Day: 260 27/2/03 Baycliff to Ulverston

Weather:  Fine but threatening

Distance:  8 km (5 miles)    Total Distance:   3342 miles

I was working in our Lancaster factory and decided to pop up to Cumbria which was less than an hours drive from Lancaster to walk the last half dozen miles into Ulverston and thereby leave me a sensible starting place the next time I was up.  I parked in the Fisherman’s Arms car park and walked down the track to the beach.  It was a lot more mild than last time I was up.  It was a sort of still overcast day threatening to rain but never actually did. 

As I walked the first stretch I was keeping an eye out for inscribed granite slabs I had been told about  He said they had been chiselled away at by a hippie type person some 20 years ago with anti-Thatcher slogans etc.  I was disappointed not to spot them.  I picked up a pebble for our ‘under the stairs’ collection and carried it the rest of the walk – afraid that if I left it too late the estuary would peter out into mud and no pebbles. 

I walked along the pebbles then the mud and then along the path that ran parallel to the beach.  Sometimes the path went through a lovely wooded area.  For the last couple of miles as I approached Ulverston the path went along an old railway.  A large slag deposit of some kind formed an island just off the coast which gave a strange appearance. 

I ended the day at the Glaxo factory or the GSK factory as it is now known.  I came here for interview some 25 years ago and remember staying in Ulverston and also remember failing one of the allergy skin tests we were given as part of the medical – dust mites I think it was.  I blamed that on never having embarked on a career in the pharmaceutical industry.

I walked the couple of miles up on to the main road and ended up by the leisure centre.  I was early for a bus seconded by which for some reason I could not find a bus stop, even though there were many going into Ulverston there appeared to be none in the opposite direction.  

Therefore I stared to hitch and in no time at all a fairly elderly man stopped.  As normal, I proudly told him what I was doing and about the short distance I had travelled that day.  He then told be he was planning to do the Appalachian Way and the longest walk he had done was the Silk Road from China to Israel  - over 4000 miles in two and a half years!  I was wondering whether he was having me on but you could tell from his appearance that he was a long distance walker.  I didn’t mention anything more about my walk!

Coming home the main road was blocked just outside Ulverston so I had to take a long detour through Grange over Sands – adding quite a bit to my journey.