St Bees to Ennerdale Bridge - 24 April

Time Departed: 9.30am Time Arrived: 5.20pm Distance: 23.6kms Percentage Completed: 7.4% Weather: Overcast, patches of sunshine and cold Accommodation: The Cloggers B&B. We had a very good first day of walking. We met at the teahouse overlooking the beach at nine o’clock. Neil’s B&B lady had made his lunch and the rest of us bought sandwiches from the teahouse. A number of older locals were coming to the shop to collect the paper and would pass us joking that they’d just finished the walk overnight, were buying the paper and should be back in Robin Hood’s Bay by nightfall!

The lovely stature told us that we had already walked 7 miles and only had 184 to go! At Cleator we came across a café called Walkers Pop In Café and how could we resist? The elderly lady running the café was very supportive of walkers. She made us pots of tea and didn’t mind that we ate the remainder of our sandwiches under the covered picnic tables in the garden. Some of us couldn’t resist her cakes either! From Cleator we could see Dent in the distance and this was the challenge for the day. It rises very quickly to 345m over one and a half kilometres.

The path is different from when I did it with Carol twelve years ago as pine forests have grown around the original path. It was nevertheless slow going as I had remembered and we were pleased to get to the top. A couple of other walkers kindly took a photo of the five of us to prove we had reached the top of Dent. Descending the final part of Dent to Nannycatch Gate was also as steep as I remembered and we took it slowly and often zigzagging to reduce the steepness.

Nannycatch Gate is a very pretty little area at the bottom of Dent and we chose a spot to have another break before we did the final stretch into Ennerdale Bridge. Ron and Chris stayed at Low Cock How B&B which is two kilometres from Ennerdale Bridge. We left them at their turnoff and agreed to meet them at the pub at seven thirty for dinner at the village‘s only pub, The Fox and Hound. Neil, Henk and I walked to the far end of Ennerdale Bridge to our B&B.

It was built in the 1600’s and it was very tiny and quaint. The owners are very friendly and gave us local milk with cream on the top for our tea. We have a shared bathroom and being a girl I had the luxury of having the first bath. The Fox and Hound was busy when we arrived and we were pleased our B&B host had booked a table for us. The pub was closed at the end of 2010 and the people of the village banded together to open it again. It now has 200 shareholders and seems to be thriving. Chris and Ron walked back to their B&B, uphill and in the dark. They were very brave!