I mentioned in my last post that I was going to post some pictures of the coast to coast walk.
I've had a comment posted by my Grandad asking about this so I'll just tell a little about it.
We *attempted* the coast to coast walk when I was back in school. As well as myself there was Simon Dale, Andrew Cotton and John Cowham. We were all pretty fit at the time so we didnt think we would have much trouble completing the course. It is supposed to take two weeks to walk from St Bees to Robin Hood's Bay and the original plan was for me and Andrew to only do the first week and get the train home as we had other plans than didnt allow us to do the full two weeks.
We were driven to the starting point by Simon's mum late in the evening and arrived at the starting point and set up camp. We were sleeping two to a tent so we only had to carry two tents with us the whole way and since both of them were designed to be light and easy to carry when hiking we were ok on that score.
The first night was awful. It rained all night and the wind literally rocked the tents. The only saving grace was that we had set up camp on a bed of hay so it was really comfy.
The following morning we were all knackered having not slept particularly well and it was still pouring down with rain. We decided to sit in the shelter at the train platform for a bit to see if the rain would subside. We sat there wet, cold and miserable and wondered if this was such a good idea after all.
Time passed and it became obvious that the rain was not going to stop so we set off. The first part of the walk takes you up the west coast of england before you actually start walking east to your goal. This was not nice. The path you go up is fairly small and quite close to the edge so with the rain and the very strong winds we were constantly fighting to stay on the path.
We eventually turned east and started towards where we had decided we would stop for the first night. This part of the journey was probably the best. As I recall, the rain stopped and as we ascended the hills we had a glorious view. We walked quite a long way that day - we were on schedule.
We camped in a little village. The landlord of the pub let us camp in the beer garden so we had our own little private space and a pub to keep us happy. The main problem at this point was food. We had a little camping set to cook our food with but it became apparent quite quickly that the little fuel things that came with it did not create enough heat to properly cook food. As most people reading this will know, I am not good with different types of food. To the best of my recollection, everyone else ate cold pasta that night whilst I snacked on whatever snacks I had with me.
The second day was really bad. As anyone has being hiking will tell you, being fit isnt enough. You have to train to do something like this and we hadnt trained. The others had been hiking before but this was my first attempt and I was knackered. We set off on schedule but I soon started lagging behind and I think I arrived at the youth hostel we were staying in about an hour after everyone else that night. A combination of a lack of food and extreme exercise was taking its toll on me. At the same time, Andrew had developed a huge blister on his foot. When I say huge, I mean HUGE. I would liken it to the size of a coin but even a fifty pence piece isnt big enough to do it justice.
At this point we decided that the following day would be a day off for me and Andrew. We had done two of our five days and we needed a break before we launched ourselves into the fourth and fifth days. This was especially important because the third night was the last youth hostel until we finished - it was all camping from now on, no civilisation, long days - we needed a break. So we decided to get the bus to the next hostel. We would arrive hours before the other two and be able to relax and recover.
Walking to the bus took hours. I dont mean just one or two hours - it took us until well into the afternoon to get to the bus and the terrain was awful. We had to walk over a huge hill that probably took an hour to get up and an hour to get down. We arrived in civilisation probably more knackered than we would have been if we had just done the normal walk for the day.
One of the amusing stories from this trip comes now. We got on the bus and by the time we got off we wished we were scared for our lives. That bus was travelling on some seriously hilly roads and there were some severe drops that he seemed to defy gravity to avoid. I remember at one point we were struggling up a hill, about to start moving backwards and he suddenly slammed it into first and the noise coming out of that engine was horrendous. Whenever me and Andrew meet up now we always reminise about that bus.
So anyway, we eventually got to the youth hostel. Simon and John were waiting for us when we arrived.
At this point I knew I couldnt go on. Our day off had left me even more knackered than the day before. I was literally walking around the youth hostel at about three steps per minute so I rang my dad and he came and collected me.
You might be thinking to yourself at this point "I can't believe you gave up after three days" but you might be interested to know that the following day I went round to Andrew's house to drop off the hiking boots he had lent me only to have Andrew answer the door. It turned out that after the fourth day of walking the remaing three of them had decided that setting out into the middle of nowhere in the state they were in was a really bad idea and they had been picked up the evening of the day I left.
So there you have it, defeated before we even got half way. It was really hard work but it was well worth it. When I meet up with Simon, Andrew and John we always have a memory to talk about from the coast to coast walk whether it be John mentioning listening to the lighthouse family in the pub (it was the only band on the jukebox we could all agree to liking) or whether it be the blister on Andrew's foot or when we want to really scare each other we can remember the bus...
