NO STROLL IN THE PARK
A trek through Britain’s Lake District
On the advice of a good friend, we signed up for a Contour Walking Tour in the Lake District (Coast to Coast) of England (Cumbria). I had not been to England for 30plus years, my husband had never visited, but had always had a keen interest in England due to ancestry, and his father having fought in the Second World War.
I chose the St. Bees to Kirkby Stephen eight-day walking tour with an additional night in Grasmere. A good choice as a stopover, as Grasmere is the home of William Wordsworth and includes some very picturesque homes, gardens and mountains. The total walking distance is 304 kms.
Many of the pictures on the tour website were of beautiful scenes of pastures, rolling hills and lakes and in my excitement to book I missed the fact this tour may be one of the most challenging in Britain: closer to a mountaineering tour than a “walking” tour.
How difficult can seven hours of daily walking be? I walk daily for two kms, swim once a week and occasionally bike — I would just be walking a longer period of time every day — easy peasy.
There were several very challenging climbs; most days included a climb and descent between 600 to 800 metres. Most walkers sailed by us, while we joined up with others, and in these instances we met wonderful Brits and other tourists on the way. Our weather was phenomenal with the exception of one day of torrential rain for seven hours of walking (which is apparently more typical in May). The B&B’s were all different and fascinating as they were usually in historic buildings and included fantastic breakfasts (fruit, granola, cereal, croissants etc., plus the mandatory “British breakfast” — too lengthy to describe).
Each B&B had slightly different rules and regulations, which can pose a challenge after having walked for seven-plus hours at which point the brain has difficulty receiving rapid-fire instructions. This was particularly comical at the Hobbit House B&B after a day of torrential rain, at which point we (with two other walkers) were questioned in an authoritarian way as to why our shoes were soaked and had we walked through a river? This is exactly what happened at hour five as we had miscalculated a trail route. However, our shoes were saturated to river-crossing level within 15 minutes of starting our walk anyway.
We were thoroughly impressed with Contour Walking Tours; as we fully enjoyed the B&B’s, having our bags ferried to each B&B and the option available to forgo any one of the walking days for an alternate free shuttle ride to the B&B (or in some places, taking advantage of England’s rail and bus network). We did this in Grasmere, where we took a very scenic route from Grasmere, Windermere and to Glenridding due to one of my knees starting to suffer from the massive increase in walking!
We left the last morning of our walking tour at Kirkby Stephen, where we had prearranged a train to Manchester. It wasn’t clear on which side of the train platform we needed to be and there were no clear maps to assist us. We were directed by other waiting passengers to go to the opposite side of them, which we did with our very heavy knapsacks in the rain. We were 10 minutes from the train arriving and were feeling uneasy so we called on the handy phone at the train station to discover there was a fellow 100 metres away in a train office (I know this because he could see us) who answered and wasted no time telling us we were on the wrong side. We trundled over to the other side making the train with seconds to spare. Even though the coast-tocoast walk was a significant challenge, we wouldn’t change anything about our trip.