Journal Entries

And I end the first day at Low Cock How Farm, a working farm with a B&B and bunkhouse. The main building is over 600 years old, although the remodeling over the years keeps it nice and cozy. Two of us are staying for the evening, sitting by the coal-burning stove and drinking tea while the wind continues to whip off the ocean outside.

Towards the end of day one, the big climb is Dent Hill. At a whopping 1100 feet high, it doesn't seem like it would be much, but it's a heck of a steep climb. The slick mud on the way up doesn't make it any easier, either. A lot of slick mud. And that's after my feet were already soaked from walking through marshy sheep pastures down in Sandwith and Cleator earlier in the day.

Once off the coast for good, it's off to the farms, heading through sheep pastures on my way to the Lakes District National Park.

The first miles of the hike go along the cliffs above the ocean on St Bees Head. It's mighty windy out, but there are only a few spots where the trail is close enough to the edge that I need to watch my step very closely.

The hike starts with a quick dip of the toes into the Irish Sea below the cliffs of St Bees Head, and then I'm off to the east coast. A little indirectly, though, since the first bit of the walk is north along those cliffs, before heading more properly east.

I made my way from Glasgow to St Bees by train, and tomorrow begin the Coast to Coast walk. 190-ish miles from St Bees to Robin Hood Bay. Apparently this is one of the most popular treks in the U.K., and this is the time of year for it. I have no idea what to expect, except that the elevation profile looks a lot more rugged than the West Highland Way.

I'm renting in the back yard of a B&B next to the train station tonight. The dog found the best napping spot in a planter.

One more from Fort William, on the less-rainy zero day in town. It really is a lovely little town, and not a bad place to take a day off. I still say Kinlochleven is a nicer town for a single night's stay as a hiker, but as a tourist and for finishing the hike, Fort William is wonderful.

And here we are in Fort William to finish this hike. It's pouring buckets, hence the relative lack of people on the street. Lucky for us, we have a nice place booked for two nights, so we get to dry off, sleep in cozy beds, and listen to the rain come down outside. On to being tourists for a few days.

It's been raining so hard, and the trail has been so crowded with racers, that we decided to take a shortcut into town to finish the hike. In this case, it turns out the shortcut is actually more scenic (because the scenery on the trail is the inside of a cloud). We get a few hours of wandering through sheep farms on the hillsides. Everything here is so pretty.

A long-abandoned husk of a house. A pair of Belgians we ran into today told us the Highlands have a blemish on their history, when the clan leaders or landowners drove their people off their land and burned their houses in order to make more money by herding sheep. I'll have to look into this some more.