Day 1 - St Bees Head to Rosthwaite
31.9 miles
7 hours 8 mins
4,671ft ascent
Well, I survived the first day, so at very least I'll give tomorrow a shot!
Woke from our handy little spot a couple of miles from the start and had some breakfast then headed down to St Bees Head car park watching numerous couples and single coast to coast walkers head up the trail. I started warming up and stretching, conscious I needed to give my leg the best chance then I had a little jog over to the Coast to Coast info panel and felt it stab of shin splints again, which made me aware my attempt might just fall apart quite quickly.
The tide was out and the sea was a fair way off so I started at the bottom of the slip with my hand in the water of a tributary and headed up toward Whitehaven. After 6 miles of running into headwind I turned east, and started to feel the need to take my coat off as I warmed up. The climb up Dent was pretty sheer and the first time I started to walk, but everything was largely going okay at 10 miles in. The steep decent felt sore on my ankle/shin but was short lived and led to a really picturesque sheltered valley as I headed north to Ennerdale Bridge, and was met by my dad who had parked at the base of Ennerdale Water and pedalled back towards me. A couple of miles later we got to the van at about 16.5 miles and had a sandwich, top up of water, a couple of ibuprofen and some voltarol to see if I could get through the tightening feeling. Running up the south side of Ennerdale Water, was like running on the surface of the moon (I imagine, this isn't my claim to have done that), and after a couple of miles of my feet sliding off rocks and rolling in my shoes I felt at risk of causing quite an injury so spent a few minutes swapping my elastic laces to the original ones which gave a much more stable feeling bouncing from rock to rock for 3 miles. I had a play with my drone too which gave some pretty good footage with the lake in the background! I was pretty achy with heavy feeling legs by the end of the lake and picked up the trail past Ennerdale YHA as the sun came out, at 21 miles in. This trail went on forever climbing up the valley, it was physically easier than some other trails of the day but felt tough and monotonous. I checked signal and noticed that my watch hadn't updated for a few hours but my satellite messenger hadn't either, presumably because the valley walls were blocking it. I had a splash in one of the springs to cool down and dip my headband then shortly after the forest trail gave way to more of a footpath which opened up at the head of the valley and felt much easier. Fairly quickly the route took sharp left turn and was 1:1 ascending so I got the climbing poles out and trudged up to the saddle, gaining height quickly. I felt tired but able to keep going and had a chat with a couple of guys at the top about their trip as we all took the view in toward Buttermere and back down towards Ennerdale Water too. Before long I was hopping down towards Honiston pass where pops had cycled up to have a cup of tea! I saw his bike and found him lingering by the bar, then made the final descent to Rosthwaite to finish the day. I was so close to 50k I then ran a further mile and a bit to rack up and distance as I'd never run that far before! The entire valley has no signal so the tracker won't have updated that I finished and am alive, hopefully people will conclude that anyway, maybe.
My legs felt tired but okay, my insides were a bit unsure what had just happened but the day went well. Tom joined us at the campsite and we got eaten alive by midges to the soft beat of rain on the van.
