Pete's Walks - The Cumbria Way
About the Cumbria Way
The Cumbria Way is a 74-mile walk from Ulverston to Carlisle, crossing the heart of the Lake District. It was created by members of the Ramblers Association, inspired by the recreation of Cumbria as a county in 1974.
Surprisingly, despite crossing the whole of the Lake District from south to north, the Cumbria Way is not a high-level route. The only summit that it includes is that of High Pike, north of Skiddaw, the northern-most 2000ft mountain in the Lake District. Apart from that, the only real ascent is the crossing of Stakes Pass between Great Langdale and Borrowdale. For most of its journey, the Cumbria Way keeps to the valleys and to the lower hills, so it is more a picturesque route than a mountain challenge.
The guide book I bought for this trip was 'Cumbria Way' by Paul Hannon (ISBN 1 870141 76 8), as I had found his guide for the Dales Way to be very good when I did that walk the year before. I was disappointed with his 'Cumbria Way' guide though, it didn't seem to be of the same quality as his 'Dales Way' book - for one thing, the factual information about points of interest was in italics rather than in bold type, so that it didn't stand out so well from the actual route information. Of course, no such book would be of much use as an actual guide anyway, as we were doing the walk the 'wrong way round'. At least this book mentioned the points of interest that we would pass on the journey, which was why I bought it and read the relevant section the night before each walk. Most of the historical or other factual data that I quote in my journal is taken from this source.
About my walk
I walked the Cumbria Way in June 2005 as an organised holiday with HF Holidays (I had walked the Dales Way with the same company the year before). This meant that I stayed overnight in a comfortable hotel with good food (four nights at Portinscale near Keswick, three nights near Coniston), and had a minibus or coach to take our party to the start of each day's walk and pick us up at the end. Consequently, we only needed to carry a 'day sack' with waterproofs, lunch, etc., rather than have to carry our overnight gear from place to place.
Our leader for the week's holiday was the excellent Patience Cooper. The other members of the group were Clare (a friend of mine that I met on my Dales Way holiday the year before), Robert and Helga (Americans, though Helga was originally from Germany), Sally and Chris (mother and daughter), Ian and Judith, Alan and Kath, Nick and Anna (friends who'd met on another holiday with HF), Janet, and Derek.
HF Holidays do the Cumbria Way from north to south, whereas the guide books and most walkers do it the other way round. HF do this because they think that a last day walk along the Caldew river to Carlisle would be a bit of an anti-climax after five days walking through the Lake District. Having completed the walk from north to south, I have to say that I think they are right and all the rest of the group seemed to agree. Certainly our last day's walk to Ulverston was far more interesting than our first day's walk out of Carlisle. So if anyone reading this is thinking about walking the Cumbria Way, I would recommend considering the north to south option.
Click here to see a very rough map of the Cumbria Way (but only if you have already read my disclaimer and notes regarding maps).
Warning Note about Long-distance walks with HF Holidays: Although I have enjoyed all of the three walking holidays I have now done with HF Holidays, I am not sure whether I will do another long-distance path with them. To me, the very essence of walking a long-distance path is that it is a continuous path between A and B. HF (and to be fair, most of their customers) seem happy to miss bits of the walks out here and there. On both The Dales Way and on A Dales Walk, there were days when the leader intended starting the walk at a different place to that where we had finished the day before, thus missing out a short section. I have had to negotiate with the leader to be allowed to walk a continuous route from start to finish (in the case of A Dales Walk, we did eventually do a continuous walk, but in so doing we missed out a short section of the official route near Hawes). I have written and complained to HF, saying that in my opinion they should walk the whole route or else make it clear in their brochures that they might not walk 100% of the route - if they advertised that they were not doing the whole route I wouldn't have booked the holiday. I wasn't overly impressed with the response I got from their Head of Walking Operations, which said: "I think we will have to instruct our leaders to allow guests like yourself to walk the extra short sections, while at the same time allowing the majority of guest to omit the more tedious sections. As this will cause delay to those guests, we may have to review this if we start receiving complaints." So if anyone reading this is thinking of walking a long-distance path with HF Holidays, please be aware that they might not walk the whole route.
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Day 1 5/6/05 12 miles |
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Day 2 6/6/05 10 miles |
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Day 3 7/6/05 10 miles |
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Day 4 8/6/05 15 miles |
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Day 5 9/6/05 15 miles |
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Day 6 10/6/05 Sunny Bank to Ulverston 12 miles |
Post-walk comments
I thoroughly enjoyed walking the Cumbria Way. The holiday was well organized by HF Holidays. Their hotels, or 'houses' as they prefer to call them, were friendly and comfortable, with good and plentiful food, though we all thought that the house at Portinscale was far better than the one at Monk Coniston. Our leader, Patience, was excellent, very friendly, helpful and knowledgeable, and certainly added to the enjoyment of the walk.
Having read up on the Cumbria Way, I was aware that it was almost entirely a low-level route, but I think one or two people were a little surprised at how gentle the route was – after all, you'd surely expect a walk through the Lake District to visit at least one major summit. Apart from the climbs of High Pike and Stakes Pass, this walk was no more challenging than the Dales Way which I had walked a year before (also with HF Holidays). The two climbs we did do were nothing major – I'm used to doing twice as much ascent over a day when I go on my regular walking holidays in the Lake District. But the route of the Cumbria Way was very pleasant and varied, and took in a lot of different parts of Cumbria, so I guess it lived up to its name. For me, the most interesting parts were the area “Back O' Skiddaw” on days 2 and 3, and Torver Common on the final day, mainly because these were areas I hardly knew at all. The walk on Day 4, though, was definitely the best – a full length traverse of Borrowdale, then down the wild and remote Langstrath before crossing Stakes Pass to Great Langdale. Definitely a day to remember!