Coast to Coast - St. Bee's to Orton - April 2022

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On 12th April myself and a friend set off to walk the Lake District section of the Coast to Coast Path. For six days we set off each morning, navigated our way along the path and as evening approached pitched our tents for the night. We covered about 70 miles and were very lucky with the weather, dull at times but only one short period of rain.

After a relatively gentle first day, the second day started with a walk along Ennerdale Water. Shortly after scrambling down Robin Hood's Chair, the difficulty of which should be highlighed more, Brendan noticed a large bird over the lake ahead of us. Once I saw it in my binoculars I recognised it immediately as an osprey. Major excitment. We got great views of it for most of our walk along the lake.

That evening we camped at the YHA hostel at Longthwaite. We discovered it had a bar so naturally we enjoyed a couple of pints and good conversation with several fellow walkers. One couple told us how they got lost for a few hours in low cloud after the Black Sail Hut. We were lucky that the mist had lifted by the time we got there, but still had some difficulty picking up the path after the climb up Seavy knot.

We had even more navigation difficulties next day. The first part was easy enough climbing up through Greenup Gill to the ridge. The views across the hills from Lining Crag were spectacular. After Greenup Ridge it is quite easy to descent into the wrong valley. We spent some time pouring over the guide book, map, compass and phone app. Fortunately we made the right decisions and successfully worked our way towards Grasmere Common and Easedale.

Grasmere is a lovely little village. On our way to the pub we wandered through the Wordsworth Daffodil Garden. It was getting quite dark and we couldn't find his grave. A couple of pints in Tweedies Bar helped relax the muscles.

Grasmere to Patterdale.

Patterdale to campsite

Campsite to Orton

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Photos

Dry stone walls
I thought this loosely ressembled the outline of Africa.