I completed the COAST TO COAST on friday, may 19th, at 3.30 PM.
The walk took me 11 days with two days rest due to a minor injury, It was an amazing experience, and I will post a film outlining my experience in a few weeks’ time after I have had time to edit it. A quick hello to some of the great people that I met on the way, Neil, Matthew, Bill, Duncan and Co, the Dutch mountain ladies, Kathy from Belgium, Richard & Neil, Kester (did I get that right), John the Canadian, Stan and Kiki, John from Lordstones, Lyn from The Old Mill and last but not least Veronika.
A special thank you to Henrike and the kids for their love and support and to all of you who donated.
Below are a few pics from the walk, and I will add more as I edit them.
Hiking the coast to coast 2023
On the 5th of May I will hike the famous Coast to Coast route in the UK.
The walk was first conceived by the British writer and fell-walker Alfred Wainwright in 1972 and is one of the most famous long-distance walks in the world.
Spanning 192 miles from St Bees on the west coast of Cumbria to Robin Hood's Bay on the east coast of North Yorkshire, the Walk traverses some of the most beautiful landscapes in England and passes through three national parks: the Lake District, the Yorkshire Dales, and the North York Moors.
Wainwright designed the Coast to Coast walk as a challenging but achievable route for experienced walkers.
I have zero experience long distance hiking and wild camping so I am disturbed by the word challenging.
WHY?
If you asked me why I was doing this, I couldn't tell you. The idea popped into my head about 6 months ago; then, a familiar and reckless impulsiveness led me to shout my mouth off about it to too many people.
Now I am overly committed, and there's no backing out.
I am not a religious or spiritual person, I don't consciously seek answers to the meaning of life, but I have a powerful urge to connect more with the outdoors and nature, a strange desire to sleep under the stars, flee the madding crowd, then just walk and walk and walk.
Before now, I have never felt anything like this, and at 50-something years old, this urge seems oddly migratory, almost like a homing instinct, Im like a human caribou or perhaps an artic turn. There is a possibility that I may want to migrate straight back home after one cold night without my sofa and big telly.
I have no idea why long-distance hiking and wild camping suddenly seem to present a way to find answers to life's more esoteric questions.
Some of those answers I will seek in quiet contemplation over a pint at any pubs I find on the way.
Could alleviating a creeping but persistent sense of existential anxiety be as simple as walking from one side of the country to another?
It is possible that this could be my latest and greatest mid-life crisis, and I should know, I've had a few.
I am going to document the walk with a small film. It will include information, about the walk, the place, the kit, the people, and a few unqualified observations on the experience.
The Ukraine Crisis Appeal
I want to raise some money for the British Red Cross Society and their Ukraine crisis appeal.
I realise that so many good causes deserve your attention and money at the moment. Still, with more than 2.5 million people displaced and this horror unfolding daily, I can't think of one more desperate or worthy.
Please give anything you can spare, click on the link below to go to my Just Giving page where you can donate directly to the Red Cross.
33 KM training day. 22/03/23
Swanage, corfe castle, west hill, swanage
I will do 2-3 more of these longer training days before starting the Coast to Coast.
43.5 KM training day. 02/04/23
Dissen to Osnabrück
2nd of my longer training walks, this one in Germany.