Three Weeks’ Walks
October 20th-November 9th, 2024
Yes, a slight change in format here as writing up my various Lake District adventures has kept pushing these posts to the bottom of the list and there have been a few other changes to distract me as well. But more of that later.
We’ll start by jumping back to October, and after a pretty lazy post-Langdale Half day, I was out walking around Keswick on the Monday and Tuesday, and both of those walks got their own posts:
The weather wasn’t quite as good the day after those two, so I drove off to the West Cumbrian coast instead of heading up some hills and took the chance to wander round Whitehaven for a while. It’s where one side of my family comes from originally, and somewhere I keep wanting to return to to do some proper research on my ancestors and what they did there. That’s partly in the hope that one of them was involved in the splendidly named Whitehaven Rocket Brigade, a 19th century organisation that supported the lifeboats in rescuing ships that had foundered on the coast heading towards Whitehaven, which was still one of the country’s major ports at that time. They’d use rockets to fire lines out to ships in trouble, given them a way to secure themselves or to evacuate sailors from a sinking ship.
So I walked along the harbour walls, and then through the town where so many of the old Georgian houses have survived. It’s a town with a huge amount of history and should draw in a lot more visitors but like a lot of this coast all the way down from the Solway Firth to the Furness Peninsula, it’s so remote from the Lakes (and even further from the rest of the country) that people just don’t make it that far. After a bit of wander, I had a nice breakfast at the Courtyard Cafe which I’m mentioning specially because when I accidentally walked out without paying and then had to dash back to rectify that.
Whitehaven’s also home to one of my favourite bookshops — Michael Moon Books — so I had to pay a visit there as well. It’s a glorious rabbit warren of rooms line with bookshelves, all overflowing with a vast range of used books that I could happily spend hours browsing through. It also has one of my favourite shop signs:
I rounded off the day with a visit to St Bees. We came here on holiday once when I was very young, and there are still plenty of holiday houses and caravan sites around there, but now it’s also known as the start of the Coast to Coast Walk. I was too late in the day to see and get jealous of anyone setting off on that 192-mile trip, but I did take a wander up towards St Bees Head, so now I’ve done the first kilometre or so of that walk and just have to find the time to do the rest at some point.
Thursday was a chance for another walk from Keswick:
Then on Friday I had to begin heading home from the Lakes, but I took my time, first visiting Grasmere to stop up on gingerbread from Sarah Nelson’s shop then heading down along Coniston to the little town of Ulverston, nestled where the Furness peninsula joins with the rest of Cumbria. It’s a place I’ve passed through many times but not stopped in too frequently so was a good spot for a break from driving and one last hill for the trip. The Hoad is only about 100 metres or so tall, but several of those hundred metres are pretty steep and at the top you’re not just rewarded with the views all around, but also the monument to Sir John Barrow, Ulverston’s most famous son until Stan Laurel came along.
Some more exploring after that, heading out of Cumbria and down into Lancashire on the A6, and spending the night in Lancaster, this time exploring the city centre on a Friday night, an interesting return to noise and bustle after being in the Lakes for a week. I had thought about doing Lancaster Parkrun the day after, but the description used words like “hilly” and “trail” and “mud” so instead I got up a little earlier and headed to Morecambe Prom for a completely flat run. I just about ran the whole thing, but had to stop at one point, because Morecambe has a monument to its most famous son, a man who decided his home town made for a better surname than his own. Eric Bartholomew became Eric Morecambe, met Ernest Wiseman who chooped his name down to Ernie Wise and the two of them became Morecambe and Wise. I didn’t do the dance, but I did get a picture with his statue, and just for that morning, at least, it did bring me sunshine.
And after that there have been a few walks, but they’ve pretty much been local ones around areas I’ve covered here quite regularly, though I’ve made one recent acquisition that will hopefully bring some new walking locations into easier reach. Say hello to Jaffa:
Jaffa’s a 1995 VW Transporter Caravelle, for those of you want details, and a bright orange camper van with Jaffa sprayed on the front for those of you want to notice the obvious. It’s a camper van that used to belong to my brother and sister-in-law but as they’re upsizing to a newer van, I decided to offer it a new home. I’m sure I’ll write more, and probably make some videos too, about camper van touring and the places I get to travel now. Already had my first night in it, at the caravan park in Huntingdon you can see it parked in. I learned some lessons, but had a solid night’s sleep and then had a short walk to Huntingdon parkrun in the morning, which was a really nice run through the woods there. So, there may well be some more flashes of orange in my walking pictures from now on, but also hopefully a range of new locations for me to visit.
And finally, I’m back up to date with these, and hoping for a couple of flatter walks around the end of this week to write about. You’ll have to come back next week to see what they were, though.
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