The winding coastal pathway promised to be chic: a gorse-lined path atop a sweep of ethereal crags that fell away to disclose a nesting floor for kittiwakes, razorbills and uncommon black guillemots. The climate, a mixture of smoking fog, brutal winds and lashing rain, was one other matter. Discuss blowing the cobwebs off.
“Take a bracing stroll alongside the clifftops,” learn the information board close to the trailhead at Whitehaven harbour, the place I started. “The outlook is nice for sea watching.” On the morning I set off, storm watching Shackleton-style was extra apt.
The forecast wasn’t a part of the plan for my three-day hike alongside Cumbria’s cove-nibbled shoreline. I’d travelled by prepare from Carlisle in quest of a brand new 40-mile part alongside the England Coast Path, a journey first conceived to sew collectively present byways and clifftop footpaths across the total shoreline right into a 2,795-mile path, however extra related than ever given our new, pandemic-driven love of the countryside.
The stage from Whitehaven to Silecroft additionally represents a radical change of focus for a area so depending on the Lake District. Many areas of the nationwide park have been overwhelmed by a surge of home guests due to Covid (and vacationer vehicles may even be banned from sure locations subsequent summer season). However farther west, away from the mountain lakes and myth-inspiring fells, lies a special portal to journey: empty seashores, the delicate crunch of boot on sand, the autumn of seabirds on the breeze.
Arriving early on the path meant I had a full day’s stroll forward. After a snoop across the Beacon Museum, the place vestiges of north-west England’s maritime historical past are on show, I walked alongside quaysides as soon as full of 200 tall ships laden with sugar, rum and textiles and on to the route correct. A Candlestick chimney and miners’ lodge, the place as soon as charcoal-blackened Cumbrians slept earlier than taking a shaft all the way down to a seam 5 miles below the ocean, had been a reminder of altogether totally different occasions.
Away from the mountain lakes and myth-inspiring fells of the Lake District lies a special portal to journey
The commercial panorama started to fade and sodden sheep appeared in fields verging on the sheer drops of excessive sandstone sea cliffs. Most Cumbrians want no introduction to St Bees Head, the RSPB reserve that curves south of Whitehaven, the place peregrine falcons trip the thermals. Right here there is a gigantic colony of cormorants, fulmars and puffins, and the point of view throughout the Irish Sea in the direction of the Isle of Man and south-west Scotland at occasions places a carousel of dolphin pods and harbour porpoises on present. I made do with a glimpse of Galloway via the smirr whereas gulls dived for canopy.
Alongside the tapered path, off within the distance and virtually constructed on to the shoreline, the scene modified from fudge-brown seashores to a salvo of chimneys, gas storage ponds, waste services and gridlocked energy strains. This advanced concrete geography was Sellafield, with about 1,300 buildings and by orders of magnitude the biggest decommissioned nuclear website in Europe. I walked its boundary and was struck not by its horrible historical past – the Manhattan Undertaking, the event of atomic bombs, had hyperlinks with west Cumbria – however by the perverse industrial great thing about an influence plant abutting England’s most beautiful nationwide park. Within the rain, it seemed like a Hollywood set.
I used to be struck by Sellafield’s perverse industrial magnificence abutting England’s most beautiful nationwide park. Within the rain, it seemed like a Hollywood set
About six miles farther alongside the shoreline, helped alongside by England Coast Path waymarking, I crossed from sea-hugging nation lanes below the coastal railway and out via marram grass on to wild dunes for my first glimpse of the Esk estuary. By now, the moshing sea had abated and the dunescapes round Seascale and Drigg started to tackle a half-hearted glow. Summer time was attempting to interrupt via.
That day ended with one other first: an evening of drying my garments on the radiators contained in the Maid of Kent, one in all two retrofitted Pullman coaches that may now be booked for self-catering stays beside Ravenglass prepare station. In-built 1917 and used on the frontline in France and Belgium through the first world struggle as a part of the London and North Western Railway’s “Continental Ambulance” prepare, the historic carriage had seen far worse than my pink gooseflesh and claggy underwear.
Because the trailhead for the subsequent stage, Ravenglass can also be a gateway to another fabulous distractions. First, a tootle alongside the lilliputian Ravenglass and Eskdale Railway, billed on nostalgic posters as “the smallest railway on this planet”; in actuality, immediately’s travellers chug into one of many Lake District’s prettiest sections aboard a toytown prepare. After that, the uncooked great thing about Eskmeals Dunes nature reserve at low tide, then dinner (fish and chips, in fact) on the Pennington Resort, the closest Cumbria will get to the Côte d’Azur.
Ease of entry is what the England Coast Path is all about, even when it stays a piece in progress. Some sections across the coastal margins require a short detour or single-station hop and this sees me catch a prepare on day three to Hycemoor to proceed my hike south.
Because the miles handed, strata of communities revealed themselves, and it grew to become clear that each one English life could be discovered alongside the coast. Caravan golf equipment, farms, golf programs, nation pubs, industrial tons, a string of fishing cabins, a jail, then, lastly, a Ministry of Defence base used for large-calibre ammunition trials. It was all right here.
Amid this scene, I reached Silecroft with sea salt in my lungs, strolling what have to be one of many loveliest seashores in England, a minimum of for the rewarding pure excessive of getting there with my very own two ft. Canine walkers had been out with their hoods up. An aged couple sat below a blanket on a bench, consuming sandwiches. A father and son struggled to hold on to their kite within the wind. And from a sheen of silvery sand cluttered with tidal swimming pools, I walked inland to the station for the final prepare residence. Solely then, did the solar lastly come out.
The journey was offered by Go to Lake District. For additional particulars on strolling the coast, go to westernlakedistrict.com. Self-catering within the four-bed Maid of Kent carriage at Ravenglass from £381 for three nights. For extra data on the England Coast Path, go to nationaltrail.co.uk
