Drow 'n' Smirr

10.81 miles  4h 57m ascent 114m

Whitehaven-Workington

No folk fled the flood,
no flags furled or spirits failed –
one brave soul felled.

from Cockermouth and Workington, Carol Ann Duffy

I don’t recall having been to Workington before and having friends in Whitehaven has perhaps skewed my views about the town. So it was, as we drove into Workington I would not have been surprised to find it to be in black and white, with men in flat caps leading starving pit ponies to knacker’s yards, beshawled women scrubbing steps of coal dust and barefoot urchins begging for jam sandwiches, all partially hidden in the swirling smog. But the town was in full colour, the road signs bright and cheery, the sky blue, the children shod and ne’er a flat cap or pony to be seen.

This section was to take us from town to town so were able to mange with just one car, parking in Workington and taking the train back to Whitehaven. we had a few minutes to kill at the station, so I walked the dog up and down the platform. On my way in I passed two workers looking at the automatic doors, one telling the other that she was “goin’ to work on these doors, but they kept orpenin’ an’ clawsin’”. I am sure there is a context that makes the exchange reasonable, but to me it sounded like something out of a sitcom.

The train ride was Christy’s first, and he took it in his stride, alternately bored, lying down, and curious, sticking his head between the seats or peering down the carriage. He ignored the inspector when she passed by. It was certainly an easier ride than that with my son Harry many years ago when he pointed down the carriage at a large, obese, leather clad Hell’s Angel with a ZZ-top beard, walking towards us and shouted “look, the Fat Controller”.

Being somewhat picky about joining up each section, I had us walk the half mile back to the Beacon centre and then back to the station, but we made it a circular route crossing the harbour footbridge, then along the Old Quay past the Watchtower and the “End of an Era” statue, bringing us to the West Strand.

I am sure one could spend half a day exploring Whitehaven Harbour and one local seeing us looking at the information about Sugar Tongue encouraged us to do so, but we had miles to go so we pressed on past the Sugar Tongue and Lime Tongue, fish shaped cycle parking, the start of the C2C cycleway, several bollards in the shape of knots and the Fish Shoal Sculpture

Benches shaped like fishes tails along the quayside are engraved with a brief history of the harbour.

Hadrian’s Coastal Route takes a minor road above the Railway Station, slowly climbing to give views back across the harbour, the road then giving way to a tarmac path signed “Access for residents and cyclists only”. Of course, we were neither, but decided to stick it to the man and stroll on ignoring the official order. The track runs beside the railway and beneath the Bransty cliffs.

A ruin between the railway and cliffs near Redness Point was apparently related to the Lonsdale Ironworks.

Beyond the ruins we came to a chap standing beside a camera with a truly massive lens. He pointed out a peregrine falcon and its nest on the cliffs. It looked little more than a white speck on the cliff to me but he was good enough to take a photo and show us the bird.

It was a very clear day and we could clearly see the Isle of Man and the Galloway Hills, Cairsmore of Fleet, Bengairn/Screel, and Criffel recognisable by their shapes. The Mull of Galloway became visible a little later.

A cycleway marker, one of the Millenium waymarkers for route 72, reminded us that we were on the cycleway, but we probably saw no more than half a dozen cyclists all day.

We were to pass several archways along the route, each giving us a view on to the beach and the sea beyond, and we met the first just after our tarmac path ended at the road into Parton. An English Coastal Path sign by the War memorial indicated we should cross under the railway.

Its peaceful now, and on the walk I did jest at the unlikeliness of Germans attacking here. How wrong I was.

The Bombardment of the Cumberland Coast

On August Sixteenth, old Kaiser Bill
Said to his men, “Now prove your skill,
And try and reach the Cumberland coast,
The feat of which I’d like to boast.

“The Kaiser’s word they did obey,
And fired away in Parton Bay,
With shot and shell they did their best
To put the Lowca works to rest.

The damage done was not so much,
The Benzol plant they did not touch,
One shell fell here, another there
Which gave the workmen quite a scare.

The inhabitants too grew quite alarmed,
Because this port is still unarmed,
This opportunity the enemy seized,
And rained the shells just where he pleased.

Two shells went through a cottage home,
The father shouts “A German Bomb,”
The children then ran out like bees,
And joined the Lowca refugees.

The submarine then made its way
Across the dub from Parton Bay,
To find some other defenceless port
Where German fiends could have their sport.

Joseph Holmes (1859-1930, then a stationmaster on the Lowca line), who promised  “Proceeds of sale (of the poem) will be given to the Soldiers’ Tobacco Fund”

This brought us to a car park with beautiful views of the sea along several picnic benches. We felt it was a little too early for lunch though so we walked along the sandy path above the beach passing a variety of flowers including large clumps of sea kale, some thrift and wild roses in full flower.

A small footbridge allowed us across Lowca Beck and then a short gentle climb onto the higher ground above the cliffs and a group hang gliding. It was seeing this that made me notice the gulls were hovering, or more accurately, flying into the wind and making no headway. I hadn’t noticed the wind until then, but became aware that the breeze had gusts of some very warm air indeed. I began to wish I had remembered to put on suncream.

There were signs that this area once had quite extensive building on the high ground, and of an industrial nature since there are old rail tracks running through the concrete. Another ironworks perhaps? The modern rail track lay between us and the sea but a raised are just inland looked to have once been a railway.

Signs posted here told us that the English Coastal Way was incomplete and rather than follow the route marked on OS maps we should instead use a bridleway which was actually a slightly more direct route and rejoined the masked coast path after half a mile or so. The bridleway took us through fields of sheep rather than the turbines of Lowca Wind Farm.

The path soon began to descend towards Harrington and having climbed over the higher ground we could see ahead to Workington. The wind farm to the north of the town was now visible, as was the Mull of Galloway. With the end of the walk in sight, albeit still a few hours away, we walked down into Harrington, passing fields with highland (and lowland) cows, and a ruined barn before crossing the railway and descending steps to the seafront grass. There was a path stretching back up the coast but Harrington was the first opportunity to cross the railway.

I had hoped we could have lunch on the grass, or at least sat on a boulder beside the grass, which would allow Christy to play fetch but the wind was pretty cool with no sign of the warm gusts of earlier, so after a look at the man and fish statue we walked on looking for a more sheltered lunch spot.

The large expanse of grass was once the site of a huge Magnesium Works. Im sorry not to have taken a photo of the area for comparison but old photos can be found here. All the buildings are now gone with just recreational grassland remaining. My picture of the sandstone man and fish is looking in the opposite direction. I don’t know what the statue is supposed to represent but it is a man with a large fish. he is reaching in to its tooth lined mouth.

We found a sheltered spot by a small railway arch after just five minutes or so. I had my sandwiches and played fetch with the dog while a variety of locals sauntered past. 

The Coastal path heads out of Harrington, between the railway and the coast until Salterbeck where it crosses the railway again. There is a firm path along what must once have been a railway. We noticed unusual rocks on the beach which looked volcanic rather than sedimentary, and quite out of place, but further on there were many, obviously man-made rocky features which are presumably placed to reduce tidal erosion. The volcanic looking rocks must have been eroded parts of these. 

The raised path had fallen prey to the elements and we moved down to the dip between the railways old and new. Once out of the dip we were obviously in the outskirts of town. Christy seemed unmoved by the ducks on the pond at Moss Bay.

We mused as to the original use of the post industrial site that lay between the railway and the coast here. It was huge, though at the time we did not realise just how extensive it was, this being the southern end of the Ironworks that once stretch all the way to the harbour in Workington. 

The path along from here had an industrial feel to it. We were hemmed in by tall fences either side. Occasional gaps in the fencing allowed us onto more remnant industrial foundations, one sporting a large concrete block which looked impressive enough to suggest it might carry a memorial. We went to investigate. it did not. There where however plenty of flowers including viper’s bugloss, white dead nettle (yes, I checked), and what appears to be a cut leaved storks bill with white flowers. Unfortunately all my flower pics from the day are blurred since I had the aperture control setting in manual focus mode without realising. I couldn’t see the focus point but thought it was me not seeing it as opposed to it not being there. Well, you live and learn.

Eventually the path disgorged us onto a main road and we crossed back over the railway following the road around. A blue sign her indicated that the English Coastal Way went left, so we crossed the road and walked along a footpath that brought us out in the car park of a shopping centre, beside Halfords. It did not look a likely route for the ECW and there were neither signs nor pavements. The map was consulted and was at odds with the sign.

We turned back and seeing the sign from this direction showed us another arm to it pointing where there was no place to go. Some joker must have moved the sign around. The way however was still not clear. there were roads on the ground not on the map. I would have continued along the road but Audrey spotted some walkers up on a rise and we headed after them. I’ll have to say I was not 100% convinced and a big gate with several signs blocked our way. Luckily, before I had a chance to berate Audrey for leading me on a wild goose chase, we spotted a Coastal way sign.

A few steps brought us out on a field with tracks in the grass either ahead or to the left. We could see a signpost at the top of the hill so we headed towards it. I thought the signpost looked like a crucifix from the bottom of the hill, and Audrey wondered if it was a mini angel of the north. But to my surprise it actually is a crucifix. 

A local out walking his dog told us that the hill we were walking along, The Howe, was in fact a huge slag heap and pointed out to us where the extensive ironworks had once stood. He warned us we would have to walk up the river to the road bridge, the footbridge having been washed away in the floods ten years ago.

There were great views of D&G from the Howe. Then the ECW goes down to the point before turning back along the river bank. Most of the active harbour seems to be on the far bank, and the south shore has been rejuvenated for recreational use. We passed a small structure, Billy Bumley’s Hut, and several benches made with iron frames, a nod to the past industry of the town. 

One of the small marinas by the pathway had a sign that seemed very generous, and had my sweet tooth on alert. But the advertised free cake was not to be. “Free Parkin” rather than an invitation to eat cake was an incomplete traffic sign, missing its final “g”.

By the riverside a plaque at what presumably was once a dock informed us that Marie Stuart, Queen of Scots landed there at 7pm Sunday 16th May 1568. That struck me as unnecessarily exact to the point that it spoiled the historical ambience. Rather than stopping to consider the queen landing there I was wondering if it was 7pm or that had rounded to the nearest hour, and how accurately time could be measured in 1568. And then wasted my time finding out.

1530 – The oldest surviving mechanical clock.
1540 – Screws became used for clocks, enabling much smaller designs that kept time much better than first models.
1541 – First public tower clock fixed on one of the towers in Hampton Court Palace, England.
1577 – Jost Burgi invented the minute hand, even though 16th century clocks were very inaccurate.
1581 – Italian astronomer and physicist Galileo discovered the properties of pendulum.1

The end was almost in sight. We were not far from the station, and walked the last few minutes looking towards an old industrial looking building while pondering what it was. I still don’t know.

The walk over Audrey was sent for ice-cream but returned empty handed, again. One day we will have our ice cream and eat it.

12.96 miles 6h 15m 430m ascent

Beckermet-St Bees-Whitehaven

But like not unto any one of these
Is that tall crag, that northward guards the bay,
And stands, a watchful sentry, night and day
Above the pleasant downs of old St. Bee’s.

Thomas Edward Brown

This proved to be a slightly longer walk than expected. (I had originally ended that sentence with the word predicted rather than expected, but suspect my walking companion does not expect that which I have predict). This was no great burden the excess being but a few minutes stroll but such was the delay we found the ice cream shop at the Beacon closed. But it was a glorious day nevertheless.

The car took us back to sleepy Beckermet, which it appears I have been mispronouncing along with Torpenhow, and Aspatria. Beckermet carries its stress on the middle syllable and has appeared in older documents as Beck Armett. Thankfully none of the “cruel of heart” or “bloody of hand” were about to put me to the shibboleth.  An old mine railcar stands in the village overlooked by St John’s church. Sellafield which can be seen looming over the village as one approaches is hidden from sight while in the village itself. 

The road crosses the Kirk Beck, and we turned left along the wee road towards Braystones. The old railway, now disused would once have crossed our road but the railway bridge is no more. Once out of the village we had a view down to the Jubilee Tower, and Sellafield came back into view. The hedgerows were in full bloom and the smell of flowers ever present. We paused to inspect a roadsign which was at first unintelligible but didn’t actually take much deciphering once we looked carefully. The road wound about a little and took us along the across the River Ehen, whose name is proving a sticking point with my laptop’s autocorrect. The tower we had seen earlier has stood by the river here since 1897 when it was built to commemorate Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee. 

The road was quiet but with enough traffic to have us climbing unto the hedges every few minutes. This road was likely a supply road for the coastal defences in Roman times and on reflection it seems a good idea to have it sheltered/hidden from the sea. There was more up and down and less sight of the sea than I had expected. 

We walked on and a little after Nethertown had our first glimpse of St Bees Head. The hedgerows were my main interest with so many flowers to see. The name of some pink flowers eluded both of us until we got back home. Thrift.

We did meet some curious cows and horses, saw some highland cows down here in Cumbria and plenty of lambs, including some black ones.

As we drew closer to St Bees the road climbed a little more. I decided not to take an over grown footpath beside a field, which might have taken us to the beach, but might have been a dead end, and we found ourselves walking into St Bees itself.  We used the level crossing at the railway station and turned left where a road sign read “beach”. There is a statue to St. Bega. More about her here [http://stbees.org.uk/history/essays/bega_todd.html]. A playing field here had the broadest bank of brambles I have ever seen.

Soon we were at St. Bees beach. There were picnic tables to sit at and eat our sandwiches and grass there we could play fetch. I couldn’t find the ball at one point and had choruses of other picnickers howling “BEHIND YOU” at me as though I was Widow Twanky. You might gather that playing fetch with Christy is a more egalitarian game than the traditional version, in that both he and I have to do our share of fetching. We wondered about ice-cream at this stage but I decided to wait until the end. Work up more of an appetite for it and all that. 

The stanza at the start of this post did not suit the mood at St Bees, and as we sat in the warm sun, smiling folk about, a nearby chap with his old dog, me with a younger one, I thought of this verse.

If life were slumber on a bed of down, 
Toil unimposed, vicissitude unknown, 
Sad were our lot: no hunter of the hare 
Exults like him whose javelin from the lair 
Has roused the lion; no one plucks the rose, 
Whose proffered beauty in safe shelter blows 
‘Mid a trim garden’s summer luxuries, 
With joy like his who climbs, on hands and knees, 
For some rare plant, yon Headland of St. Bees.

Wordsworth

Fed and watered, sandwiches for the bipedals, gravy bones for the quadruped and our water bottles refilled, we donned our rucksacks and set off for the climb up to St, Bees Head. This took us past the start point for the Coast to Coast walk. 

It’s a bit of a slog up the path and quite close to the edge at times so the dog was straining on a short leash as I huffed and puffed my way up.  Once up we were on a clifftop path with views out across an empty sea. The Isle of Man, previously visible on the horizon, was now lost in the haze, but close enough that I received a text message from O2 roaming, welcoming me to the Isle of Man and assuring me that my calls and texts would be taken from my usual allowance. 

At the lighthouse there was a sign indicating that the coast to coast walk turned inland, but we continued along the clifftop path past a white building that I now know is a foghorn station. A little later we did here what sounded like a foghorn but it sounded more distant. There were some other strange noises along the way including one that sounded like an elephant and another like a couple of cats fighting. Presumably these were seabirds on cliffs below us. Detailed research (fwr two minutes with google) has not identified likely culprits as yet.

Several “gates to nowhere” allowed access to clifftop areas with views of the cliffs/birds. The only nesting birds I saw though were gulls. The rocks beneath the cliffs had a flatened appearance a little like the Giant’s Causeway, if the giants had been drunk and short sighted when doing the building. I’m not one for steep drops, especially with the pup in tow so I was happier when we were a few metres from the edge and especially when there was a fence between us and the edge. At one point we had a choice between walking cliff-side or field side of a fence and chose the field side. We met a couple of walkers who had chosen cliff side and were looking for an escape to our side.  I offered to use my OS map as a cover for the barbed wire, which I have done many times, but from their facial expressions once they had checked I had said “ my map” and not “my mat”, it was clearly not something they considered reasonable. That had me recalling my encounter astride an electrified fence on the SUW, well perhaps I was a little off the SUW at the time. 

The cliffs and rugged beaches beneath them were very pretty indeed, those as we approached Whitehaven sporting several colours. The paths were easy to follow. We stopped for a rest at a bench by the path. It was new and dedicated to a couple who had both died in 2017. I had thought I had taken a photo of the plaque but have not and sadly I don’t recall their names, Corwen perhaps. A bench a little further along the path was very dilapidated indeed. At one place we passed a much carved rock, mostly graffiti but one area looks as if it might once have been something more.There are several quarries on OS map, all marked as disused, but Birkhams Quarry is definitely in use. An info board listed various places their sandstone was used, including Caerlaverock Castle. 

At last we came to the outskirts of Whitehaven and began to meet folk walking their dogs, and Christy had a brief run about on the fields. There were ideogram signs which we interpreted as “colliery” and “harbour”, and though the direction appeared to be going a little back we followed along and it brought us to a footpath. This took us past the Haig Mining Museum, which had been visible for some time but seemed to be defying the usual laws of perspective in that it hadn’t appeared to be getting any larger despite us walking towards it. Eventually though our perseverance was reward and the building grew noticeably larger (closer). 

We had a glimpse of Saltom colliery down by the sea, and had a look at a cairn marking the King Pit. A plaque reads This shaft was sunk in 1750 by Carlisle Spending the mining agent for the Lowther family By 1793 it had reached a depth of 160 fathoms which at that time made it the deepest pit in the world.  

I was surprised how close to Whitehaven we were before we could see the Candlestick. Though it stands high above the harbour it is not at the top of the hill. I had thought the Candlestick was a lighthouse of sorts but it is actually a chimney constructed to vent methane gas from the Wellington pit which extended 4 miles out under the sea.

A sign above the Chimney warned of a steep slope and asked cyclists to dismount. The final section of our walk was full of sights. Whitehaven harbour with its boats, the Candlestick and a mosaic beneath it, a memorial to those killed in the collieries, Wellington Lodge, the pit entrance, a mounted pit wheel and a huge anchor rusting where they stood and there presumably to recognise the effects of mining and shipping to the town. Close by are a line of cannon with a statue representing a sailor spiking a gun, when John Paul Jones 1778 raid on the town.

Unfortunately we were too late for ice-cream at the Beacon.

Walking back to the car, sans ice-cream, we paused at the final statue for the day: A Brigadesman, a Screen Lass and a Deputy, erected to remind people of the role that the mining industry played in Whitehaven. A miner is carving the words “end of an era”. 

12.3 miles 5h 4m 114m ascent

Ravenglass-Beckermet

Having completed our walk along the Hadrian’s Wall route last year we have spent the last few months thinking about our next walk and the book Hadrian’s Coastal Route: Ravenglass to Bowness-on-Solway: Walker’s Guide by Clifford Jones served up our challenge. The Roman Coastal defences once stretched from the end of the Wall at Bowness-on-Solway down to Ravenglass, which was once an important Roman naval port. So the route ties in with our Hadrian’s Wall walk from last year. The book contains a wealth of historical detail, but only a basic description of the route, and with hand drawn maps. My copy was published over a decade ago and we are aware that paths and access may have changed since then. There was once a Cumbrian Coastal Way, but the council decided not to continue maintaining it after 2010 and it no longer appears on OS maps, so we might still find old signs but would not be able to rely on waymarkers to guide us. More fun, eh?

The day’s weather forecast was for single figure temperatures and rain, but the Met office on this occasion got it wrong. The rain went elsewhere and we walked in sunshine.

I took the start of this walk to be the Roman bath house near Ravenglass. One can’t park there without obstructing the road so we parked in Ravenglass and after touching my bank card to the pay-and-display machine we set off in search of said bath house. This took us across the railway at a level crossing and along a beautiful tree lined lane. [Edit: The LDWA has the Mite viaduct as the start].

The bath house is all that remains of a Roman fort that once housed 500 soldiers, the full extent f the fort now shown only by the nearby information board. We paused by the ruins for our start of walk photos and decided to make our way back through the trees on an inviting path. After about 50m however the path ended and the woodland wasn’t conducive to wanderings off-path so we backtracked to the ruins and began our Hadrian’s Coastal walk anew.

Rather than walking back the way we had come we took a tunnel beneath the railway and soon found ourselves on the sands of the harbour, the tide being out. The harbour is silted up now and where once the Roman vessels would have docked there are now just a handful of pleasure boats resting on the sand. Ravenglass sits at the confluence of the rivers Esk, Irt, and Mite, and to find our way across the estuary we turned onto the old main street with its flower bedecked houses. One even had a bowl of water outside for passing dogs. Christy wasn’t thirsty yet though. A GR post box added to the old world feel.

As we walked along the street the first of three concerns I had regarding the day’s route rose into my consciousness. How were we to cross the River Mite when the map showed only the Railway viaduct? So I was relieved to find the viaduct had an attached footbridge.

The three rivers forming the estuary are, from north to south, the Irt, Mite, and Esk. The internet proposes a host of possible etymologies for Irt, Mite, and Esk but most have a “just so” ring to them. Irt it is claimed might take its name from ancient words meaning mud but alternatives suggest it might derive from clean or fresh. The Mite could take its name from words with a meaning of peeing/dribbling, but also from meet or muster. The derivation of Esk is perhaps more certain. The name exists elsewhere and probably meant water as in Gaellic uisge, (which has also given us Ex, Ax and Ux). But who knows if these rivers ran clear or muddy, or fast or slow millennia ago?

After crossing the Mite, which was more than a dribble, we walked around a small area of salt marsh then onto a minor road at Saltcoats. There was hardly any traffic so Christy ran free most of the time, finding sticks for us to throw for him. The mountains to the west brooded under slate skies, and may have had the rain forecast for us, while we had sunshine and hedgerows of flowers displaying all the colours of the rainbow.

There is a ford on the Irt beyond Carleton Hall but having looked at photos of said ford I wasn’t likely to use it. Instead we followed the road around to our right, towards the second of my concerns regarding the route. Our guide book described an old footbridge on the Irt, but bridges can be washed away and I have had the experience of absent footbridges before.

So I took my concern with me under the railway, while looking at the map for an alternative.

A signpost for a public footpath indicated where we should leave the road but after a short distance the track ended abruptly at a gate. Ahead was a field of grazing sheep, but no evidence of a path. On the gatepost though were some old signs presumably dating back to the Cumbrian Coastal Way. We followed the direction indicated and came to the Irt. 

I spotted what I took to be the remains of a bridge’s foundations and began to cast my eyes about for a more direct way back to the road. Then I saw that the old bridge was still there and my second concern was assuaged. 

There were steep steps down to the river which required some concentration with an eager spaniel on a lead. I heard Audrey say “a real packhorse bridge” once she could see it, which seemed a strange thing to say. I thought perhaps she is a secret expert on bridges and would soon explain to me what characteristics identified this as a packhorse bridge. I realise now that she was quoting from the guide book.

Reply from A: I certainly wasn’t referring to the book when I exclaimed ‘a real packhorse bridge!’ It just struck me as such with it’s narrowness, hump back and cobbles. It would seem Cumbria has an abundance of these. I may not have known the term ‘currick’ but perhaps my Cumbrian descent has instilled some ancient packhorse bridge knowledge! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Packhorse_bridge

Across the river watching us crossing was a woman with a springer spaniel, the reason for Christy’s eagerness. The dogs said hello as dogs do.

There was a faint track, well more like trodden grass, to follow across a meadow that looked as if it would usually be very wet, but today was dry, so we walked easily across dried up mud through wetland grasses with butterflies dancing from flower to flower. The trodden grass became a path and brought us out on the B5344 beside St Peter’s Church in Drigg.

Drigg is said to take its name from a norse word meaning a place to drag a boat but it’s a bloody long way from both the sea and the river so either the derivation is incorrect, Norsemen liked dragging boats an unnecessarily long distance from the sea, or the sea was once closer. One curiosity of Drigg is that the houses and bungalows along the B-road all have cattle grids at their drives. 

An information board “Drigg: neolithic to nuclear” told us that the bridge we had crossed is named the Holme Bridge and was indeed on an old packhorse route. Its age is unknown but it  has a stone inscribed 1772.

At Drigg railway station I realised what LC means on an OS map. There is an old fashioned manual level crossing. We read the instructions and were sure to look both ways carefully before crossing.

The crossing took us into a different world. To our left farmland. To our right a high fence topped with barbed wire surrounding a low level nuclear waste facility. The fence had numerous “no hipster” signs, or they perhaps just designed in the 60’s. I tried to reproduce the sign’s deportment but the photo didn’t really capture my efforts.

The road down to the beach seemed to go on for ever. It was actually 25 minutes but the monotony altered my perception of time. That said, Christy enjoyed “fetching” sticks, there were bluebells and stitchwort covering the banks, sheep and lambs in the fields, and unfortunately, a dead dog by the road. I think it was a dog anyway. Christy was very good in responding to the command LEAVE!

There were some pink flowers I didn’t recognise. My initial thought was sea-spurrey but having looked it up I don’t think they were. Centaury perhaps?

At last, after the eternity that was really only 20 minutes we could see a hut and cars ahead. A sign told us this was an area of special scientific interest which probably accounts for the folk with binoculars. After exchanging a few words with them we headed on to the dunes to some wooden benches which were just what we needed for our lunch beak. There was a steep drop down to the beach so the pup had stay on his lead, forcing him to take a rest as well.

We were just a little shy of half way to Beckermet and lunch was welcome, though perhaps a little overdue. We could now see Seascale and Sellafield but not discern them as separate. Indeed we could see as far as St Bees Head and, once it was pointed out to me, the Isle of Man.

Re-caffeinated, fed, and a little cooler, I donned my fleece and we set off over the dunes, Christy taunting me with bits of sticks. The sun was warm and the breeze cooling. We could now see the target that held my third concern, but that was still an hour and a half away so all was well with me. The going underfoot was easy and the ground firm beneath our feet. Until, that is, the spell was broken by a careless comment to the effect that the going was easy and the ground firm.  

The path altered, the ups and downs growing more pronounced, and the firm ground giving way to soft shifting sand. Fun on a carefree beach holiday, tiring on a day’s hike. 

We looked to the beach below us, where another walker had paralleled our walk and as soon as an opportunity presented itself we climbed down. The beach offered choices for our walk: shingle, firm but uneven and unstable; dry sand, soft and yielding; wet sand, soft, yielding and clinging. I tried each more than once and eventually settled on the slightly wet sand. It was a tiring walk and despite being completely flat it drained me like an uphill slog. Conversation was curtailed. The effect was made more irritating by being overtaken by a young lad who appeared to be moseying along languidly, as would one with nowhere to go and no hurry to get there. His appearance would have been complete had he been aimlessly kicking a tin can. Yet despite his apparent lack of effort he overtook us easily.

I got the ball and chucker out to keep the pup amused and distract my mind from the sand underfoot.

As we drew closer to Seascale the beach grew narrower eventually giving way rocks at Whitriggs Scar, then a breakwater that took us into the town. The ‘scale” of Seascale takes its name from the Old Norse word for hall, skali. And it still is, I suppose, a collection of halls by the sea. I have since heard that the ice creams here are good, but we didn’t know that then so didn’t think to try them.

My eye was caught by an obviously modern castle like construction and we wandered over to take a closer look. A plaque is placed there to the memory of those who were killed in the West Cumbria shootings of 2010. It did seem a little incongruous though to put such a memorial immediately below a cannon.

I was a little unclear as to the route  from here. We knew we needed to be on the sea side of the railway line and should be following the national cycle route. The only way to go seemed to be the beach, which seemed an unlikely route for bikes. But then I noticed a narrow path beside the Windscale Boat club and following this led us to a footpath lined with wild roses and a variety of wild flowers, with stitchwort the most abundant. This was presumably the cycleway. Walkers coming in the opposite direction looked at the dog and warned us of an adder on the path up ahead. So I had to keep my eyes peeled and make sure the dog didn’t run too far ahead. We didn’t meet the adder.

As we drew towards Sellafield my third concern loomed closer. Would the path between Sellafield and the sea, and the river crossing, still be open to the public? Walking along the beach would not be an option because we would need to cross the River Calder. Our guide book was out of date and still suggested that one could get tours of the site.

When we came to Sellafield, we ran out of path and the railway crossed the water on a bridge of its own. We went the only way we could, picking our way over broken ground beneath the railway bridge which was the right thing to do since we found a footbridge hidden on the other side and cycleway signs pointing across it. 

Having crossed the Calder we were faced with a tunnel back under the railway or a path beside the tall fence. I checked under the railway and found a concrete pathway that went nowhere. It looks as though at some time there had been a plan to build a more substantial pedestrian bridge.

So we went alongside the tall razor-wire topped fence with its “no hipster” signs now interspersed with “no drone” signs. Luckily I didn’t bring one.

There were a several trains in the site but some subconscious effect dissuaded me from taking taking photos, I now see I took very few of the site itself.

At Sellafiled railway station we left the coast for our last leg, inland to Beckermet. We were now on a modern road which was surprisingly busy so I was pleased to find we had pavement to walk on. As we were about to leave Sellafield’s perimeter fence we noticed a plaque hidden by the grass: “Dedicated to the victims of the reactor fire at Windscale 1957. We will always remember.”

It was a little sad that it was set in so inconspicuous palace and could so easily be overlooked. This poem by Norman Nicholson relates to that incident. 

The toadstool towers infest the shore:
Stink-horns that propagate and spore
Wherever the wind blows.
Scafell looks down from the bracken band
And sees hell in a grain of sand,And feels the canker itch between his toes.
This is a land where the dirt is clean
And poison pasture, quick and green,
And storm sky, bright and bare.
Where sewers flow with milk, and meat
is carved up for the fire to eat,
And children suffocate in God’s fresh air.

The toadstool towers, the cooling towers, are gone now, demolished over a decade ago. The contaminated farms poured away their milk and burned their meat before I was born and the events will linger in only a few memories now. Perhaps Nicholson’s poem has a place beside that plaque in the grass. (More information on the Windscale Incident).

As we turned away from Sellafiled the final view looked las I would imagine a 1950s or 1960s nuclear power plant to be. Sellafield seen from this vantage point looks old, and almost cries out to be seen in black and white. It is a look that would have appeared futuristic when I was a child.

We were looking to turn left from the road but a sign pointed right and we decided to follow its advice. This took us back under the main road, sparing us a dangerous crossing, and onto a tarmac path away from the cars. A bench by the path let us rest for a while and have a drink of water then we were off in search of the cinder track that would take us along the route of a disused railway, to Beckermet.

The cinder track is no more, replaced with tarmac, and our stroll along this last section gave us views of the sea and a large hill that looked to be manmade. I wondered if this was the “Starling Castle” marked on the OS map, but it would appear not.

Our last mile or so took us past an old church and graveyard, St Bridget’s I think, though it bore no name, and once we had passed under a railway viaduct we were in Beckermet and the car only five minutes away.