Our Walk Along Wainwright' s Coast to Coast Trail

Hiking across England and Scotland “None could walk that Pennine Way without being improved in mind and body, inspired and invigorated and filled with the desire to explore every corner of this lovely island.” Tom Stephenson, Daily Herald , 1935 Toward the Pennine Way Where one moment or trail ends, another possibility opens up and begins. We have always believed that. Having completed Wainwright’s Coast to Coast , we now found ourselves in the strange space between journeys. Behind us lay the crossing from St Bees to Robin Hood’s Bay – from the Irish Sea, across the Lake District, the Yorkshire Dales, and the North York Moors to the North Sea.  Amid which we rambled through constant rain, mud, the crowded trailheads,  and unique pub-side campsites while enjoying the kindness of strangers and navigating the realities of damaged backpacks and gear en route.  Regardless of the challenges, we had carried a pair of small stones from one coast to the other. Ahead of ...

“...we all need something to look forward to – without that it is easy to get lost...”   Mike McBride , Pilgrim on the   Camino Primitivo   Looking Back from St. Bees to Robin Hood’s Bay   By the time we reached Robin Hood’s Bay, dipped our already sodden and stinking boots into the North Sea, and finally set down the small stones we had carried from St Bees, Wainwright’s Coast to Coast had become something much more complicated than the simple notion of walking across England.   It had been our first long-distance trail in the UK, but not our first long-distance walk. By the time we stepped on the beach at St Bees, we had already crossed many places on foot. We had followed pilgrim routes through France, Spain, and Portugal, walked across 10 provinces from the Atlantic to the Pacific over 14,000 km in Canada , and spent years learning what it means to move through landscapes, communities, and cultures with everything we need on our backs.   And yet, the ...

“When all’s said and done, all roads lead to the same end. So it’s not so much which road you take, as how you take it.”   Charles de Lint   Last Morning on the Coast To Coast   We woke on “Chicken Island” behind the Horseshoe Hotel to something we had almost stopped expecting on Wainwright’s Coast to Coast - a beautiful sunrise beneath a clear sky. After so many mornings of rain and uncertain weather, the light felt almost improbable. Chickens wandered around our small patch of grass, pecking and peering under the flaps of the tent as though inspecting the strange temporary neighbours who had appeared beside their coop. It was a wonderfully absurd way to begin the final day of a long-distance trail. We made oatmeal and coffee outside the tent, enjoying breakfast quietly before packing down for the last time on the Coast to Coast. We had a full stage ahead of us, and a schedule which no longer had room for delays. Because we had stopped early in Egton Bridge t...