“The Lakes? Who’d want to go there?” The first coast-path users I meet are local – as will all the others be, save for hikers leaving St Bees on the Coast to Coast Path bound for Robin Hood’s Bay in North Yorkshire. I have pointed out how quiet the Cumbrian coast is compared to the Lake District National Park, just a short way inland. “They’ll be crawling over each other like ants there today,” my new friend from Millom snorts. “And it will cost them a ‘harm and a leg to park.”
His companion pokes him cheerfully with a walking stick before adding, with a sweeping gesture that takes in the Duddon Estuary: “You don’t need a car here. It’s grand! And it’s all free.” I look at the sparkling sea, the bird’s foot trefoil gilding the derelict iron-ore quarry (now a nature reserve), and heartily concur.
I am walking the coast between Millom and Whitehaven. Offshore is Walney Wind Farm and the Isle ofgrassland that sprawls to the shore. Yet the coast is largely ignored by the multitudes who frequent the Lakes. A few come to Ravenglass, the only settlement in the National Park that is also on the coast, to St Bees for the Coast to Coast Path, or to the beach at Seascale, a former Victorian resort. The rest are presumably deterred by mountains, rural roads (unaware of the excellent coastal railway network), weapons-testing ranges, industries and particularly by Sellafield Nuclear Power Station.
