trip, they were just a mess. So I need to really spend some time on how I could improve on that for the future.

Now for shoes I was in a big debate about what to wear. Debating between leather boots which I knew would be waterproof but hot and heavy and my Salomon hiking shoes which I know would be waterproof(ish) and comfortable but the toe box isn’t as wide as I like, they are a bit crampy on my toes, or the shoes that I did wear, my Salomon Olympus shoes which are my long-distance running shoes, which have a great foot shaped toe box and a really thick cushy sole for going long distance and they are so, so, comfortable, so so comfortable, but they are not waterproof. And I thought I would pair those with waterproof socks which is what everyone does here in terms of long distance running and running in the wet, it is customary to wear non-gortex running shoes and pair them with waterproof socks. However, I learned on this trip that waterproof socks do have a limit and when you are walking in wet conditions for four or five days in a row, they get saturated. So I actually ended up buying a pair of waterproof socks so I could swap them out, but it was just a mess. My feet were soaking wet for five days straight it was not good and that set the tone for the rest of the trip because my feet were pretty messed up. Again, I need to evaluate options, I actually ended up buying a second pair of shoes which I think was probably a mistake but again more on this in the book when it comes out because I would have had more time to analyse the situation. But my feet were so messed up that I was just looking through all of the pictures of the trip and I have so many pictures of my feet, it is like I have this documentation of how my feet were taped up and powdered, and oh it was just a mess. So that was bad, and I need to fix that.

My experience of the trail

So what is the trail actually like? And I this out when I did my original notes for this episode and I realised that’s kind of the whole idea, to give you an idea of what the trail is like. So as you know it starts in St Bees, we started in the West, and we travelled up North on the Saturday, 30th, and stayed overnight at Seacote Caravan and Camping, and we were, I think, there was one other tent there that night, but I think it was pretty much us in the field. The weather was quite bad, it was quite rainy and windy and kind of a rough night, but we got through it and we started the next morning in pouring rain and decked out in our waterproofs and that was a very wet start to the walk and the first few days were very wet. Now I didn’t realise this, because I had never been to the Lake District before, but the lakes are very wet, it is very rainy up there and that is one thing that you might want to be aware of if you are starting your walk there. The rest of the trip, once we got out of the lakes, I think we had some drizzle sometimes and we certainly had wind, especially on the Yorkshire North Moors, but the weather was really good, we had clear skies or at least grey skies but no rain the rest of the trip. So the rain was mostly confined to the Lake District.

So we had a great first day, I think we did 14 miles, or 26 km and we stayed at the Ennerdale Bridge, there is a pub there and we camped in the pub garden and that was great. It was really convenient, it was Sunday, we had a roast dinner at the pub, we were able to charge things in the pub and this is important, I didn’t realise how easy it would be to charge things along the way, so that is why I brought two power banks because I thought I needed to have a backup and I didn’t, I really only used one and I was able to use it and my devices at various times along the way, mostly at pubs when we were eating or staying there. So that was a really wet but beautiful day and it was just exciting to be on the trail and I was getting used to the weight of my pack which my shoulders did hurt a little bit in the beginning and once the weight went down as I was eating my food and I got used to things it was much more comfortable.

So the next day we went from Ennerdale Bridge all the way to Ennerdale Water, and this will make sense to you if you watch some YouTube videos about the trail to a place called Borrowdale where we camped in this really lovely farmer’s field that he had for camping, it was really, really, nice. That was a 15-mile day, it was a lovely great day, it was a great evening and I remember being really exhausted. There is this picture of me just lying on the ground exhausted when we got in and I remember being really, really, hungry. I wasn’t eating enough the first couple of days and then we kind of got into the habit of having proper meals on the trail in addition to trail snacks and that helped a lot. So yes, Borrowdale is lovely, Borrowdale is one of the rainiest parts of the country, I later read in my guidebook. So it makes sense that the lakes are so rainy, but it was really lovely. Now, we were planning to do a wild camp that night, but we didn’t, because it would have made for a really short day and we wanted to continue on. It was a really beautiful day.

So the second day was where we walk by Black Sail Hut, which I think is the most remote Youth Hostel in the country and it is this cute little building up in the middle of nowhere, it is really lovely. It wasn’t open when we were there, because I think they open at 5.00pm, but they do have an honesty bar, so you walk in, you can plug your stuff in, so again your can charge and we took an hour break there and had some lunch, and they have a refrigerator with drinks, and they have a kettle so you can make tea and coffee. And they had cakes and crisps and fruit and candy and all kinds of snacks, so it was really easy to refuel on the go and it was just really nice to have little places like this to just stop and rest and eat. Black Sail Hut I really, really, loved I saw it in all the YouTube videos I watched, and it was just really nice to actually visit there.

The third day we left Borrowdale and we were going to try to get to Angle Tarn to wild camp, but we ended up staying at Wasdale Tarn which was a few kms shorter because it was a really long day, and it was a tough day, and it was so lovely to wild camp. We had to go down a little bit from the Tarn (which is a lake) and we set up camp on this flat kind of area and it was really windy and kind of a rough night again but when we woke up the next morning the cloud had come in and we were all surrounded by cloud, and it was foggy and just beautiful. It was really, really, lovely it just felt really magical and wild. I loved it that was a great night and I have got pictures of that camp on my Instagram account if you want to take a look at it. That was another long day, it was a bit of a longer day than I think the previous days and I remember it being a really tough day for me.

So the next day we intended to get from Grisedale Tarn to Shap and that didn’t work out the way we planned. We got up early, we were walking all day, it was a fairly long day, and it was about seven or eight in the evening when we realised we weren’t going to get into Shap until quite late and so we decided to wild camp alongside the reservoir and we didn’t know this at the time but that was going to be the second and last wild camp that we would do. And it was really lovely, we got in at about 8 o’clock, made the call stay there, found a nice flat spot and then waited until the sun went down a little bit before we pitched our tents. And that worked out really well. And then the next day was when we had a shorter rest day at Shap. What happened was, I think we just burnt ourselves out a little bit and then one of the group needed a rest and then I realised that was very welcome! So we did a very short day of just 6km and then had a rest day in Shap.

And Shap ended up being a really nice place to have a rest day, we couldn’t find a B&B, which we initially wanted so that we could dry out some of our stuff but what we did do, we got the camping pods at the Crown and stayed in there and later we regretted that and wished we had camped, rather than staying in the pods, but it was fine we had a hot shower and the pub was unusually warm, they kept the heating really cranked up in there so I was able to put my shoes by the fire, dry out my shoes which was really good. And we also had a place to charge, we had a beer in the pub in the evening and charged all of our stuff. I definitely think you do need to bring a battery pack, but you probably don’t need to bring two large ones like did. Unless you have got cameras and drones and phones and tons of stuff to charge, you don’t need to bring so many charging devices (as I did). So Shap was a great day, we found this really great little café, I think it was the Abbey Kitchen, and we had breakfast there and we had lunch there and it was a really great place. The owner of the place was a walker, she had walked the Camino de Santiago, I think five times, and so she was giving us tips about walking and stuff, it was just lovely, it was great. So that was a very much needed rest day after we had put in some really tough times on the trail in the Lake District.

From Shap we went to Kirkby Stephen and that is one of the really big towns that you see on the trail. And this was where I bought new shoes which again may have been a mistake. Hindsight is 20:20 and I didn’t know that the rest of the trail would be quite dry, so I could have gotten by in my original shoes which were not waterproof, but I didn’t know that at the time, and I was expecting really wet and boggy trails which was not the reality. So I bought new shoes and they weren’t great. But Kirkby Stephen is the place to do this, so you have got two outdoor shops, one of them is bigger than the other, where you can get new shoes, where you can get new gear, they have got jackets and all kinds of stuff. So anything that you need that you might not have, you can get there. This is a really good place to re-supply. There is also a Coop where you can stock up on food, and so we did some of that, and there we stayed at this great campsite called the Pennine View Campground they had a great shower, they had a kitchen with a kettle, it was really nice. And I remember that was a really long day, that was our first 20-mile day, or I think 33km. That was a tough day, I remember we got in and I just kind of collapsed next to my tent and then I realised I had to get myself up and eat and shower and I went to bed at 6.30pm and woke up at around midnight and organised my stuff and then slept again until 6 or 7am.

This is another thing which is really important, I am not an early riser usually, but we got into the habit of getting up at 5.00am for a 6.00am start. And I found that really easy to adjust to, surprisingly, and I found that really nice to get up so early and this was possible because we were camping. So when I stay at B&Bs you usually get breakfast in the morning and that usually doesn’t happen before 8.00am so that means you have to get a later start. But I really enjoyed having the early starts and this is something that I wouldn’t have done if I hadn’t been doing the walk with other people, because I wouldn’t have thought to get up that early because that is just not my lifestyle, but I really, really, enjoyed it. And of course that meant that by 8.00pm or 8.30pm in the evening I was tired and going to bed. So it was a very different schedule to what I am used to in my walks and in my life and I liked it, so that was nice.

So this is Day 7, we went from Kirkby Stephen to Keld, I got my shoes in the morning, we had coffee and breakfast at Costa. We really wanted a nice, cooked breakfast at a café but for some reason things didn’t open very early in Kirkby Stephen and so we ended up in Costa and I shopped for shoes and food. This was where we had that kind of option in the trail where, depending on the date, you could go up to Nine Standards Rigg or there were two other tracks that you could take. So as we were doing it in May, it meant that we had to go up to the Nine Standards. And the Nine Standards Riggs are like giant Cairns, I don’t know how old they are, it has been hard to find information about them, but they seem to be quite ancient. So it was a long climb up to the top there and it was just really lovely (it was so nice to see something I had seen in all the videos, and I don’t know it was really, really, lovely). From there it was uphill and then downhill, and we went through these farms and it was really beautiful. So we were very much in the Yorkshire Dales National Park now, so it was like rolling green hills and just lambs everywhere and it was just really nice.

At Keld we stayed in I think it was called Rukin’s Park Lodge, or a caravan farm or something like that. It was this really lovely site where they had a couple of different levels, this big field at the top and further down there was a middle level and further down there was this other level by the river where you could camp. And we stayed in the middle level, and it ended up being quite cold because, of course, cold air drops at night and heat rises, I didn’t think about that when we chose our campsite but when we wok up next morning my tent was frozen. It was covered with frost and when I rolled up my tent to put it away it was crunchy and that had never happened to me before. It was a bit of a rough night for me, I slept through the first two-thirds of the night and then I woke up and couldn’t sleep anymore just because I was so cold, and that was the only night that I was too cold.

But this was the day where we went through to Reeth and beyond. Now Reeth is a place I had been to before, it was the location of one of my navigation courses and so I knew a little bit of the trail and it was really lovely to revisit this route that I hadn’t been to in three or four years. So this is another point where you can take the high route or the low route and we took the low route, which part of it follows the Swale trail which goes through Swaledale, again a dale is a valley. So we went through a little bit of woodland and along the river it was really, really lovely. We went through some meadows. In the Yorkshire Dales you have these really beautiful dry-stone walls and they have very narrow openings to walk through and it can be quite tricky. So this was a bit slow this part, going through all of these fields, we had to go through so many different fields and pass through so many different walls and every time you have to climb up and squeeze through, especially if you have got a big backpack, it is quite difficult to jump down at the end. So it was a bit slow going but it was really beautiful, and it was green and just lovely.

This day was a bit tough, it was another longish day, I found it really challenging and we stopped off at Reeth and had a burger and had some ice cream and we went to this shop and got some more snacks, that was kind of refuelling place, and it was really, really, nice. And from there we pushed on to this farm at Nun Cote Nook, where we camped. I really like camping in farms, this woman has a little shop, and she does breakfast, and she does dinner (which we didn’t take advantage of) and she served us tea and biscuits when we got in, it was really, really, nice and we had a really warm hot shower. The bathrooms are great, with the bathrooms there, she lets you use the toilets and the showers in the house, there was kind of a separate entrance ,and it was just warm, and it was just really nice to have a warm place to shower because sometimes campsite showers, the water is hot but the room itself is cold, so you kind of freeze when you get out. I took more showers than I thought I was going to take on this trip, since we thought, we were going to wild camp, I honestly didn’t think I was going to get more than one or two showers but there a lot of showers, which was nice.

So I am just looking through my notes as I tell you this story and this was the day, I think we all found it really challenging and we decided to start doing a gratitude list, whenever we would complain about being tired or feet hurting, we would say the things that we were grateful for in terms of what we enjoyed about the day, you know: I enjoyed the lambs and I enjoyed the hills… I have this in my notes because this was actually a really important mindset shift, because this was a tough day for me, I remember just being really, really, tired and shifting this around from complaining to talking about the things that we enjoyed really, really, helped, so I think this is a good technique for the future.

So this is the point at which we really started to reevaluate our long days and distances and things. So we were really supposed to walk to Danby Wiske today, but this is the first day that I woke up not feeling great and I really wanted to go back to sleep after I turned off my alarm and that was the first time that had happened. So we hiked into Richmond and had a really good breakfast there and that was where we decided to replan the rest of the trip and stretch it out a little bit. This was another really lovely walk through the Yorkshire Dales and just pretty green hills, it was another really lovely day in the Dales. And I remember being really tired when we got into the campsite that night. So we stayed at another farm which was really nice, another place where we got in and got settled, they brought us tea on a tray, it was lovely. This was another place we could charge. So we ended up being the only people staying at this farm and they had hot showers and a bathroom and there was an outlet, a kettle, and we didn’t need the kettle, so we unplugged it and we were able to charge some things and I was able to wash some clothes. So there was a heated towel rack in the shower room and so I was able to wash some clothes and hang them on the towel rack and get them dry for the next day. I think that was the first day that I was able to do some laundry but when I was in  Shap staying at the Crown this woman there had done some laundry for me which was nice. So there were a couple of times when I was able to do laundry throughout the trip. For some reason I thought it would be easier but because it had been so wet at the start it wasn’t, so it was nice to have this.

The next day was another long day, I think just over 20 miles. And here we went from Brompton on Swale where we had stayed at the farm, to Ingleby Cross, and this was the shift out of the Yorkshire Dales and into the North York Moors and it was a tough day. This was a day that had lots of walking on country roads, it was really hard on the feet and the wind really picked up. We had really hard gusts of wind, going up to 40 miles an hour towards the end of the day. This was the day that I felt I was going to get pushed over by the wind. It was a challenging day partly because of the roads and partly because of the winds over the moors. And in the moors, it is just open flat fields of heather, and you don’t have trees or anything to stop the wind, so when you have got wind up there it has nothing to stop it, it just blows and blows. So there are a couple of challenging days with the wind, and it was right around this time. So this was day 10 and the next day I think was even worse. We stayed in this little, tiny village called Ingleby Cross, and we camped at a pub there and it was just really nice. There were a couple of other campers there that we had seen a few times along the way, and it was nice to reconnect with people and meet up with them at the end of the day.

Day 11, we were intending to wild camp at night, but we ended up staying at a campsite instead. So we went from Ingleby Cross to  a place called Lordstones, a couple of kilometres before we planned to stop. This was a day that was kind of sunny and kind of alternating between sunny and dark clouds but then we had these really strong gusts of wind, I really felt like I was going to fall over a couple of times. So we had breakfast and then walked through a really pretty woodland for a bit. And I remember feeling like it was so good to see trees in what felt like ages. So we had some ups and downs of the hills and went through a plantation, I think this was the day when some trees had been harvested and there was a diversion to the trail, but the sign wasn’t clear, so we went where we weren’t supposed to go and had to climb over some trees. But it was nice to see trees, even though some of them were being cut down. And we got into Lordstones which Is this I think it is a country park, just before 4 o’clock and we saw some people there that we kept seeing on and off, who we had camped with the previous night, and they were staying there to camp. We went into the shop to buy some things and they said you have 15 minutes to decide whether you are going to camp here and we decided to go for it. So the café was closed there sadly, the restaurant was closed, the shops we had fifteen minutes before they closed, but we were able to stock up on some things and then get settled in the campsite. And Lordstones is a place that charges £25 for camping which is really expensive, but they have a special price for Coast-to-Coast walkers. So they put you in a special field but you get all of the same toilets and showers as the normal campers. So it was a really, really, nice place, it was quite quiet, it was just us and the other three tents of the other people we had kind of been seeing on and off and then a couple of people arrived quite late and pitched their tents further down. The big surprise here was actually seeing the Lordstones. So there was this semi circle of standing stones, just a little way of from where we were camping and it was really, really, lovely, a really nice sight, nice to see and it was a lovely surprise.

The next morning, which was day 12, we went from the Lordstones to the Lion Inn and we had a bit of a late start because we had to turn in our keys to get our deposit for the keys back, it wasn’t a very efficient system that they had. So we got a later start, had some climbing to do and it was a really lovely day and this was the day when we had another choice where we could take the high route or the low route. Sadly I forgot that until we got to the top of the first peak, but then I saw the low route and we decided that we were going to take the low route from then on. So we did that, it was really nice. We were following the Cleveland Way this day, so there was a section where the Coast to Coast follows part of the Cleveland Way, and so you no longer follow Coast to Coast signs for several hours, you are following Cleveland Way sign, and that is another national trail. So this was another day that was really, really, windy. It felt like a long day even though it wasn’t but just the wind was really tiring. I remember being really, really, tired and seeing open moors and nothing, nothing, nothing and then finally off in the distance we saw the Lion Inn, this really remote pub where we were camping that night. And I remember just feeling so much relief when we saw that.

The Lion Inn, you will see it if you watch videos of the Coast to Coast, it is really, really, lovely. It is this pub in the middle of nowhere. Lots of Coast-to-Coast campers will camp there, they also have rooms, which are pretty much taken up by Coast to Coast walkers, and it is just a nice, open, pub, great food, in the middle of nowhere and it was such a nice place to get in out of the wind, the wind was terrible. The next day was day 13, getting towards the end, walking through the North York Moors still. There is this ancient cross, just off the path called Fat Betty, where it is a tradition to take some food and leave food. So we walked by Fat Betty, I left a trek bar and I took a Kendal mint cake and it was just fun to do this tradition thing and I have seen people doing it on videos, and it is just a weird thing that people do and I found that really fun, I don’t know!

So it was a fairly easy trail, it was fairly flat, but hard on the feet. There were a lot of hard packed dirt and gravel on this trail I remember, and I remember my feet being really tired. My feet were a lot more tired than I am telling you, they were aching a lot of the time! Not only from the weight in my pack but from the shoes that just weren’t right and from the blisters that I got the first few days. That is all I am going to say about that, otherwise this would be like a lament about my feet, but it was not all fun and games!

So we were originally planning to stay at Glazedale and didn’t, the place had a weird vibe, and it was just kind of dead and there weren’t many facilities and the pub that was supposed to be there, which was the only place to eat, was closed. It was just not great, so we ended up going onwards a little bit to Egton Bridge, which was just 45 minutes away and we actually stayed in a hotel there. It was this little country hotel that was lovely they had decent food, a good breakfast in the morning and a nice place to stay and a good shop which we didn’t manage to get to because it closed by the time, we had finished settling in but it was just nice. Again that was a place where we could charge our stuff, take a shower, it was nice. Originally as I said, we planned to stay in a hotel halfway through, we didn’t because I guess we just didn’t feel the need to, I didn’t feel the need to, but it was nice to have a place to settle in for the night. And I remember we were talking about, this is going to make us soft, it is going to be harder on the trail the next day. It wasn’t, we just had a good rest and went on our way.

From Egton Bridge we went through to Grosmont, which is where most people stay, and we didn’t realise when we stopped at Egton Bridge how close Grosmont was but we could have stayed there and we could have camped there. So it was just less than an hour into Grosmont and from there, there was a big climb out of Grosmont and we saw this huge, I don’t know there was a deer park and then a massive herd of deer on the right. We actually stood there for a while taking pictures of them, I had never seen anything like that before they were really lovely. And then Moors and then we went off the Moors into Littlebeck, this really pretty woodland, really lovely, just alongside the stream. We saw this cave which was left over from I think mining and there was a hermitage cave which has the date of 1790, I don’t know if someone actually lived in there or if that was just a folly that someone had made. And then we came across Falling Foss, a Foxx is a waterfall, it was really lovely but there were tons of people here because it was a Saturday, it is clearly a tourist trap, but it was lovely, it was nice to walk through there. And then we found this tea garden at the waterfall and that was a really nice surprise, I hadn’t seen that in any of the videos that I had watched, and we were able to get some lunch there, it was really nice.

So, originally, we had been debating about whether to have a short second to last day and then a medium last day, but we decided to flip those on their head and go a little bit further this day and stay at High Hawsker, which is really close to the end. So as we were getting closer to our destination, we realised how close we were to the actual end of the trail and we decided that we were going to see if we felt up to walking all the way through or if we were going to stay at High Hawsker. And in the end this is where my feet did not allow us, or me, to push on, we decided to stick together and we camped at High Hawsker and stayed the night at another caravan campground. So this was a place where they had a restaurant, they had a shop, I guess we could have charged things if we needed to but it was the last night so we didn’t and just had a leisurely evening as we got ready to do a very short walk into Robin Hood’s Bay the next day.

So we had a short walk the next day, it was just two hours and we got started at quarter to eight and got in at quarter to ten. So it was nice to have a short day and get in early rather than pushing on the previous evening. I was really conflicted about that, just having such a short day but it ended up being nice. We got there early in the morning and there weren’t may tourists out, it was really quiet and we were able to walk to the sea and throw in our pebbles and then have a quiet breakfast. I thought it was nice. Then that gave us plenty of time to get to Middlesbrough, where we were staying the night before taking the coach back home the following day.

So that wasn’t the greatest telling of the story and I think that will definitely get better when I am writing my book, because I am more of a writer than a speaker and it is hard to condense two weeks of adventures into half an hour. (And this is actually longer than I thought it was going to be.) I hope you enjoyed hearing that and I hope it gave you a feeling of what it is like to go on the trail, but was is really going to give you a feeling of what the trail is like is to watch people’s videos and see what it look like. Again you are going through those three National Parks so you are getting three very different types of scenery and nature and wildlife and it is such a great experience.

How can you do Wainright’s Coast to Coast walk?

I would say start out by selecting a guidebook. I bought the Trailblazer guide which is what I usually buy. I like them because they have these cute little hand drawn maps which explain all the highlights and stuff to look out for which is nice but not as practical on this trail as it is on other trails. So one of the guys that I was walking with brought the Cicerone Guidebook which comes in two parts: one part is just the OS maps for the trail and the other part is the Guidebook. That is what I would bring next time, and I am linking to both of these in the show notes. So I would say choose a Guidebook or maybe two and start researching.

Next decide if you are going to do it solo or with friends. This is unlike other trails in the sense that it is not signposted all the way through because it is not an official trail. So in the North York Moors, there are a lot of signs. It is not totally signposted, and you are going to need a map and you are going to need where you are going, but it is pretty well signposted. In the Lake District it is not marked at all. So there is Cairns that will mark the footpaths that the Coast to Coast goes along but when you see the Cairn you are not sure if it is actually Coast to Coast unless you are actually navigating so you can’t just follow the Cairns. So you definitely need to know how to navigate, and you definitely need good maps, and you need to know how to use a map.

So solo or with friends? If your map reading skills are not great, I would say brush up on them or go with friends who do know how to navigate, that might help, however ideally you all want to know how to navigate.

Next, decide how you want to do it. Do you want to camp the whole way like we did? Do you want to stay at B&Bs, or do you want to do a mix? You could do two nights camping and one night’s B&Bs. You could do B&Bs halfway through, whatever. But that is going to help you decide how you want to split up the route.

Next do you want to get your luggage transferred? Now you can do this for both B&Bs and camping. There are luggage transfer services along most of the national trails and other routes here in the UK. You can just hike with a day pack and get your luggage transferred. A lot of people that we saw, especially older walkers, did that. And here is where I need to say: all ways are valid. However you choose to do this is great, do what works for you.

So we were hiking with these big packs and people would always see us and would be like you are doing it the real way, you are doing it the right way, not like those day packers! And that’s BS, do what you need to do to have this adventure. If you want to get your luggage transferred, do it, don’t feel guilty about it, there are plenty of people that do that, and it is totally fine. So plan your adventure in a way that works for you, I know I say that all the time, but it is true.

Next you need to decide if you are going to go from west to east or east to west. So most people walk this trail from St Bees in the West to Robin Hood’s Bay in the east, and that is because there is this idea that way you will have a tailwind the whole way rather than a head wind. However, the trail doesn’t go strictly from east to west, it kind of meanders and there were many, many, times, especially in the North York Moors, where the wind was coming at me from the side. So it doesn’t really matter which direction you do it in, there is only one point I would say for about an hour or so, on the North York Moors we had a really, really, windy day and gusts of up to forty miles an hour, and it was just so exhausting. But there was only a period of about an hour of that where I felt like I had a bit of a tail wind, I felt like the wind was pushing me. So one hour out of two weeks I think is not enough to say that you definitely need to do it from West to East However weather changes, weather is different, your results may vary. But I think you can do it in either direction, and the people we saw doing it east to west didn’t complain any more than we did. So I think it is good.

Next you need to decide how many days you want to split the walk up into. Some people do it in as little as five or six days, some people do it in ten or eleven days, some people do it in more eighteen days. But I think two days is about the norm and I would say fourteen to fifteen days should be good. You might want to add an extra day in if you want to break. And maybe have some flexibility. Originally, we were going to do it in fourteen days, then we changed to thirteen and then it ended up being fifteen, so allow for flexibility because if this is a bigger adventure than what you are used to, you might find that you need extra time than you estimated. And the Lake District is more strenuous, you have got a lot more climbing in that, and a lot more really technical  downhills, so you might want to plan shorter days in that section and spread the Lakes out a little bit. If I  am going to do this trail again, I would definitely have shorter days in the Lake District so that I could enjoy them more and not pressure myself to get through each day, because I really enjoyed the lakes and it was really hard; it was really, really, challenging for me.

You also want to get a feel for the different alternative routes, the high/low routes, the different routes around the lakes, that kind of thing. And obviously the route that you choose is going to depend on the conditions, the weather conditions, that you reach that point, but it is a good day to know what the options are.

Next, I would say to watch some YouTube videos and I am going to link to what I think are the best ones in the show notes so you can get to know the trail. I probably watched at least 25 or 30 YouTube videos about the Coast to Coast and it was great because I got to see the route from different people’s perspectives and different people’s experiences and there was one where it snowed this time of year and that was interesting to know because I hadn’t thought that might be an option. So I think it is really useful to see other people’s experiences and it will give you an idea of what you are going to come across. The different sites you are going to see, the different landscapes and I got really excited because you had seen so many of these videos and there were certain points and things that I remembered, and I saw those places in real life it was really exciting. It was like oh I remember this from the videos! So I really enjoyed that. Again get comfortable with navigation if you aren’t already and then plan as usual: get your packing list out, really revise it, don’t pack your fears like I did and pack as little as you need to.

Book

So since I started sharing about this on Instagram people have been asking me will there be a book? Yes, there will be a book, but I didn’t record my experiences like I usually do, on my iPad, so the book will probably be different. I took lots of notes but it is not the same as actually writing up the chapter so it is probably going to be different, and I don’t know how it is going to be different, but we shall see!

And there were some days where I was even too tired to even take notes so I took the notes the next day and as I said, there wasn’t so much inner reflection, so there is probably going to be a different book to my usual book but there will be a book because I really enjoyed this trail, it was a great experience, I want to share it with other people and I would love to encourage other people to walk this trail. I thought it was really, really, good and I enjoyed it.

So that’s all for now, if you have any questions about my Coast-to-Coast experience, please drop me a line and let me know. You can email me at [email protected]. Don’t hesitate to send me questions because that will help me know what people need to know for the book. I find it really, really, useful to know what people questions people have. So again [email protected] or you can find me online and get in touch there.

If you enjoyed this episode you might want to check out these related episodes:  in 438 I talk with Jenny Mowbray about solo travel ad adventure when you’re in a relationship, and of course this wasn’t solo travel but I wasn’t going with my partner, so I was away from home. 376 I talk about long distance walks: time and space to think and reflect and that was a similar episode but about my Ridgeway walk that I did a couple of years ago. In 368 I talk about Yvette Webster about how to take your hiking to the next level, which is exactly what I did here. In 367 I talk about finding yourself through solo travel and outdoor adventures and 364 I talk about personal growth through outdoor adventure.

So hope you found this interesting and useful and thank you for listening. Remember to visit: hollyworton.com/461 for the show notes on this episode. Happy trails to you!