Weather: Fine but cloudy.
Distance:
29 km (18.0 miles) Total Distance: 3264 miles
I said goodbye to the people staying at the Youth Hostel
and headed off, ironically driving through Egremont where I had stayed the
night previously. I parked the car in
the peaceful village of Beckermet near a bus stop where I was hoping I would be
dropped at the end of the day. From
there I walked about the mile down to the coast at Braystones and onto the
beach.
I could see Sellafield in the
distance and it was a question of when to cut off the beach and onto a path
that went on the landward side of a river flowing parallel to the shore. When I did cut inland under the railway, the
path was pretty overgrown and appeared to get progressively worse as I headed
towards the reprocessing plant.
As I neared the plant I was having to
fight my way through the undergrowth.
Even though there was the occasional sign saying that this section of
the footpath was sponsored by BNFL there was little evidence that they were
doing any maintenance on it.
I skirted
the plant for a couple of yards and then dropped down towards the small station
that serviced the plant. As I was
dropping down a police van pulled up and a young disheveled policemen jumped
out, seemingly having been woken up. It suddenly
occurred to me that I must have been spotted on a security camera and he must
have been called out to find me. He was
not very observant however and once he and the dog were out of the van they
headed off in the other direction without looking around. I had in effect crept up behind them and was only
a short distance away when the dog eventually heard me. The policeman looked around, looked me up and
down, concluded I was obviously a rambler and then turned around and put him
and his dog back in the car. So much for high security.
After walking near a golf course I
entered the village of Sellafield. It
had a very eerie feeling about it and it took me a while to realise what was
wrong – there were no children around – only adults. I presumed all parents were too afraid to
bring up children so close to the reprocessing plant.
I found a bakery that also sold hot
drinks and had a take away coffee and cake sold to me by a very nervous young
shop assistant. I almost asked her if I
was her first customer but was afraid that she would drop the coffee and I
would go thirsty even longer.
The next section of the walk was along
a very long beach to Drigg Point. I was
debating whether this section was strictly in my walk criteria but two things
convinced me it was firstly that the dunes marked on the map were pretty
substantial and not an area that got flooded at high tide and secondly that
there were quite a few other people walking out to the point.
It was pretty desolate, not any landmarks to
speak of but the sand was pretty firm.
It took over an hour to get to the point. Once I was there I was hoping to go all
around it and back up north on the landward side but having walked around a lot
of it it became very muddy and marshy so I had to frustratingly turn back and
go all the way around again – another walk of over an hour!
I cut in up to Drigg where the low
level waste from Sellafield is stored.
The next frustrating part was that on the map there was a path across
the river marked but having walked down a farm track to see what it looked like
it was a river, even though the tide was out, another ancient right of way
masquerading as a footpath. This meant a
long walk inland but at least it was more interesting that the long sandy
beach! I caught up with a man who I had
spotted on the landward side of Drigg Point on the other side of the mud flats
to me. I wanted to know how he had got
there and back. I chatted to him but it
was evident he was a little slow but pleasant nevertheless.
When I did eventually cross the River
Irt(?) it was at a very picturesque ancient stone footbridge with the only
other person around a lonely fisherman – a great scene. I was rushing now as I was trying to make the
bus and deciding whether there was time to go south of Ravenglass and over the
railway viaduct as I knew the trains were on strike. That would mean that next time I could start
south of the viaduct. When I got to the
lovely village of Ravenglass I headed out along the sands and footpath but soon
realised that time was against me so I turned back, enquired at the café about
B&B for future reference, and about where the bus stop was, had a quick
look around the narrow gauge railway museum and bought a can. The bus turned up exactly on time and did
indeed take me back to the car for the long journey home – the first time I
travelled south of the Lakes.
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