St Bees Head to Ennerdale Bridge 14 Miles.
It’s a rainy start to our adventure. Gwen and I picked up the obligatory pebble off the beach at St Bees to carry to Robin Hoods Bay, I reckon a fair bit of St Bees beach must be at Robin Hoods Bay by now and vice versa. The pack maybe weighs about 10kg and my camera weighs a kilo of that. I’ve done a fair bit of walking lately and spent some time in Nepal last year so have got the packing off to a fine art with some good lightweight gear. After the beach and photo stop at the sign it was off up the steady incline to St Bees Head itself.
We didn’t have much inclination for sightseeing in the wind and rain so pressed on to Sandwith where we stopped on the village green for a bite to eat. A network of fields leads to Stanley pond and then shortly afterwards we reach Moor Row and its rather fine statue to ‘Coast to Coast’ walkers. Hot chocolate and a cake revived us in a little cafe in the village and the rain stopped on the way to Cleator, Things were looking up.
Once past Cleator and across the river the Way starts to incline steadily up through the forest towards Dent, which can be seen sloping up ahead on the forest tracks. About halfway up, a Red Squirrel popped out of the forest, scampered across the track ahead of us and shot up a tree, one of the highlights of the day. The wind started to get up and when we left the forest behind and got onto open moorland before the summit it was quite strong. We plodded on and I could see that the summit itself was covered in mist so I made sure I admired the view of the Cumbrian coastline before we immersed ourselves in the cloud.
Dent hill, at 1,155ft isn’t big by Lakeland standards but it is big enough on day one of a 200 mile walk to get the juices flowing and exercise the lungs a little. After Dent the path drops down to a little valley called Nannycatch and here there is a feeling that you are entering the Lake District proper, with sheep on sloping hillsides and the sound of water running in the becks. The final leg of the day follows the road down into Ennerdale Bridge and our bed for the night.
For map and route of this walk click ‘Learn more’ below
