the ‘sea’ smell of success…

after dipping our boots into the Irish Sea on the west coast of England, and beginning our Coast to Coast walk in St. Bees 18 days ago, we finally got to dip our toe into the North Sea, on the east coast of England in Robin Hood’s Bay!

Our walk wasn’t without some adventure; Mal saw the doctor and found out he’d strained a leg muscle so we were forced to take a few days rest to help him get better. We had to catch the ‘little red bus’ (it was white) for two days running. The bright side was that we got to see other areas we wouldn’t have seen otherwise, and both times the bus followed close to the coast to coast path so we still got to see what we were missing on foot.

Once Mal’s leg was healed, and we’d walked a few days happily, we were struck down for a day with food poisoning!  Thankfully (?) we weren’t the only ones so didn’t feel so pathetic in the scheme of things.  We’ve met 5 others and heard of another person at least, so whether it was food poisoning or some sort of nasty bug, I guess we’ll never know.

Apart from those two events, the rest of the walk was an adventure…the good, the bad and the wow!

the good bits:

conquering the Lake District and all its high mountains…scary but exhilarating

walking across the Yorkshire Moors…all that beautiful purple heather in flower

meeting such a variety of people…both local and other Coast to Coasters

stopping for yarns along the way…the Yorkshire farmer is a friendly guy

the views…picture postcard stuff

up and down, and up and down again across the Yorkshire Dales

90% glorious weather across the country …were we really in England?

Identifying the wild herbs and flowers along the way…too many to mention

Staying in a variety of accommodation…pubs, farms, youth hostels, homes

The cute Swaledale sheep…although their poo in your boot isn’t so cute

Setting and achieving our own personal goals…we got there, our way!

one of the many kissing gates we passed through.  This one was nice and wide!

we had walked from the dirt path coming down from the horizon, down through the valley, along the forest and up the next hill, with at least another 10kms to go that day! Hard to tell we’re up on a hill, looking down into the valley and up again to the other side where the dirt path is.  (Egton Bridge down to Littlebeck)

the not so good bits…

food poisoning on Carlton Moor …don’t trust a café built into the side of a hill

Mal injuring his leg…he never knew a strained muscle could hurt so much

Tackling vertigo in gale force winds…just as well we’re not featherweights

Jane B dropping out due to injury…we missed you xx

Bogs!…wet, slippery, squishy and like riding on the head of an elephant

Being chased by a bull across a field…we must have look like a comedy act

Stiles…fun to begin with, but after 1,344 (rough guess J) it gets a bit much

Fighter jets roaring past between the mountains…as if only meters from us

one of the many pubs we stayed in.  This one is the Horseshoe Inn at Egton Bridge.

one of the views on my favourite day’s walk – across Clay Bank Top.  The path here is very obvious.  Some days I just couldn’t see it and relied on Mal’s sense of direction.

another view from Clay Bank Top

Mal checking the map to make sure we’ve on the right track.  The farm track you see there is fantastic to walk along – well marked, relatively smooth and we were able to walk side by side for a change!

It’s been just over 300kms from St Bees to Robin Hood’s Bay…and although we didn’t walk every single kilometre it was one hell of a stroll.  We took much longer than most other Coast to Coasters we met but everyone agreed we had the right idea by doing the “stop and stare” version.  Many were doing the walk in around 14 days and wished in hindsight they had chosen a longer time so they too could stop and explore. We would really recommend anyone thinking of doing this walk to take at least the time we did it in…a good pace, still some longish days but no day over 25kms.

We’re very glad we did this walk – the physical challenge has been rewarding.  This is the first time we’ve tackled a long walk together and we worked terrifically as a team – Mal is now a dab hand at camel back filling, map reading and lugging heavy packs up narrow stairs.  I’m brilliant at eating muesli bars, peeing on the side of a hill and leaping over stiles in a single bound! (OK, huffing over a stile in ten difficult steps!)

you roughly could say we’d walked across all the land off in the distance over the previous few days or so.  This section of about three days was quite flat and reminded me of the meseta on the Camino Path…lots of farm fields.

about 2/3 of the way across and all of a sudden some good signage!  Virtually none in the Lakes District, a little in the Yorkshire Dales and then really well signed through the Yorkshire Moors…give you more confidence you’re going the right way when you see a sign pointing the way you’re walking.

and one farmer had his own personal sign for us!

our last day…walking along the cliff tops towards Robin Hood’s Bay (looking back from where we’d come)

We’re back to London for a few days R&R before Mal heads off home and I head off to France to visit my sister and then onto Austria to visit my Camino friend Tanja.

What happened to my plans to walk another Camino next week?  During the Coast to Coast I decided that one long walk was enough this time – all the reasons why I wanted to do another camino were met on the Coast to Coast path and so I decided to grab the opportunity to see my sister Clare and her family, spend some quality time with her in France and also visit Tanja in Vienna…and possibly find an intensive Italian course somewhere if I can’t change my flight back to Australia.

thanks everyone for all your comments, hope everyone is happy and well in their own parts of the world,

take care,

Jane + Mal xx

WE MADE IT TO THE OTHER SIDE!

THE END!

more photos…

Shap Abbey – with one of the many stiles we have walked over in the foreground and the very rare sign showing the way.

one day we seemed to climb a stile every field we walked through.  This is one of the big ones – some are some so narrow you have to turn on your side, breathe in deeply, hoist your back pack up over your back and squeeze your way through!

just like this one…breathe in and squeeze through!

looking down what they call “high street” up in the Lakes District, near Kidsty Pike.  The couple in the middle of the picture (from Melbourne) were going the wrong way and we had to yell at them to get their attention.  The correct path was just to the left in the foreground. The photo doesn’t show just how high up we were

Angle Tarn – it was a long and steep ascent of several hours before we got to this point.  Good place for a rest – shoes and socks off and eat yet another muesli bar.

Mal looking down towards Angle Tarn which you can see off in the distance.

some of the vistas we looked down upon whilst walking in the Lake District.  Great views, scary heights! That path was actually quite good – nice and wide, relatively smooth and not close to the edge!!

our view one breakfast time – that hill we had to climb to begin the day’s walk. (from Patterdale main street)

OK – this was one of the rivers we had to cross on the horrible day when we had to turn back and retrace our steps down the mountain…up to our calves and having to pick our way across the boulders and smaller stones, making sure not to let go of our walking poles otherwise they would have been swept away. Just as well you can’t see my face in this shot – my look of terror isn’t an attractive one.

we had just left Jane B in the rescue hut and began our long ascent up Loft Beck…I am so grateful the weather was good that day as it was a long hard climb and an equally long descent…we didn’t get into Longthwaite until 7.30pm…absolutely exhausted!

well, that’s a few more shots for you all to get a bit of an idea of some of the scenery we are walking through. We are currently in Richmond, over half way through our walk and having a rest day for Mal to recover from his muscle strain.  We have the Yorkshire Dales and then the Yorkshire Moors to go through now…they won’t be as strenuous as the Lake District but it’s not all flat and easy walking either.  We still have some walking challenges ahead of us but are confident that we will manage them. We are quite excited actually.

The time is flying by…hard to believe that it is 10 days since we started walking. Despite the physical obstacles we’ve had to face we are really enjoying ourselves and it’s a great way to travel…on foot, slowly passing through villages and getting to see, hear and definitely smell everything that is going on around us. Something I experienced on the Camino, something quite new to Mal.  This walk rates as extreme compared to the Camino I did in 2008…that is a gentle stroll in comparison.

(For my camino sisters reading this…it’s like 1,000 O’Cebreiro climbs every day, with a steep mountain and running water thrown in for good measure).

Sorry for 3 updates within 24 hours…that’s it for at least a week I would imagine

love to all, hope each and everyone of you is well and happy,

love J+Mxx

photo time…

double click on each photo if you want to see it better!

Where it all began…St Bees Head – we took the path up and around the cliff after we had dipped our toes in the Irish Sea.

Mal and Jane B tackling the first climb up Dent…a minor climb considering what we’ve now done!

the two Janes on top of Dent, looking back to the sea where we had begun. I had my blue poncho on as it was freezing up at the top!

view from the highest climb (Kidsty Pike)…we then walked down to the lake at the bottom…a long, slow, steep descent but a great walk!

Mal on the top of a mountain, walking amongst the heather. We walked on further than the horizon shown that day.

the lovely swaledale sheep we seem to spend a lot of time with.  As far as you can see off in the horizon we have come from…it looks so far doesn’t it?

the first day of any sort of road walking…crossing into the Yorkshire Dales, which means leaving the massive mountains of the Lake District behind…not that that means there are no more mountains to climb, just hopefully less steep and not as high!

Sorry there aren’t any more, I have to resize each one and it’s too much of a headache at present.  I’ll try and post some more on Saturday, at least these few give you a bit of an idea of what we are seeing.

J+M xx

horrendous or heavenly, you decide!

well we are half way through our walk across England and it has been heavenly or hell, depending on the day!

The five days walking to begin with was through the Lakes District and boy! was that a challenge.  Up and up and up, then down and down along narrow paths, sheer drops to the side, but wonderfully exhilarating views and a real sense of achievement at the end of each day.  Most days we’ve walked 8 to 9 hours – the distances have only been around the 20km mark but the path is so rough that progress is slow.  At times you have to test your footing each step – we’ve had to negotiate very boggy areas, scramble up scree slopes, slowly go down rocky valleys and even one stage hang onto a chain as we negotiated our way over a very narrow ledge above a raging river!  To say I was scared is an understatement!  I thought my knee would be the thing that held me back (it has been fine thanks to pilates I’m sure), but its been my fear of heights that has been the real challenge for me.  Some days I’ve just had to keep my eyes down on the path and pretend I don’t know there is a sheer drop down a huge mountain inches from me!

Our worse day so far was negotiating up a mountain in the rain.  That would have been OK, but it was the gale force winds – so forceful at times we had to crouch down into balls to prevent being blown off, and the driving hail in our faces that were the real killers.  There were literally hundreds of streams all coming down the mountain side, joining up into rivers and we had to cross 7 of them – 5 of which were the tops of waterfalls and up to our calves in water as we negotiated across the rivers, trying to place our feet on stones that weren’t slippery and definitely not wanting to lose our footing.  It was very scary for both of us! After three and a half hours of this, we got to a point where we had to huddle behind a rock and access the situation.  Before us was a very steep rock face we had to climb up and on the top we could see heavy fog/mist.  The look of Mal’s face was enough for me to want out.  He said he was prepared to go on but how did I think I would be?  It was so hard to decide but I couldn’t see us getting up there safely and so, at the thought of having to turn around and re-negotiate those 7 raging rivers, that’s exactly what we did.  By the time we got down the bottom and into a nice warm pub for soup and to dry off, the locals in the know said we had done exactly the right thing!  We began to feel a little less pathetic.  We later met up with a couple who had gone over the top and ended up wandering around in circles lost for hours and didn’t get into the village until 10pm that night.

But all is not doom and gloom.  We’ve had some amazing walks too.  Our biggest thrill was conquering Kidsty Pike – at 780 metres above sea-level (and we had started that day at 70m) it was our biggest mountain climb for the whole walk.  We were very thrilled once we made it to the top.  The views were spectacular and you really do feel you’re on top of the world.  I was dreading the climb down as it is very steep.  (hence the months of training beforehand to strengthen my knee).  Although it was tough, we got to the bottom with sore knees but still able to walk!  Just as well because it was another 6kms of uneven ground and up and down before getting to our B&B!  (well, until we got to the village closest to our B&B which was 2kms off the path.  We were so exhausted that I boldly went over to a couple in a car and asked them for a lift.  I said I’d pay them petrol money but they negotiated with me for a pint at the pub instead.  Turned out they were absolutely a gorgeous couple and we had a grand old time with them for a few hours.)

Our friend Jane B who was walking with us had to leave us after only a day and a half.  Poor Jane twisted her knee on day one, thought she could manage to go on but by lunchtime the next day she was in too much pain.  We had walked on relatively flat ground that morning up to a place called Black Sail Hut.  After there it was a steep climb up the mountain and a long climb down.  Initially Jane thought she’d carry on and see how she managed but by the time we got to the hut she was in too much pain.  We had no mobile reception so had to ring 112 emergency services and get connected through to the Mountain Rescue team. Jane explained her situation to them and they said they’d be out to get her at some stage.  We really didn’t want to leave her but she reassured us she would be fine and because by now it was getting on in the afternoon we had to get moving if we wanted to make it up and over the mountain in day light. So leaving her with my mobile, a packet of dried apples and making sure she would be ok if she was stranded there the night we left her. I was really anxious that we left her but also anxious that we couldn’t stay and wait with her for the rescue team.  It all turned out well for her though – 7 burly men arrived within an hour or so and took her back to their headquarters.  She now is an avid fan of the Mountain Rescue team and has the t-shirt to prove it! By the time we made contact with her again that evening at 7.30pm when we got into Longthwaite, the mountain rescue team were on stand by to come and rescue us as we were so late getting in.

Two days ago Mal hurt his leg…we’re not sure what has happened – either he’s strained a muscle or he has tendonitis.  Either way yesterday’s walk was very painful for him and I ended up hailing down a car the last few kms as he was limping so badly and luckily the walk had ended up on a road. (most days we walk all day and don’t see any sign of civilisation). So today we have had to bus it into the small village of Reeth and are waiting to see the doctor. It looks like we won’t be able to walk tomorrow and thankfully the next day was a planned rest day anyway.  Mal’s hopeful that he should be right by then and we can continue our journey.  I don’t want to walk tomorrow by myself – the path here is nothing like the camino where there are good markings showing the way – here it is definitely a compass job at times and I am so hopeless with navigation that I would end up lost in the peat bog for days!  I’m sure he’ll be right in a few days and we’ll be back on the path again.

We’re really enjoying walking together and have got into a real swing with things.  Mal leads the way – he’s much better at working out which rock we need to scramble over, I come up the rear with the ‘health advice’ – reminding us both to stop and drink water and eat more muesli bars! We are really enjoying the isolation and the fact that we often don’t see another person all day.  It is so wild and isolating at times.  The only other living creature we see all day are lovely sheep – we especially love the Swaledale sheep – the ewes have horns and they have black faces, white fleece and black legs.  Very pretty.  But boy do they pooh alot!!

anyway, enough for now before this ends up as a volume! I’ll probably post again in a week if there is connectivity. (rare )

I’ll try and put up some photos too.  Hope everything is good with all of you – for those of you in Adelaide we hear the rain has been constant so hope you’re keeping nice and dry.  Love to you all from the both of us,

Mal and Jane xx

to begin…. a 320km walk across England

our plan – Mal and I are planning to walk across England, starting in the Lakes District on the west coast and ending up in Robin Hood’s Bay on the east coast.   We’re planning on taking around 18 days to do the 320kms.  A camino friend Jane will accompany us for some of the way.

Once we’ve finished walking we’re back to London for a few days R&R, then Mal flies back to Adelaide whilst I get myself down to Lourdes in France and begin a walk of approx 1100kms.  At this stage I’m walking alone….

The coast to coast walk is going to be tough if the DVD we’ve watched is anything to go by.  I’m just hoping the British weather will be kind to us as I don’t really do walking in the rain too well!  Let’s pray for a dry UK autumn. My solo walk through France and Spain will be as varied as last time – let’s just hope this time there are no bed bugs, no pilgrims dying, no dislocated knee caps!  I have two months to walk before I fly out of London on November 2nd.

I don’t know how often this blog will be updated during the coast to coast walk, but it should at least be weekly once I start my camino. If you want to follow in your armchairs, click on “email subscription” button in the bottom right hand corner. I would suggest our first update will be around August 24th where we think the first internet cafe will be.  By then we will be 7 days into our walk and have something to share.

Jane and Mal xx