Coast to Coast: A Sailor’s 192 Mile Walk Across England

By Katie Cerezo

After almost a year at sea, a U.S. Navy sailor fantasized about being on land again. On a whim, she decided to test her legs on England's Coast to Coast trail. What she had thought would be a leisurely springtime stroll through three national parks turned out to be a rigorous hike through the Lake District, limestone counties, farmland, heather-covered hills, and marsh. At times encountering more sheep than humans, she quickly discovered that a compass does not work in English 'mist' and that communicating with the English in English is not as simple as one might think.
Despite blisters, bloody heels, and missing toenails, she soon became enthralled by the sublime natural beauty of rural England, the exquisite delights of Wensleydale cheeses, and the extraordinary kindness and hospitality she encountered at every turn.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Oct 19, 2023
• ISBN: 9798350916959

Book preview

Prologue

I had made a foolish mistake.

As I massaged my throbbing left knee, looking around the country landscape in bewilderment, my right leg ankle-deep in mud and pungent English sheep excrement, I tried to figure out how I could have made such an error.

It had been a cultural misunderstanding caused by nuances in the English language, and no small amount of arrogance on my part, I concluded. That, and the fact that I had just spent the last eighteen of twenty-two months living at sea.

That time at sea is an essential detail. Despite the impressive length of an aircraft carrier, 1092 feet, or an amphibious ship, 844 feet, there is a finite distance one can walk before having to turn around to continue walking. The ship can travel long distances; however, while on a ship, the sailors themselves cannot. I wanted the chance to stretch—really stretch—my legs. My feet, encased in steel-toed boots for over fourteen hours a day and accustomed to the undulating and unpredictable motion of the ship, ached to travel over something solid. More than anything, I wanted to begin a walk from one place and emerge someplace entirely different.

After so much time living on top of water, I had romanticized the idea of land. To properly understand, you would have to be a sailor.

It was on the first of two back-to-back deployments that I read Bill Bryson’s classic A Walk in the Woods. I had heard from admirers of Bill Bryson’s books how much they had enjoyed his humor, his insight, and his adventure on the Appalachian Trail. Still, even as I listened to their enthusiasm, I had difficulty understanding just what it was they were excited about. It was a book about a walk. Someone else’s walk, at that. A walk for which the reader would reap no personal health benefit or transfer of virtue. Privately, I wondered how much adventure could be in the book. Surely, the author had not been chased by bears, living off plants and his wits, while evading thieves the entire way?

I very much doubt that I would have ever read A Walk in the Woods, regardless of the praise it had received, had it not been for the fact that when I saw a copy at a bookstore in Dubai, it was after several months at sea. As proud as I was to be on the aircraft carrier, I was tired of the monochromatic hues of gray, blue, and beige. A sailor’s way of life is strange, to be sure. There are no animals or children aboard a U.S. Navy ship. Furthermore, there is a complete dearth of natural foliage. There are no trees, no bushes, no flowers. No real ones, at least—the ones on the mess decks and wardroom are fake. And so, just as though those who have never seen the ocean might fantasize about stealing a sailboat and circumnavigating the globe, so I—a sailor—suddenly had an urge to embrace nature and set off on a long walk on land.

I bought the book and devoured it in two days. From my coffin rack with its bright blue curtains, I dreamed about trekking through woods, grass, dirt, and nature. Perhaps it is simply part of the human condition to want to stuff the barest essentials on your back and head off. There’s the fantasy. And then there’s the reality of time, money, societal obligations, and logistics. The 2,175-mile-long Appalachian Trail represents a huge time commitment—approximately six months for the average thru-hiker walking end to end. There was no chance I would be able to do it while I was in the navy.

If I had simply returned from that deployment and stayed ashore for a few months, perhaps the yearning would have gone away. Instead, two months after my return I was ordered back out for a second deployment. This time the ship was gone a record-setting ten and a half months. The craving to walk . . . REALLY WALK . . . grew. I was restless. As I prepared to transfer to my next duty assignment, the Pentagon, I questioned what long walks I could complete with the sixteen days of leave allotted to me after I returned home and visited my family. It was important to me that the walk have a clearly defined beginning and end and that I complete the entire trail.

Spain’s Camino de Santiago? No. A hiker would need at least a month to cover five hundred miles. Switzerland’s 103-mile Tour du Mont Blanc? The distance was certainly doable . . . but definitely not in March.

It was then that my mom suggested Alfred Wainwright’s Coast to Coast walk across England, a 192-mile route that began in St. Bees near the Irish Sea and ended in Robin Hood’s Bay by the North Sea.

Wainwright was a British cartographer and accomplished walker who devised a scenic walk through three national parks: the Lake District National Park, the Yorkshire Dales National Park, and the North York Moors National Park.

I explored this option disdainfully. I fancied myself a first-rate adventurer. One of the things I loved best about the navy was the promise of being exposed to something new. I had been to England a few times. Therefore, my first thought was to dismiss a return trip there as repetitive and wholly unnecessary. With so many rare and wonderful things to see in the world, why visit the same country again?

I craved the dramatic: a climb up Mount Kilimanjaro, a hike along the Incan trail. The Coast to Coast walk had been successfully completed by recreational walkers in their sixties and seventies . . . how challenging could it be?

As the weeks passed, the idea became more alluring. I cannot pinpoint the reason for the sudden shift in mindset, although I strongly suspect it may have been that my roommate’s family had sent her a care package full of food and entertainment. Included in the package had been a Downton Abbey DVD.

After binge watching the season, a walk in England took on new appeal. I reckoned that if walkers twice my age could do it, there was no reason why I, a healthy thirty-year-old, should have any problem. I decided to contact Mickledore, a British travel company specializing in walking holidays, for a self-guided tour that included prebooked Bed and Breakfasts along the route. It would be my take on A Walk in the Woods.

Granted, there would be no rattlers, no copperhead snakes, no grizzly bears. Unlike Bryson, eating oatmeal and freezing in his tent and sleeping bag, I would sleep in beds and take hot showers, with gracious B&B hosts preparing fresh packed lunches for me.

A Walk in the Woods, Downton Abbey-style.

I intended to stop, sketch, drink tea, and eat scones with jam and clotted cream.

As our return to the ship’s homeport of Norfolk, Va., grew closer, my shipmates and I discussed our post-deployment holiday plans.

What are you going to do?

I’m going to walk across England, I said grandly.

There were raised eyebrows and amused twitches of the mouth.

Which parts are you going to?

I am starting at one end and coming out on the other end.

The whole way? Are you going with a group or with a friend?

It’ll just be me. I can’t find anyone who is free this time of year who wants to walk that far.

How odd. [Pause] Have you done a long distance walk before?

This will be my very first, I admitted.

Are you doing it to raise money for charity?

No. I was perplexed. Is it so strange that I want to walk?

It’s just that . . .well, you hate the gym.

I could understand why they thought this outing out of character. As is typical during deployments, over the course of almost eleven months we had gotten to know each other better than many people who have been acquainted for years. There was nothing about my background to suggest I was a long distance hiker. I was not even a recreational athlete, a weekend warrior. It was true that whereas my virtuous roommate, the legal officer, exercised at least once a day, I generally avoided the ship’s gym. It was not that I hated exercising, but that going there felt vaguely depressing. Whether I got on the treadmill, elliptical machine, or bike, I felt the machines mocking me. The red numbers might record me as having completed ten miles. Where had I traveled, really?

Nowhere. It was all a lie.

I was curious that navy friends did not automatically grasp why a walk spanning the breadth of an entire country held such appeal. Did their own legs not ache to move over grass, not nonskid? After months inside several layers of gray steel, did they not yearn for the outdoors? Nature? Chirping birds and furry animals and that sort of thing?

However, to be fair, if my plans seemed odd, I was equally baffled by some of their post-deployment ideas.

When one friend said he was taking his wife and daughters on a Disney cruise, I had to stifle the first horrified thought that burbled up.

You’re a navy sailor and you are going to pay to go on a ship? Ten months at sea wasn’t enough for you?

He was a devoted husband and father—he was thinking of the happiness of his wife and kids. I hope I managed to say something socially appropriate that recognized what a thoughtful guy he was.

I did not do much planning beyond booking a walking holiday through Mickledore. Before coordinating the B&B arrangements, Mickledore asked me to self-assess my physical fitness so that they had a realistic idea of how far I could walk each day and book my rooms accordingly. They suggested that walkers who were generally sedentary should consider fifteen days. A twelve day walk was the most aggressive program they offered, intended for the most serious of hikers and conditioned athletes. If I was merely fit, they recommended a thirteen-day plan.

I assured Mickledore that I was fit, while privately doubting if I was using the right metric to make this assessment. As a sailor, the navy required I take a twice-yearly physical readiness test to evaluate my cardio and core strength. Although ships at sea have the option to waive the test if operational requirements take precedence, the command I was assigned to chose not to request a waiver. Thus, I had a recent fitness evaluation to go off of. My push-ups had been assessed as good, my sit-ups as excellent, and my cardio as outstanding. Granted, the cardio portion of the test aboard the approved elliptical machine had taken all of twelve minutes and might not have been the best indicator of long-term endurance. Still, I figured that surely the physical readiness marks were sufficient enough that with willpower, I could make the required distances each day.

The vast majority of Coast to Coast walkers complete the walk between April and September, when the weather is warmer, and the days are longer. Although Mickledore offered a luggage transportation service during these months, because I was hiking in early March, they apologetically informed me that I would have to carry my own luggage from point to point. Two weeks before the start of my walk, as the ship was doing the trans-Atlantic crossing on our way back to Norfolk, two kindly Mickledore representatives wrote that they were getting unseasonably cold weather and there was a good chance I could be walking in snow.

Oddly enough, none of this bothered me.

The ship returned to great fanfare and sailors and their families reunited. Ten and a half months is a long time to be separated. My dad flew from California to Virginia to welcome me back. I was thrilled to see him, even as I marveled at the changes that had taken place in the city since I had left. As always, there is bewilderment any time you compare the image that exists in your mind to the reality you are suddenly confronted with. My father, having served a career in the navy himself, understood my confusion and gave me time to process.

It was not until after I went to visit family in California that I first began to appreciate how little thought had gone into preparing for the trip.

What kind of backpack are you going to take with you? Dad asked during dinner.

My seabag is pretty sturdy.

He looked mildly disturbed. I