Too Old Codgers

We have always enjoyed day walks near home in south-eastern Queensland, and on holidays in Australia and elsewhere. Our walking is often interrupted to listen to, watch and identify birds.

During a UK holiday in 1986 we spent a week in a cottage at High Lorton on the north-western edge of Lakeland. The cottage owners introduced us to Wainwright’s pictorial guides to the Lakeland Fells (as well as a superb Cartmel restaurant, and large tumblers filled with single malts). Having purchased the guide to the western fells, we decided to follow Wainwright’s route from Lorton up Fellbarrow along the ridge to Low Fell. We walked from the cottage on a sunny but brisk November morning and climbed slowly up Fellbarrow. As we crested the ridge we were distracted from the superb views over Crummock Water and Buttermere by hail and a howling gale coming off the Irish Sea. The wind increased as we approached Low Fell. To avoid being blown over the steep eastern flank of the fell, we resorted to crawling on hands and knees and hanging on to tussocks of grass. We didn’t reach Low Fell, but scrambled down Crabtree Beck to eventually stumble into Loweswater Inn to thaw in front of a roaring fire. The adventure left an indelible impression!

Crummock Water from the Fellbarrow - Low Fell ridge, 1986

Decades later we were looking at options for a longer walk. We are not happy campers, so the pubs and B&Bs of England’s villages and the short, walkable distances between them looked promising for our sort of walk. A web search for English walks threw up Wainwright’s name associated with a 190 mile walk across the Lakes District and Yorkshire Dales and Moors in northern England, the Coast to Coast walk (C2C) – we were hooked.

In 2010 we walked the C2C after several years of anticipation and planning. It was one of the most enjoyable experiences of our lives. As Wainwright had warned, we finished with regret. Mary wanted to do the C2C again and, to overcome the let-down at the end, to turn around and go back the other way. Graham wanted to do something new. Our compromise was a circular coast to coast – the North of England Way (NoEW) east to west and Wainwright’s C2C west to east.

Our motivations for long distance walks include: reassuring ourselves that we aren’t too old codgers; experiencing some beautiful parts of this beautiful world at a pace that enhances the experiences; storing memories that we can happily look back on when we are too old codgers (to paraphrase Wainwright’s motivation for his wonderful illustrated guides); meeting interesting people; and, for Mary, achieving the goal of walking across England.