Wainwright’s Coast to Coast Walk

Alfred Wainwright (1907–1991) was a fell walker and author most famous for his work on documenting the numerous fell walks of the Lake District.  But he also published the first guide to a long-distance footpath across Northern England from St Bees in Cumbria to Robin Hood’s Bay in North Yorkshire in his 1973 guidebook “A Coast to Coast Walk”.

A few weeks ago this walk was designated a National Trail (like The Ridgeway) as “The Coast to Coast Path National Trail”.

Albert has been producing AVs since the mid-1970s.  He took the photographs for this AV during his own hike through some of the finest landscapes in Northern England – undertaken in his “mid-seventies”!  And he embellished his evocative landscapes etc with his own detailed narrative, some Beethoven (7^th and 8^th symphonies), and some appropriate sound effects.

The first part of the presentation started at St Bees on the Irish Sea coast, and headed east across the Lake District, then over the Pennines and into the Yorkshire Dales to the north Yorkshire village of Keld.  Along the way there was a diversion to Whitehaven.  And the highlights included Patterdale (Wordsworth territory), Striding Edge (and the Charles Gough and Robert Dixon memorials), Shap Abbey, the Black Dub monument, Kirkby Stephen, Nine Standards Rigg (a group of cairns near the summit of Hartley Fell), before ending in Keld in Swaledale.

This is regarded as the halfway point of the walk.

The second part of the presentation therefore began in Keld, headed east through the Yorkshire Dales into the North York Moors and then to Robin Hood’s Bay.  Highlights included abandoned lead mines, Crackpot Hall (an abandoned farmhouse), Reeth, Marrick Priory, Marske, the town of Richmond (with Easby Abbey, St Martin’s Priory, and the castle), Bolton on Swale, Ingleby Cross, Cringle Moor (and the Alec Falconer memorial), the Lion Inn and the Frank Elgee memorial on Blakey Ridge, Egton Bridge, Goathland (the “Heartbeat” village of Aidensfield on TV and Hogsmeade Station in Harry Potter films), a diversion to ride the North Yorkshire Moors Railway to Pickering  and the Beck Isle Museum, the Hermitage folly at Newton House, and finally down to Robin Hood’s Bay on the North Sea coast.

Tradition demands that you dip a boot in the water at each end of the walk.

This was a lovely wander through the National Parks of the Lake District, the Yorkshire Dales, and the North York Moors.  With loads of landscape photographs of crags and peaks, ridges and valleys, lakes, rivers, and moors, as well as shots of the various sights and places visited along the way, there was so much to enjoy in the1 hour and 20 minutes of this fine AV.