Day 1

St. Bees to Ennerdale Bridge

Well, we've made it to the end of the first day. And what a day. Total, wall-to-wall sunshine with only a few clouds on distant mountain tops. Looking west from the top of Dent Fell we could see Dumfries & Galloway, the Isle of Man and the Mountains of Mourne in Northern Ireland. Looking east we could easily pick our Scafell, Scafell Pike and Great Gable.

We left Richmond at 07:30 and arrived at St. Bees at 09:45. After dipping our boots in the Irish Sea and taking a few photos, we left St. Bees and started the Coast-to-Coast walk.


We had coffee on a bench overlooking Whitehaven, lunch in a football ground in Cleator and afternoon refreshment on the slopes of Dent Fell. We were most grateful for the wine gums that we bought in Richmond last night. They provided a much needed boost as we climbed Dent Fell - a 350m high hill on the approaches to the Lake District fells.

Although we only met one other couple on the walk, the hotel here in Ennerdale Bridge is teeming with walkers doing the Coast-to-Coast. Most of them are English but there are Dutch and German hikers too. The Shepherds Arms Hotel is to be recommended, the landlord is most friendly, the beer excellent and the food is just what you want at the end of a long day.

Distance covered 14.4 miles (as recorded by our GPS). Tomorrow we enter the Lake District proper and climb to a height of 600m before descending into Borrowdale.