The first day…In two days

I wrote my last post as we arrived the afternoon in St. Bees for our stay at the Manor House pub thinking today we would begin our Coast to Coast walk but we pulled a bit of a switcheroo and decided to hike the first 5 miles of the trip, including a large circular swath up and around the coastal bluff looking out over the Irish Sea toward Isle of Man. We cancelled our dinner reservation, stuffed the stove and freeze-dried lasagne in our packs and began this bit at 5:30, with first a stop at the beach to dip our boots in the water and collect a few rocks per tradition to take with and leave at the other coast. We then climbed up the bluff and along it between sheep and cattle on the right and the sea on the left. If any of you are familiar with the Ebey’s Landing hike along the Whidbey Island bluff looking out toward the Straits of Juan de Fuca, this has a very similar feel, with the added bonus of sheep. We stopped at a bench at dusk, lit the camping stove and enjoyed our noodles. Carried on and eventually turned inland along a one lane road and wend our way, soon in darkness lit by the one headlamp we brought. Made it back to our place by 9 and in to bed. Next morning enjoyed a full English breakfast: fried egg, blood sausage, tomato, ham, baked beans (Tom) and scrambled eggs on toast (Erica) along with some yogurt, muesli and machine-made latte. Left our big bags for pick up to take to our next stay and set out about 8:30am with day packs stuffed full of all the things we thought we might need (and many others we wouldn’t). Not long into our journey after the towns of St. Bees and Sandwith as we turned inland to carry on from where we left the trail off the night before, we moved off the path to let a young woman with a determined pace get past us. But, of course, as often happens on the trail with strangers, we began to chat and walked side by side for a bit, and then walked some more and chatted some more. After a while Tom said, “Don’t let us hold you back, feel free to carry on. Her response was, “Ok, I’ll keep that in mind” and didn’t leave us all day. Thus began a delightful trail friendship. Rachel had done the first few days of the Coast to Coast walk just before the pandemic but had “tapped out” after the first couple days because she just kept hiking for 24 miles looking for a suitable camping place- and was understandably physically crushed. So, this was her second attempt. We being the novices constantly consulting our maps and GPS were thrilled to have a young navigator who had been here before to show us the ropes. Rachel is also an experienced solo hiker and self-described plant nerd from near Liverpool. She apologized for pointing out numerous plant and tree species, identifying them for their edible components, poisonous threats, beauty, rarity and native/non-native properties. We told her not to hold back, we were very curious. Today’s hike was varied- including towns, farms, backyard paths, winding sections along stone fences ending with a latched gate, lots of sheep and a 1,000 foot hill called Dent. We learned that Rachel was unfamiliar with switchbacks until she came to visit Vancouver and couldn’t understand why the Brits hadn’t adopted such paths. She said all English paths went straight up the hills no matter how steep, rocky, boggy, long. We got our fist taste of this on Dent… in the socked-in fog, in a big wind and in a driving sideways rain, in some places without and actual trail. After Dent was a gorgeous skinny valley with a large creek running the length edged by bright green grass, craggy oak trees and bordered with thick stacked-stone walls and lined with the first sign of the high basalt rock outcrops so prevalent in the Lake District. Up and over another hill and we carried on down into the valley toward the small town of Ennerdale (which, we learned is old Norse for “Juniper”) where we stayed at the Shepherd’s Arms and were met with a very welcome warm dinner of Lamb (Tom) with not one but two typed of potatoes (mashed and roasted, what?) and fish and chips (Erica) with mushy peas- no, really, that’s what the dish is called- “mushy peas,” which is just a little bowl of pea soup without the liquid added, and was surprisingly tasty!