On this first morning I changed out of my clean sleeping clothes back into the dirty ones from the day before and crept out into the dark to cook breakfast. The flicker of the stove was a strange but pleasant sort of company, and I had to lean precariously over the steep banks of the river to wash the pots from the evening before, reaching down into the black until I felt the icy rush of water. I cooked a pan of sugary porridge as the first light of day crept over Cleator. Before long Christian emerged, narrow-eyed and displeased with the hour, and by eight o’ clock we were shouldering our packs, and squelching across the field. Our legs seemed fine after the exertions of the day before, but already I could feel the ache across my chest from the dead weight of the rucksack.
‘My shoulders are going to be round my knees before we’ve finished’, pronounced Christian, as he opened the gate. There was a shout from across the river, and at the far side of the bridge we saw Tom hanging out of the window of his bungalow waving.
‘Good luck, lads.’
We began our ascent by getting lost, until a nice man from an isolated house leaned out of his window and pointed us in the right direction. The Coast to Coast isn’t a national trail, so it’s not very well signposted, especially in the carefully conserved Lake District, but that doesn’t mean you’re without direction. Our progress across Cumbria was marked by a series of silhouetted farmers pointing from the opposite end of fields or shouting from their Land Rovers as they saw us going wrong. Whether this was out of a desire to keep us off their land I’m not sure, but I’d like to think it was just good spirit. To be fair you’d have to be quite a bastard to casually watch two laden walkers heading off in completely the wrong direction.
Navigation always seems easier once you get away from fields, or maybe it’s just because the walking’s more pleasant. We cleared the last houses, crossed a forestry track and started in earnest on the tramp up Dent fell. It was quite steep, and hard work with our packs, the path hemmed in by tight, scratchy rows of conifers that caught on our clothes. I quietly cursed myself for not removing my long johns in the cold of the morning. I should point out I had never, previously to this trip, been a long john wearer, and I can report it to be an interesting experience. Apart from the obvious practical value on cold evenings and mornings, it also gives you a cheery sort of feeling that you might be wearing your pyjamas underneath your clothes. But not when you’re hot and struggling up a hill.
When we came out of the trees onto a slippy green hillside, the sun was properly up, and below us fields and woods stretched out to the sea, all bathed in a lovely gold light. The sun was ahead of us to the east, peeking blindingly over the summit and throwing long shadows back down the slope. As anyone who has ever climbed a hill or mountain will know, perspective is a cruel beast, and what you think is the top almost never is. After three or four occasions of thinking we’d crested it, only to see another hump stick up in front of us, we finally reached the Western summit of Dent. The grass was longer and browner on the top; a breezy, sun-drenched plateau, and we paused to take a picture, looking back at what would be our last view of the sea until we saw the North Sea in the failing light from a soggy Yorkshire moor two weeks later.
The top was fine walking, but the drop down the other side was unpleasantly severe. The ground was greasy, and I fell over into a spiky bush. Once I’d finished swearing, I found that holding up my bare forearm and watching the tiny droplets of blood welling out of the dirty pinpricks was quite diverting, and I nearly slipped again. It sounds strange, but there’s something quite confirming about hurting yourself a little bit. I don’t mean I intend to start paying money to ladies in high heels, but you can get a bit paranoid about scrapes and cuts and bruises, and then when you do get scuffed up one way or another you realise it’s not the end of the world and you feel quite human.
‘Supper for you’, Christian shouted from up ahead, pointing to a patch of particularly pestilent-looking crimson fungus bubbling up by the path. A couple of days earlier, sitting by the brazier in the garden at our Bonfire Night party, B had been trying to describe to me which wild mushrooms were safe to pick and eat. Having been hunting out the things since childhood she made it sound quite straightforward, and I might conceivably have chanced my hand at foraging, had Big WCR not leaned over and butted in. He has known me since we were knock-kneed schoolboys of four years old in bright blue caps and blazers.
‘Can I just say: do not, under any circumstances, suggest to this man that he starts trying to pick mushrooms. He will die.’
So that was the end of that. Christian however found this a terribly funny joke, to be repeated on every occasion during two weeks that we passed anything remotely resembling a mushroom.
We picked our way past a deer fence and down into the bottom of the valley, stopping to refill our water carriers from the fresh stream that slithered along at the foot of Dent fell. The way wound up the valley, round kinks in the stream and sheepfolds, then climbed sharply up the side and out, quite abruptly, onto the road running the last mile or so down to the village of Ennerdale Bridge.
It was a faintly ghostly sort of place, Ennerdale Bridge. There was a very quiet school next to a phone box, and the sign in the window of what had once been the village shop read that it had closed down in 2006 due to lack of custom, and now operated two mornings a week as a post office. We had been nursing hopes of picking up a tin of something for the next day’s breakfast there, but it was not to be. Sort of reminded me how far away we were from the world I was accustomed to, where a shop was so totally reliant on passing trade from wanderers that a slump in our sort of domestic snail tourism meant curtains.
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