Prologue

What is this?

This is a diary of when we took on the Coast to Coast walk at the end of August, 2006.

The Coast to what?

The Coast to Coast is a 192-mile walk across North England, from St. Bees on the West coast, to Robin Hood's Bay on the East. Originally described by a famous travel writer, Arthur Wainwright, in 1973, it crosses three national parks: The Lake District, The Yorkshire Dales and The North York Moors.

Coast to Coast Route Shown on a Satellite Image of the UK. Click on the picture for a closer look.

 

Coast to Coast Route Shown on Satellite Image of North England. Click on the picture for a closer look.

 

The highest point of the walk is Kidsty Pike at 780m, whereas the lowest is Danby Wiske at 33.5m.

Height Profile of Walk. Click on the picture for a closer look.

 

Why did you do it?

For fun, really. And for the challenge. We'd been talking about doing it all Summer, and then about three weeks before, we decided to go for it and started making arrangements. In retrospect, we put very little thought into the decision.

Who are "we"?

I'm James and I walked with my friend Dave. We're both postgrad students from the University of Nottingham and we were 23 when we did the walk.

Are you keen walkers?

We both enjoy it, but it's not exactly a regular pastime for us. Dave had done the Coast to Coast before with his college, but the most adventurous walk I'd done before was the four-day hike I did when I was 17 as part of my gold Duke of Edinburgh's award. In fact, I'd probably only done one or two hikes in the 6 years since.

This looks long. Do I have to read it?

Nope. I wrote this diary partly so I had a record of the walk myself, and partly to let my friends know that I'd done the walk in the first place. The chances are that if you're here then you're one of my friends, in which case you now know that I did the Coast to Coast. Congratulations! Carry on if you want, but please don't feel you have to read anymore than you want to in order to keep me happy. In all honesty, when I decided to do this on day four of the walk, I never realised quite how long it would be, and quite how long it would take to do. Whether or not I would have bothered if I had realised beforehand is an entirely different story, but in the end I did. You can give up now, after day three (of the walk, not of reading - it's long, but it's not that long), or at the end, and I honestly wouldn't mind.

I'm thinking of doing the Coast to Coast and found this randomly through Google. Is it worth reading it?

If you fancy a bit of an insight into how we found the Coast to Coast when we did it, then yes. If you're just looking for information that will help you when you do it, just read the advice page.