Thursday 7th April 2022

We wanted to put in a one-off day’s walking because we were going to be in Cumbria for a few days at our cottage and seeing the new production “Kes” at the Theatre by the Lake in Keswick.

We drove from our cottage to Maryport Station and left the car in the station car park (free) and caught the train to Whitehaven. The day was overcast and raining intermittently but the forecast was for things to improve. From the station we walked by the side of the railway, which pretty much summarises the whole day’s walk, for we were in close company with the railway line nearly all the way or so it seemed. After Parton the railway runs hard up to the coast and the tide, which was in, comes right up to the railway embankment and so the the path climbs up the cliff.

It had stopped raining and the air seemed remarkably clear and visibility was good even if the sun was not shining. We could see back to Whitehaven and St Bees Head and we could see across to the Isle of Man.

There seems to be a little bit of uncertainty as to where the England Coast Path actually runs along this section but we stayed with the higher route that passes around the Lowca wind farm and then descends to the railway once more at Harrington.

It was quite cold because of the strong wind and we were both wearing hats and gloves. An indoor coffee stop would have been good but there were no cafés so, since it was still not actually raining, we settled on bench looking over the empty harbour in Harrington and had coffee from our flasks. The harbour is only useable for about 2½ hours either side of high tide.

We chilled off quite quickly and we happy to get moving again for the 4 ½ miles into Workington. We walked alongside the railway for about a mile then, at Salterbeck, we were inland from the old steelworks which are fenced off. In fact the fencing has been broken down in places and so it is possible to walk on the seaward side of the steelworks but whether it is worth the effort would be debatable. The old steelworks site is a wasteland and not very attractive.

Approaching Workington we left the railway and climbed the small hill called the Howe and could see over to the ‘beach’ and the vast amount of slag that has been dumped over the years of steel making. It is difficult to know much of the landscape is grassed-over slag and how much is original ground. Indeed the Howe itself may actually be a slag bank.

On the top of Howe Hill is a crucifix, controversially erected without planning consent in 2014 by a local man in memory of his wife. When the council demanded its removal hundreds of people signed a petition supporting its retention and retrospective planning consent was granted .

We walked to the harbour mouth and then, having decided we really wanted to sit in the warm for some lunch, we walked up into Workington alongside the harbour. “Mrs Google” suggested that the nearest café was Café West. This turned out to be a café within Workington Library. It provides a range of home-made fresh food with locally sourced ingredients. We enjoyed an excellent bowl of vegetable soup and a cheese scone. The café is run by two women who train and support people with learning difficulties and so it seemed a more than usually worthwhile stop.

After lunch it was still breezy, chilly and spitting with rain. We followed a rather dismal route through the less attractive parts of the town, past a couple of spontaneous traveller encampments with the usual detritus strewn around before reaching the coast once more.

The route then went through an old industrial site which is now home to a wind farm. From the end of the wind farm, the path runs on the edge of the railway embankment; in places the path has disappeared so walking along the beach itself is required. Since the tide was well out that was not a problem. It is not the easiest of beach walks being a mix of coarse sand and stone which just made it hard work. The walk was not without interest; we saw flocks of turnstones whose black and white backs sparkled in the brief sunny interludes. Across the Solway Firth we could see Criffel which will be in our sights for the next week or more.

On the approach to Maryport the railway moves towards the town whilst we followed the path to the harbour mouth at Glasson and from there we followed round the harbour.

The footbridge over the harbour replaces a walk-way over the lock gates. I have not seen a bridge quite like this. It is a single bascule bridge and at the time of its construction in 2007 it was the only one of that design in the UK. It is, apparently, based on a Dutch canal bridge design. It was named Ellenfoot to preserve the former name of the town before it was renamed Maryport in 1749 after the wife of Humphrey Senhouse who developed the town as a harbour.

We were pleased that the café at the Aquarium was still open and so we went in there for tea before walking up to the car in the station car park.

Monday 28th March 2022

We awoke to a dull day.  After five dry days of almost wall-to-wall sunshine and wearing shorts, I felt mildly affronted by the change.

We had a swift breakfast and drove to Whitehaven to leave the car at the finish of the walk and we got a train back to Seascale where we had finished last night. On the train we swapped our jumpers for waterproof jackets and disembarked into a damp mist that enshrouded Seascale.

The tide was in and though there was beach we could walk on for a little way it was very stony and so we stuck to the ”official”  coast path. On this section the path has to juggle a bit to get around watercourses and and get past Sellafield safely. 

As we approached the River Calder the path loops under the railway line to cross the river next to the railway and then continues between steel fencing on the left for the railway and a high steel mesh fence securing the Sellafield nuclear processing plant.

On the north side of the plant is Sellafield station which may have been built for the Sellafield site since the station buildings are of redbrick and have a post-war appearance. However, it was there in the time of steam trains because there is a water crane next to the platform. And on the subject of water, the station has toilets.

Between Braystones and Coulderton, the beach front is dotted with a variety of beach shacks and houses which do little to enhance the appearance of the the area.

We have noticed that this new section of the England Coast Path is rather over signposted. In the picture above, taken on a very minor road, the signs are merely indicating we should cross the road presumably for the sake of improved visibility for the traffic. As you can see, Jill chose to ignore them.

From here on our supply of photos is a bit limited. St Bees Head would have been the highlight of the day’s walk but with the cloud down to the sea we saw very little.

At St Bees the official coast path swings in to pass on the landward side of the golf course, presumably due to issues over rights of way. There is, however, a perfectly good path along the the top of the sandy cliffs. We couldn’t see the sea or the beach because the cloud/fog was so dense. We did pass a group a golfers who I teased about seeing their golf balls or anything else in the dense cloud but they told me they just aimed in the general direction of the greens and hoped for the best. By now it had been raining steadily for an hour or two (not what the Met Office had forecast) and having chosen not to take the route into the village of St Bees, we had missed any café that there might have been.

It was to our surprise and delight that, close to where the Wainwright Coast to Coast walk starts, there is a beach café which was open on a Monday in March. We went in to escape the weather and have coffee and a toastie. It was surprisingly busy, mostly with local folk meeting family and friends there for lunch and they looked at us sympathetically as we arrived in our wet gear. The rain had come on very gradually so we had not bothered to stop to put on waterproof trousers and slow to pull up hoods and we fairly sodden.

After our break we moved on and the rain had stopped though we were still enveloped in cloud. The walk around St Bees Head was disappointing in that, after five days of sunshine, we started on the only significantly elevated section of the Cumbrian coast  but could see nothing. The path undulates but nothing too severe. We passed the Fog Signal House which surprisingly was silent despite the zero visibility. I looked to see the lighthouse which is only a short distance inland from the fog signal but it was totally invisible.

After while we heard the noise of heavy machinery and we had reached the quarry in the north side of St Bees Head.

As we descended to Whitehaven the cloud began to clear, or perhaps it was wishful thinking on my part. The tide was out and so the lock gates to the harbour were closed which meant we could walk across the gates to the North Pier and thence to the railway station where we had left the car.

Sunday 27th March 2022

We are staying at the Pennington Hotel in Ravenglass. Being a Sunday, they would not normally serve breakfast until 8.00 but having asked for an early non-cooked breakfast at 7:30, the staff were quite happy to do us scrambled eggs. That was particularly good of them because this morning the clocks went forward this morning so it was actually very early.

There are no early trains on a Sunday and so we drove to Bootle and left the car there and we will get a train back from Seascale to retrieve it this afternoon. We walked back down to the coast path which we followed to Eskmeals.

The path was bounded on the beach side by shingle and sand which has been bulldozed to form a sea wall but it did not look very attractive. At Eskmeals there is an army firing range. Since red flags were not flying we could have walked along the beach and around the tip. When I had originally planned this section we would have walked it on a weekday when the range would have been in use and walking the beach prohibited. From what we could see with the tide still quite high and we would have started with a walk on shingle, so we stuck with the road and followed it to the Eskmeals ford.

We knew from various accounts that the ford is quite safe to cross at an average low tide though the water would probably still be mid-calf depth in the deepest channel on the far side. However we had no information on the actual time frame for a safe, not-too-deep crossing. I had consulted the tide tables last night and low tide was not for another three hours; more to the point, today was a very high low tide at plus 2.7metres. How this actually translates to the practicality of crossing the river, I do not fully understand but we were looking at a wide channel of water with only a single sand bar just appearing. It seems to me it would be a very simple thing to place some posts with depth markers on them in the crossing to aid walkers. The river is not used for boats and so depth posts would not be an obstruction.

We looked at the railway bridge which had a walkway for railway employees on each side of the track. Jill was tempted to try scaling the embankment and nipping across the bridge just after a train had gone through on the basis there was unlikely to be another one coming in the time it would take to get across. I talked her out of that idea.

Sao, as we had no way of assessing the depth of the water – or the mud – and as I had allowed time for walking around via Muncaster Bridge anyway, that is what we decided to do. Sitting and waiting two hours until almost low tide seemed silly when the walk around was only an extra five miles.

As it turned out the walk to Muncaster Bridge is quite straightforward along a track to Waberthwaite, where there is a simple but pretty church and then across fields to Muncaster Bridge. There was a section of very dodgy board walk and some of the fields had been under water quite recently. In places the track/path was flooded across and we had to pick our way along the bank at the side.

Once over the river, the return walk is delightful through the Muncaster Castle Estate and along the foreshore to the the other end of the Eskmeals viaduct. We stopped on a makeshift bench before walking the tidal path into Ravenglass.

At Ravenglass the sun felt glorious and we sat on a bench on the grassy promenade and had our lunch. 

After lunch we crossed the River Mite – via the footbridge attached to the railway bridge. What a good idea! There is a ford but why would one bother removing boots and getting wet feet?

At Hall Carleton we could have used the ford to cross the River Irt but we decided to use the dry route via the pretty Holme packhorse bridge. This adds very little extra distance.

Just over the packhorse bridge, a young collie appeared from nowhere and bounded up to us. He seemed intent on walking with us though we did not encourage him. Fortunately after we went through a gate on to a track through some woods he disappeared as mysteriously as he had arrived.

We walked along the road to Drigg Station where we had to wait for a train to go through. This is yet another manually operated level crossing.

Then we followed the perimeter road of the nuclear storage facility with its high-security fences.

This brought us back to the shore and a mile and a half along the sandy beach into Seascale. There is a very good ice-cream shop on the front at Seascale and on a sunny March afternoon it was doing a roaring trade. We joined the queue.

Then we wandered up to the station. We were delighted to find that our train was running on time and that the previous train, which we could have caught if we had really pushed things, had been cancelled. Whilst waiting for our train, we got talking to a couple of our sort of age who had been hoping to get the previous train. They were dog walkers and had paddled across the combined Rivers Irt and Mite at Ravenglass to the dunes of Drigg Point and walked all the way to Seascale. That seems like a very good option for any other coast walkers (so long as the tide is well out to get across the rivers).

Saturday 26th March 2022

Weekends mean late breakfasts at the hotel; we were all packed up and were waiting to be served with breakfast at 7:45, fifteen minutes early. The hotel staff were very obliging and so we got off quite promptly and drove to Green Lane Station. I noted a road sign saying “New Level Crossing” which seemed odd since the road and railway have been there for about 150 years. I asked a local about it and was told that they had recently had automatic barriers installed; previously they had to open the gates themselves after telephoning up the line for permission before driving across.

Green Road has a minor claim to fame as being at the start of another section of the England Coast Path to be completed. The section from Green Road to Allonby was opened in January 2022 and so we will be treated to brand new way signs and gateways that work for the next eighty miles.

We had a short tarmac walk to the sea bank and once we were back on the turf bank we sailed along in the cool of the relatively early morning. Three miles took us to Millom a place I have only visited once before when I found it to be dreary and rundown through the loss of local industry, they even had trouble finding GPs to work at the local surgery. Approaching from the sea bank we could see the plateau of the the old steel works now levelled. Once upon a time the population was over 10,000 but with the loss of the haematite mine, the town went into decline and seems never to have recovered. We passed the quay where ships would have been loaded, though with the tide out it seemed amazing that any vessel ever reached Millom.  We took to the beach and enjoyed a damp sand walk  as far as Hodbarrow Point when we returned to the path proper and followed it round the Outer Barrier. This is effectively a rim around the old Hodbarrow mine which is now flooded and is a bird reserve and used for water sports.

Beyond the the lake we came to Haverigg where we paused at the beach café for a coffee. That was a mistake; it was a quick instant coffee and weak at that. Basically £1.50 each for a cup of hot brown water. Selling instant coffee should not be allowed without clear warning signs.

After Haverigg, where one necessarily has to come inland to get around a watercourse called Haverigg Pool, we returned to the beach and walked on damp sand all the way to Silecroft. The dunes extend well out and so we walked a slightly longer distance than I had planned from the map. At Silecroft the England Coast Path follows the edge of the sandy cliffs.

We wondered if we could have walked on the sand all the way and I am pretty sure we could have done so but we were on a rising tide and I did not know how safe the route was. As we were sitting on the cliffs having lunch, we saw four horses coming south along the beach and one or two walkers. It did appear that the high tide rarely reaches the base of the cliffs and there are a few points where one could escape to the cliff path. The beach is sandy for the most part but with the tide in one would be forced to walk on rather large pebbles.

An information board at Silecroft heralds the opening of this section of the England Coast Path but completely fails to mention the two river crossing sections that they have been unable to find suitable route across or around.

After lunch we checked the distances and train times and thought that we should be able to get the 16:28 from Bootle. We had not quite factored in the change in landscape. We have not walked on anything that might be called a cliff since leaving Llandudno. All of a sudden we were faced with a gentle roller coaster of a coastline – frequent changes between ascent and descent always seem to slow us more than the gradient itself. Nothing especially big but enough to see our usual walking speed of 3.2 mph fall to a bare 3mph and we had 5 ½ miles to go in under 2 hours. This seemed to be unrealistic.

We kept on as fast as we could, pausing only for occasional photos and the miles ticked by. Fortunately the recent dry sunny weather meant that the the ground was firm and there were no muddy areas to negotiate. It was a bit on the warm side for a forced march and despite it only being March the sun was very warm and, as I discovered later, strong enough to burn my calves (obviously I was in shorts).

We made it to Bootle Station with about 10 minutes to spare and so our effort was rewarded. Bootle Station is another request stop and has a level crossing right next to it. To my amazement the level crossing gates are still operated manually by a gate-keeper. I haven’t seen that since I was a child. An eighteen minute ride took us back to Green Road  where we retrieved the car and drove to Ravenglass where we are staying for two nights at the Pennington Hotel.

Friday 25th March 2022

Today we had a short taxi trip back to Sandscale Business Park to resume our walk up the Duddon Estuary. Last evening the tide was right in but this morning the sea was nowhere to be seen. We had to go around Sandscale which is large area of sand dunes and I had been concerned that, if it was high tide, we would need to walk through the dunes which is always hard work. But with the tide out we had an easy walk on the damp sand. The views over South Lakeland were magnificent.

After Sandscale we continued along the foreshore to Askham which would not have been possible if the tide was in. There was just one area where we had to step carefully through a couple of streams. 

Askham has a curious, rocky spit that sticks out into the estuary. It is known as Askam Pier. It is a man-made promontory made from slag that was tipped there and then had a rail track laid. It was constructed between 1898 and 1911 and serviced the steelworks in Askham. We walked under the bridge under the railway  and continued along the beach.

The other side we walked alongside the Dunnerholme Golf Club to Dunnerholme, a rocky outcrop into the estuary which provides an elevated view of the estuary.

The path continued along the foreshore which was clearly regularly inundated by tides. Fortunately there are white tipped posts to make navigation easier.

From Soutergate the path was much more difficult. We were not keen on walking on the sand which was still very wet and quite muddy with lots of stones and slippery seaweed. It was sandwiched between the channel of the river and the railway embankment that had been reinforced with rocks in places. We followed along the top of the embankment but at one point had to pick our way over the uneven boulders which was not much fun.

We made it fairly uneventfully to Kirkby-in-Furness where we sat on a bench on the station platform and had our morning coffee. We watched as a train arrived but as we had taken socks and shoes off to air our hot feet, it was probably obvious to the guard that we were not intending to board the train which duly departed the station. Then we set off over the railway bridge  and up the road alongside the railway.  Shortly we turned off to cross an un-named river by a footbridge between two pipelines.

It looks rather like a high security entrance. Having crossed the river we crossed the railway only to recross it a couple of hundred yards later. Then we had several miles of tarmac. After our recent concerns about the potential hazards of walking beside busy A roads, we felt fairly at ease walking along a single track road with plenty of width for us to continue walking on the road should any car wish to pass us; constantly hopping on and off a rough verge is time-consuming and loses all walking rhythm. When a small car approached us, rather more on our side than even down the middle of the lane, we fully expected him to move over and slow down as he passed. Not a bit of it – Jill, walking in front, stopped at the very edge of the road and the car passed us both unnecessarily close with no apparent reduction in speed. We shouted at him to slow down and gesticulated at him as he disappeared; I rather wished I had “keyed” his car with my walking pole. The road lead only to a farm so maybe he lived there and resented walkers. We were quite upset and angry and resolved that, should he return while we were still on the road, we would walk down the centre of the road and ignore his presence much as he had ignored ours. He didn’t return. After four miles we were at Broughton-in-Furness and we stopped at the village bakery where they have a simple café which was a very welcome break for our lunch.

After lunch we continued with a short section of pavement along side the the A595 before taking a footpath alongside the River Duddon. This was particularly beautiful as the wild daffodils were out and the wild garlic was just beginning to flower.

We rejoined the main road to cross the River Duddon and then had to decide whether to risk walking a short section of the busy A595 or take the, almost parallel, walk through Stanley wood.  I had hoped we might be able to walk along the sea wall bordering the River Duddon but the gate onto it was topped with crossed steel bars supporting four strands of barbed wire – one on each arm of the crosses which I took to be an indication that walkers were definitely not welcome. We did the sensible thing and went for the walk through the woods. We started with a gentle climb uphill past Duddon Furnace.

Then we were faced with the handiwork of Storm Arwen. The hillside was strewn with trees blown down by the storm. It was a real struggle to find a way through the random pattern of fallen trees and we wondered whether the road would have been the easier option.

We regained the A595 and were thoroughly frightened as two high powered motor cycles screamed past and then a number of big lorries which confirmed that this was no road to walk along.

Then we followed a minor road to Lady Hall where we crossed farmland on a footpath and came to the sea bank alongside the Duddon Estuary.

Now we had an easy 1½ mile walk to Green Road Station where the train to Barrow was due twenty minutes after we arrived. Time to finish our coffee and snacks before making sure we were ready to hail the train as it approached the platform – this was a request train stop, probably a first for us.

Thursday 24th March 2022

The weather forecast is still very favourable for the next few days and so we are keen to make the most of it. We caught the 7:47 train from Barrow, where we are staying, to Ulverston and we were walking by 8:15. It was a cool, clear morning and warming rapidly. We headed down past the Glaxo Smith Kline factories, took a path to the foreshore and joined the coast near Connishead Priory. On our way through the marshes we spotted a large barn owl quartering the fields.

The tide was fully out and so we had no worries regarding walking the foreshore other then the soggy bits left by the last tide. We had a fairly easy walk to Bardsea.

Then it was a little trickier getting along the foreshore until we came to Baycliff, it was really just that the path floods a high tide and so there were a few marshy areas.

At Baycliff we could see that the route around Maskel Head looked very rocky and not that easy to walk and so we took a short inland diversion to come back to the foreshore at the beginning of Edgebank. There was no formal path – we just picked our way along the stony beach over and around the large boulders until we came to Aldingham.

At Aldingham the beach ahead looked a bit uncertain and the only exit would have been through a farm which we knew from experience might well be signed as “Private”. We took to the road and when we approached the aforementioned Moat Farm, we could see a sign up telling of ice creams and coffee; how fortuitous since it was 10:50 and time for a break. Needless to say when we arrived there the café was closed. We headed on and took a footpath over the headland to Newbiggin where we settled on to picnic benches and had the coffee from our flasks.

From Newbiggin to Rampside the A5087 runs beside the beach and so we followed either on the pavement or seawall depending on what was available. We could see tracks of vehicles going out across the sands, presumably cockle-pickers.

From a considerable distance, we could see the Leading Light Beacon known as the Needle. It is an elegant, slender, parallel walled tower of brick construction. Built in 1875 it is the only survivor of thirteen such beacons in the Barrow area.

From Rampside a causeway runs to Roa Island but being an island we were not visiting it. From Roa Island one can walk across a tidal path to the famous Pele Island. There is also a very low island called Foulney Island which is composed entirely of pebbles and is a nature reserve. There is a causeway connecting it to the mainland.

At Rampside we took to the beach to start walking to Barrow Docks but once again the stony shore path slowed our pace; it is impossible to walk fast on loose stone.

The foreshore was actually quite variable and might be difficult at high tide. After half a mile we left the beach and clambered up to the tarmac cycle/walkway which goes all round the gas terminals and on to the Cavendish Dock. It was easy walking if a little on the dull side. We stopped and had our lunch in one of their sculptured anglers’ umbrella shelters, rather disappointed that the seat was a stone block sculpted to look like a fishing basket but not especially comfortable to sit on.

After lunch we continued into the town of Barrow-in-Furness but saw little more than the Morrisons and B&Q superstores and then passed the Premier Inn to reach the coast-side path again. Here, initially, the path was paved and effectively a promenade along the side of the Walney Channel.

Where the paving ceased, a dirt track continued until near Ormsgill where a narrow path continued over a headland and then dropped to the foreshore. We then walked for a mile and a half along a beach with the tide only just turned. The water was almost completely still with just a minor fluctuation indicating wave action was still present miles away.

Over the thousands of miles we have walked, we have seen derelict pill boxes but never one apparently intact but fallen on its side.

We had great views up to Black Combe in the Lake District reminding me of the fell race I ran there three years ago – a tough one that visited the summit twice. At Oak Head, near the start of the Sandscale Nature Reserve, we walked up to the A590 waiting for the level crossing on the way and got a taxi back to our hotel.

Wednesday 23rd March 2022

We set off from home soon after 7.00 and drove to the station at Ulverston; the plan was to get the train to Kents Bank where we finished walking last Friday. We arrived in plenty of time and found free parking very close to the station. The train was on time and nine minutes later we were at Kents Bank. The tide was well out as we came over the viaduct over the River Leven.

We had debated over the best route to take. I had reckoned we could probably walk the foreshore between the railway line and the sea though there is no marked path. The distance from Kents Bank to Humphrey Head is less than a mile along the sea shore but more than double that by the inland route using rights of way. Consulting blogs of those who have gone before us, two mentioned the inland route as being disastrously wet and muddy with water over the top of boots. Another blog recorded that they had made it along the shore route though suggested the last section might be difficult at high tide. Fortunately we were setting off at low tide.

We opted for the short route along the foreshore and it was a doddle. There is a concrete ledge on the side of the railway embankment for a third of the distance and after that we worked our way along the edge of the marsh, sometimes on dry bits of the marsh and at other times on rocky bits of ground. In short there was nothing difficult and we have coped with much worse walks along the various marshes we have encountered.

We crossed Humphrey Hill and then necessarily followed the road around Flookburgh airfield until we came to the sea bank again.

The bank was comfortable walking on cropped turf most of the way until we came to Cark in Cartmell where I had hoped we might find a a café for a coffee stop. No such luck. Holker Hall was a possibility but it would involve a long walk up their drive to reach the house and café, so we just kept going.

The next few miles was to have been along the Cumbria Coastal Path through the hills to avoid walking four or more miles along the B5278. This road has no pavement and is quite busy. I had street-viewed it and decided it was too dangerous to be worth walking. The possible route alongside the estuary is restricted by “Strictly Private Access”.

On arriving at the B5278 in Cark there was a roadworks sign saying that  the road was closed. This seemed too good an opportunity to miss; we could walk the direct route almost traffic free.

The small number of cars and vans that were on the road did seem to be enjoying the lack of traffic by driving very fast. We eventually found a gap in the wall that enabled us to get off the road and find a grassy bank to sit on for a much-needed coffee break. There were two or three more signs announcing the road closure but by the time we reached the bridge over the River Leven at Haverthwaite we were still none the wiser as to why the road was closed or indeed where exactly it was impassable to traffic. The relative peace and quiet meant we could relax and look at the wildlife such as a slow worm Jill spotted by the side of the road.

We turned on to a private road beside the River Leven and made our way alongside the river until we crossed it at Greenodd. We did find a log to sit on and eat our sandwiches. Crossing the River Leven was interesting because it was a few minutes before High tide and the river was flowing upstream very fast. I remain ignorant as to why Levens Hall and Levens Bridge are on the River Kent and nowhere near the River Leven.

We walked down the west bank of the River Leven until we reached the  car park and picnic area. Here the tide was covering the bank-side path and so we clambered up to the road. There was a broad grassy path continuing ahead of us but I had researched this option and looked at Google Earth and the main barrier to success was a closed gate (shown by the shadow it cast) into a roofing supplies yard at Plumpton Farm Cottage about 3/4 mile further along and didn’t want to find we had to retrace our steps. Jill was not at all happy with the prospect of 2-3 miles walking along the very busy A590; we had driven along it to get to Ulverston and the verge was uneven with longish grass and it was easy to imagine a moment’s lack of concentration by a passing driver might prove unduly hazardous.

After a discussion with a local angler who knew of anglers who had walked all the way along the water’s edge to Canal Foot at Ulvertson, it seemed that there would be a way round, even if not through the yard, so we set off along the the sea bank. There is a dismantled railway which seemed like a good possibility. We reached the closed gate and called to a man working in the yard to ask if we might come through. He replied that it was private land but when Jill explained how much she did not want to walk all along the A590, he relented and said that we could come through. So we clambered over the gate and walked through to the minor road beyond. The disused railway line certainly cannot be used as a cut-through beyond this point because it is totally overgrown. After a short section of road walking, we came to a cottage at Pheasant Field and a lad walking a dog told us we could follow the broad grass path from the cottage all the way to Canal Foot. So we went on past the wider, firm track to Moss Cottage and followed the grassy path that seemed to run parallel with it.

The start was very promising and is shown on the map as large green dots meaning “other route with public access”. Clearly the owner of a local cottage had other ideas because there were two ungated, barbed-wire fences to cross before we climbed up to a track alongside the old railway to continue. For the benefit of other walkers, the track to Moss Cottage next to the old railway line would be a better route. Also for the benefit of others, we are pretty sure that you could do as the fisherman told us and turn left at Plumpton Cottage Farm and walk the sea bank all the way to Canal Foot.

The last half mile to Canal foot was along the foreshore and fortunately the tide had just started to recede and so we could get along but at high tide it might be a challenge. Canal Foot used have lock gates allowing access to the sea for boats; it now has a concrete wall and a pair of dilapidated lock gates though the owner of the neighbouring cottage had set a series of planters with colourful polyanthus all along the top of the wall beside the lock and that was very attractive.

We crossed the canal at its foot and walked up to the our car parked near the railway station. As we walked inland we went up Rope Walk which is a straight section of path that was originally used for rope making. The rope making history is commemorated by some very attractive bronze (looking) street furniture.

Friday 18th March 2022

With the weather forecast promising a warm, sunny day, we decided to take advantage of being only an hour and a quarter from where we had to finish our last walking session; we would do just a single day’s walk. We left home about 7.10 and drove to Kents Bank, the next stop along the line from Grange-over-Sands where the cancellation of our train in February had brought that walk to an abrupt end. The 9:18 train today took us two stops back along the line and across the River Kent estuary to Arnside.

At Arnside Station I left Jill to wander on and I walked back into the village to get the paper and some something to supplement lunch; I caught up with Jill at Sandside, a mile or so along. It was a beautiful day; there was a frost last night but now the sun was up with a clear, blue sky and it already felt warm. The tide was still on its way in with high tide at 11:11 but seemed like it was still a long way out.

We followed along the foreshore of the River Kent but beyond Sandside there was no path on the shore so we followed the pavement until a footpath turns off and follows the bank of the River Bela, a tributary of the River Kent.

At Milnthorpe Bridge the path joins the road to cross the River Bela.

Beyond the bridge we could again follow a permissive path along the sea bank before joining the road to walk up to Levens Hall. By this time it was 11:40 and we felt we owed ourselves a proper break. We went into the Levens Hall café and had a coffee and cheese scones; they also do a range of very attractive (but unhealthy) cakes and meals.

After thirty minutes we moved on and crossed the River Kent and then turned onto a minor road to High Sampool which rejoins the main road a mile or so further on and crosses the River Gilpin. Once over the bridge we turned south to High Foulshaw following the minor road; I wondered if we could have walked along the sea bank but the fences generally didn’t have gates and so it would have involved clambering over fences at regular intervals.

Beyond High Foulshaw we did return to the sea bank and followed this. There were excellent views across the River Kent and of birds on the marshes. We saw barn owls, herons, egrets and a variety of other small birds. Near Cragside cottage we settled onto a rock to eat our sandwiches in the unusually warm March sunshine.

At Meathop we joined the road and had to follow the tarmac all the way to Grange-over-Sands. I had wondered if we might have been able to sneak along the banks of the river but it would have been doomed to failure because the railway and the River Winster would have barred our way.

At Grange-over-Sands we crossed the railway to the promenade.

We were still walking on tarmac but we had great views over Morecambe Bay and the the side of the promenade is beautifully maintained and planted with flowers. The promenade is separated from the town by the railway and there is no tourist tat at all which, in our experience, makes it unique. There are two “respectable” cafés and we stopped for ice creams at one of them.

At the end of the promenade, the path turns to run on the inshore side of the railway; however, we crossed the line at one of the access points and walked along the foreshore which was very waterlogged in places until we came to Kents Bank.

I had not looked up the tide times in advance and was surprised that we had not seen Morecambe Bay full of water. It turns out that high tide was shortly after 11:00 at which time we were almost at Levens Hall, well away from the bay and the River Kent and, by the time we were back on the coast proper, it was about 16:00.

So we were half way to the southern tip of the first of the Lake District peninsulas. We still have the River Leven and the River Duddon to cross.

Wednesday 23rd February 2022

Today we were to get the train to Morecambe from Lancaster at 07:58. So we had an early start and walked to the railway station from our hotel. Our few minutes on Lancaster station was not without interest. There is a bench with a dedication to the much-loved former Station Cat, ” Sir Toby”. I was also impressed by the bike pump and tool set on security cables next to the bike park. The train journey only takes about eight minutes and there is only one stop at Bare. We noted with interest that a banner said the Bentham Line was Dementia-friendly. It seemed to be very much the case with its regular running times and single stop.

We started walking by 8:15. We followed the promenade and stopped at the statue of Eric Morecambe; it seems a fitting tribute. We would have been very happy if he could indeed have brought us some sunshine.

We enjoyed another piece of promenade sculpture – a panorama of the Lake District Fells. It was just a pity the light was so poor that out photo did not do justice to it and the view it portrayed was hidden by cloud.

We thought Morecombe felt like an elegant seaside town which we might return to enjoy another time. When the promenade ended we followed a track that also ended on the foreshore. It looked particularly unappealing and so we settled on a parallel path along the road for a few hundred yards before crossing a level-crossing back to the shore. It is from hereabouts that the famous path across Morecambe Bay leaves the coast path. I would have been happy to make the walk with a Guide but when I researched it, I discovered that the Guide only takes walkers across in the summer months at weekends. Furthermore, all but three weekends are reserved for organised charity walkers; clearly we were just going to have to walk round the bay and be done with.

After that diversion we followed  a path along the foreshore, sometimes on firm surfaces and at others on what the last tide left behind. After three miles of variable walking we started up the estuary of the River Keer.

Again to start with we were on the foreshore. There was no well-defined path though there were occasional posts indicating that we were vaguely on a right of way. Initially we just had an expanse of squelchy, grassy foreshore crossed by watery channels.

Then we came to a section where the raised grassy tussocks were remarkably firm but the whole area was broken up by a multitude of deeply cut channels; it was like a huge, loosely-fitting, jigsaw puzzle and we had to jump the gaps between the pieces. We have not come across a bit of foreshore quite like that before. It was one of those situations where our walking poles proved exceptionally helpful.

The path became more formalised and came to the road near Carnforth where it turns to cross the River Keer by a bridge. For some reason when planning, I had decided to follow the Lancashire Coast Trail which at this point takes a dive away from the coast and across some footpaths to avoid walking along the B road. Well, we followed the first bit but the old path has disappeared under a ploughed and reseeded field with no evidence of way-markers to show any re-routing. After climbing up to the top of a steepish field and scouting around the boundaries, we failed to find a proper exit and so we went back down and took a path straight to the B road we had sought to avoid and walked that. The verges had been trimmed and there was not very much traffic so we walked as far as Crag Foot and then turned along a footpath that crosses the estuary at Quaker’s Stang.

Once again the marked path on the map has been superseded by a path along a turf sea wall which was no problem but just not what we had expected. The wind had got up again and we were heading straight into it.

On the other side of the estuary, we followed around the headland past Brown Houses and on to Jenny Brown point. As we neared Brown Houses a runner paused to explain that there was a right of way through the gate and driveway of Brown Houses but the owners were discouraging people from using the path and trying to get them to use the foreshore instead. We were grateful for the info as the foreshore path would not have been very easy walking and so we used the gate. We were then back on tarmac as we walked into Silverdale. We were ready to stop for lunch but Jill declined to use a bench outside a care home presumably from fear that we might be mistaken for residents and get incarcerated. (It was also on the corner of a road with nothing to look at except the passing cars.)

From Silverdale there was a section of beach walking but we needed to hurry to get round before the incoming tide filled the channels that crossed the beach.

There is a cave in the cliff above cove well though I did not venture inside.

When we came to the Far Arnside Caravan Park, Jill spotted a bench and we stopped for lunch. We were on a bit of a tight schedule (what’s new?) because we wanted to get the 15:30 train from Arnside. The next train was not until about 6pm. The intermediate train service appears to have been cancelled. 

The path around Arnside Park is about three miles and though some of it is easy going other parts dip down to the foreshore or wind up and down the low, rocky cliffs. It is an interesting and varied walk  but was rather slower than we wanted when we had a train to catch.

The tide was coming in quite fast as we approached Arnside but the beach was still walkable. We came to Arnside station with just fifteen minutes to spare. The journey back to Lancaster is only 20 minutes and so we were back at out hotel by 16:00.

That night we had dinner at the Merchants. We don’t often make recommendations but if you are in Lancaster we would certainly recommend Merchants for a good meal.

Tomorrow we plan to drive to Grange over Sands and take the 8:20 train for the five minute ride to Arnside. We can then walk around the Kent Estuary, pick up the car and drive home ready to head off to London the next morning.

Post Script.

On Thursday morning, having got up and left the hotel early, we parked at Grange over Sands and paid £5 for the day’s car parking and went into the station to buy tickets only to be told that the train had been cancelled. With over an hour to wait for the next train and the weather being far from favourable for a 16 miles walk, we decided it made much more sense to head for home to give us a few more hours to get ready for our trip to London on Friday.

Tuesday 22nd February 2022

We awoke to a wet and windy morning. The weather forecast continues to talk of unsettled conditions and high winds, particularly on the coast. We packed up and drove to Lancaster and parked near St George’s Quay (free on-road parking) quite close to the railway bridge and footbridge. On the drive it had been tipping with rain and so I was not very optimistic. However, as I put on my boots and gaiters, the rain lessened and within a few minutes of us setting off the rain ceased and we had nothing more than one or two spots of rain for the rest of the day.

Our legs were quite tired after three days when we had pushed the speed or distance or indeed both. We started with the climb up the steps to the railway line which effectively has the footbridge bolted on the side. That was hard on the legs for starters.

Once on the north bank of the Lune, there was an easy cycle path to Oxcliffe and after that we were on the road all the way to Overton. At Overton there is a little peninsula less than a mile long to go around.

But when the road and track run out, the path is on the tidal foreshore. The tide had only turned to come in an hour or so before and so there was plenty of foreshore but its surface was quite rough and littered with debris, no doubt the effect of storms Dudley Eunice and Franklin. It was very wet going but it only took us about forty minutes to come up to the other side of Overton and reach the tidal road to Sunderland.

Sunderland is a hamlet on the side of another peninsula but the there is only one road to it and that floods twice a day. There are two footpaths, one of which is “dry”, the other is on the foreshore on the west side and is at risk of flooding with high tides and storms. The walk across took only 20  minutes but it is not something one would want to risk when the tide was getting full.

The tide comes in very fast. There are probably only 10-15 dwellings in Sunderland and I suspect some of those are second homes. Despite that there is a village hall, a church, a phone box also selling free range eggs, a post box, public loos and a defibrillator. That is probably 1 defib for about 25 residents. Once you get to Sunderland, there is a small parking area which floods but precious little else. A private road of sorts runs along the front of the handful of houses.

We tried to walk around the tip of Sunderland Point but there is no real path and the tide was coming in fast and so I did not want to risk the foreshore when I could not see round the corner. Jill was not happy with the ankle-turning, loose rocky surface couple with slippery seaweed.

So we retraced our steps and took the public footpath across the bottom of the peninsula and joined the public right of way along the foreshore near Sambo’s Grave. Sambo was a Negro cabin boy brought to the UK and died in sad circumstances – you can look it all up on the internet.

Near Sambo’s Grave is the “Horizon Line Chamber”, one of a series of creations by the Land Artist, Chris Drury; Google Horizon Line Chamber and you can find out all about it. I was rather underwhelmed by the structure and mildly appalled by the wheel chair access paths around the site but absolutely no way of getting a wheelchair to the site itself. Accessibility is one of those essential requirements to get Heritage Lottery funding.

The walk up foreshore was fine if a bit soggy in places and then came to a causeway-like track that cut across the marshy foreshore to Potts Corner. When I was planning the route I had hoped that we might be able to walk from Potts Corner to Money Close Lane along the coast. However, it did not look like a very attractive proposition, particularly since the mean high water level comes all the way in and high tide was only an hour or so away. So we did the sensible thing and followed the road to Middleton where we sat on a bench and had our sandwiches and then continued on to Heysham where we rejoined the planned route. 

At Half Moon Bay we got on to “proper” coast paths again and enjoyed walking on cropped turf with views over a rocky shoreline.

We passed St Patrick’s Chapel and then dropped down to Lower Heysham from where there was concrete promenade all the way to Morecambe. There is little to say about the last three miles of the walk. We were both tired and one promenade can look very similar to the many others we have walked before.