Wainwright’s Coast to Coast Trail: An Introduction

About the Coast to Coast National Path National Trail

“I want to encourage the ambition in others to devise with the aid of maps their own cross-country marathons and not be merely followers of other people’s routes.”

Alfred Wainwright, A Coast to Coast Walk

Hiking Across England with Curiosity

There are walks that promise escape, and there are walks that invite attention. Wainwright’s Coast to Coast belongs firmly to the latter. It is not a journey into wilderness in the North American sense, nor is it a route that asks walkers to disappear from the human world. Instead, it offers something quieter and perhaps more interesting: a slow crossing of England on foot, through landscapes that have been shaped, worked, inhabited, and reimagined for millennia.

Stretching from the Irish Sea to the North Sea, this route does not lead into wilderness in the North American sense.  Roads are never far away, villages appear regularly, and the land is clearly worked and lived in – as it has been for millennia. And yet, the walk demands presence as the trail traces a deliberate line across the country – over cliffs, across fields, fells, moors, and valleys.  En route, weather can change the experience in an instant, and the realities of crossing hillscapes and moorlands demand attention.

For decades, the Coast to Coast existed without official status. It was kept alive by guidebooks, conversations, and the steady passage of boots across rights-of-way. Alfred Wainwright never intended it to be rigid or prescriptive; he encouraged walkers to make the route their own, to vary it, to walk with curiosity rather than obedience.  Only recently has the trail begun its transition toward National Trail designation, formal recognition arriving long after walkers had already decided its worth.

We chose to walk this route not to collect miles or chase peaks, but to experience a different kind of crossing in a new country.   Coast to Coast is a transect of landscapes and cultures: from the exposure of the Irish Sea, the intimacy of the Lake District, the pastoral landscapes of the Yorkshire Dales, the tranquillity of the Vale of Mowbray, and the challenge of the North York Moors before the final descent to the North Sea.

Part of a Longer Adventure

Our journey this year began not at a trailhead but first on Via Rail’s Canadian crossing of Canada and then on a transatlantic voyage on board Queen Mary 2 from New York to Southampton.  The gradual shift in landscapes across our home country and then the seascapes of the Atlantic Ocean have all served as a slow easing into the series of hikes that we have ahead of us.  

By the time we arrived in St. Bees with our packs once again on our backs, we were ready to set aside the luxury of trains and ocean liners and step onto the trail once more.

Wainwright’s Coast to Coast begins in the west at St Bees, on the edge of the Irish Sea. Tradition holds that walkers pick up a small stone from the beach to carry across England. From there, step by step, the route leads eastward across the country until the water appears again at Robin Hood’s Bay on the far side of the island.

See you on the Trail!