Lockdown Dreams - Future UK Hiking Plans

A brief look at what I've been doing during lockdown, including books I've read and hikes I'm looking at doing in the future 

The Coast to Coast Walk 2011 - Borrowdale to Patterdale

For Day 3 of our 2011 Coast to Coast hike, we had a short, easy day climbing over to Grasmere from Borrowdale. Here, we caught a bus to Ambleside as we could not find a BnB in Grasmere. The following day, we headed through the Grisedale Pass to Patterdale where we camped at the Side Farm campsite. The video quality in some scenes isn't the best as it was filmed on a fairly basic, pocket camcorder.

The Coast to Coast Walk 2011 - St.Bees to Borrowdale

In 1998, I solo walked my first ever long-distance trail, The Coast to Coast walk through northern England taking twelve days to complete it. This was for me the realisation of a long-held desire to walk a long distance trail and sparked a fascination with long distance hiking that I have to this day. In 2011, I decided that I would hike the trail again only this time, I would be hiking with a friend. Another difference to my 1998 hike was that a tent formed the majority of the 'accommodation´ along the way, camping being something that I had not even considered on that first hike. The 2011 hike was a great success, although we did suffer some pretty horrible weather over the last three days but overall, we thoroughly enjoyed the walk, which took us thirteen days. I have since hiked the trail for a third time with my wife and had a more leisurely trip this time taking sixteen days to complete it. Why am I writing about my 2011 hike it now? Well, after completing the hike, I made a Youtube video of clips and photos taken along the way and unfortunately included quite a lot of music that violated Youtube's  copyright policy, which caused them to mute the audio track. I have just begun re-editing the material from this trip into short videos, this is the first of these. 

Our Coast to Coast Adventure

Ennerdale, gateway to the Lake District

Having abandoned my Cape Wrath Trail hike due to illness, I spent the best part of a week recovering in Ullapool before I headed south to the Cumbrian coast to meet-up with my wife in St.Bees for our impending trek along Wainwright's famous Coast to Coast trail. I still had a cough and a rough throat but it was beginning to subside and I felt much better than I had when I had arrived at Inchnadamph, almost a week earlier. Despite not feeling well, I spent these days exploring Ullapool, which I found very attractive and as I left for Cumbria on the bus, found myself regretting the fact that I had not been well enough to really enjoy my stay. After a long trip by bus and train, I arrived at St.Bees station to find my wife waiting and we headed into the village and enjoyed a drink and the afternoon sunshine in a nearby pub garden. We set off the following morning in fine weather and enjoyed the exhilarating clifftop path and the views across the Irish sea to the Isle of Man before heading inland towards the Lake District, which looked superb in the sunshine from the summit of Dent, the first serious hill of the walk.  Unfortunately, this was to be the last sustained, decent weather of the walk until we crossed into the Yorkshire Dales. The third day from Rosthwaite to Grasmere turned into one of the worst days walking I have ever experienced as the constant rain, flooded paths and rivers were compounded upon reaching the top of Greenup Edge by flooded peat bogs and gale force winds. We came to a swollen river as we headed for the path down into Easdale and as we stood in the howling wind and rain, I began to shake uncontrollably with cold as we wondered how to deal with the obstacle in front of us. I had started walking in my usual very light clothing, which had been fine in the valley, but at the top of the climb the gale force winds became an unexpected factor and although I had more layers in my rucksack, putting them on in the wind was almost impossible. Despite this, I managed to pull a windshirt on over my waterproof, which helped considerably and as I tried to ignore my predicament and focus on our options, we were joined by four other walkers. Together, we squelched through bogs to a point further up the river where it narrowed a little and helped each other jump across. As we reached the summit of the Easdale path, the wind became so strong that one of our party was blown off of her feet and knocked to the ground. Having re-grouped, we bolted for the descending path and fairly quickly things eased although the rain and wind continued until we arrived very wet, cold and bedraggled into Grasmere.