A car-free jaunt to the Lake District to hike a stretch of the coast-to-coast trail
18.08.2023 - 12:31
/ theguardian.com
Alfred Wainwright’s coast-to-coast trail through Cumbria and North Yorkshire over mountains and moorland is one of the UK’s most popular long-distance walks, with an estimated 6,000 people completing the whole 197 miles each year, and lots more walking shorter sections. In August 2022 the government announced it would become England’s newest national trail. About the same time, the Borrowdale Royal Oak hotel in Rosthwaite, near Derwentwater and right on the route, reopened after a £1.3m refurbishment with a sustainable focus (and free cake).
The Lake District has excellent public transport compared with most of rural England so I head to Rosthwaite and back by train, bus, boat and foot. The eight miles of the trail between Borrowdale and Grasmere are considered a scenic highlight. Wainwright, a celebrated writer and fell walker in the postwar period, describes one stretch nearby as “a walk in heaven”.
Day one is idyllic. I meet a friend at Euston station in London and for the direct three-hour ride north to Oxenholme. The train to Windermere is waiting on the opposite platform. On arrival we stock up at Booths, a grocery store by Windermere station, jump on one of the frequent buses to Bowness, and spend the afternoon cruising around England’s biggest lake on a 19th-century boat, toasting the sunshine with a pint of Wainwright Gold.
Leaving the boat at Ambleside, we settle into YHA Ambleside in an old lakeside hotel by the pier, and take an evening stroll through nearby woods to prepare for our big hike the next day. Swallows are darting and swooping over the ruins of Galava Roman fort, 10 minutes’ walk from the hostel as we climb up through Skelghyll Wood, past glades of ferns and fields of Herdwick lambs.
Next morning, the open-topped 599 takes us to Grasmere on one of the UK’s best bus rides. We pass Bridge House, straddling the stream at Ambleside, the gentle shores of Rydal Water, whitewashed Dove Cottage and other Cumbrian landmarks. Grasmere smells of woodsmoke and melting sugar.
Half a mile from the churchyard where William Wordsworth is buried, we call in at Allan Bank (entry: £7), where the poet and his family moved from Dove Cottage in 1808. Hardwicke Rawnsley, one of the founders of the National Trust, lived here a century later. The house is now a welcoming space of books and murals, where you can help yourself to tea and sit by the fire. A red squirrel leaps from branch to branch as we set off again through intermittent Lake District drizzle.
Legs aching, we stop to eat honey-spiced Grasmere gingerbread, and admire the view from Helm Crag: the sunlit green of the village and wooded lake is framed by cloud-capped hills. The interminable steps and scrambles that led up here felt like the