Published in the Asheville Citizen-Times on 02/08/2009

It would take you about seven months to walk coast to coast from Los Angeles to New York. But in two weeks, you can walk the 192 miles across England on the Coast to Coast Walk from the Irish Sea to the North Sea.

It is said that Alfred Wainwright, the designer of the Coast to Coast walk, laid a ruler on a map of England and came up with the route. Thousands of people walk the unofficial path the same general way that Wainwright did – from St. Bees to Robin Hood’s Bay. West to east is the preferred way so that the wind will always be at your back. The trail passes through three diverse national parks: Lake District National Park, Yorkshire Dales National Park, and North York Moors National Park. Over 90 percent of national park land is privately owned. England is crowded and the government is not about to move people out; residents can keep farming and raising cattle.

My husband and I start by dipping our hiking poles in the Irish Sea and choosing a small stone that we’ll carry all the way to the North Sea. The coastal path climbs steeply in a westerly direction for a short while with the wet wind in my face, then turns north and thankfully east and inland. After a couple of days, we reach the town of Grasmere in the Lake District, home of Beatrix Potter and Wordsworth. It’s drizzling and will rain every day – sometimes a couple of hours and sometimes the whole day. This is England, after all.

We’re fellwalking on barren hills where a light mist envelops us, so typical of northern England. Sheep, with black faces on white bodies, scamper in treeless fields encircled by stone fences.

The main challenge through the Lake District is finding the route. We carry a map and two guidebooks but there are no trail markers in the Lake District, as a matter of philosophy. “If you have signs,” British walkers complain, “you’ll take all the fun and challenge out of walking.”

We signed on with Contours Holidays, a British “independent holiday” company, which booked our lodging and moves our luggage each day so we’re basically dayhiking. We had to decide on the number of walking days, from 12 days to 18 days - the fewer walking days, the more miles per day. We chose 14 days which is the most typical. Though that gave us an average of 13.5 miles a day, the average is meaningless. Our mileage was short at the beginning of the trek when we had a lot of climbing and a whopping 23-mile flat day toward the end. After a few days, we start noticing the same hikers in town and meet them for dinner, talking about the rain and how tough the next day will be.

At the end of the sixth day, we see our first Coast to Coast sign; we’ve left the Lake District. Now we’re crossing stiles through farmland and small forests in the dales. This is picture-book England with village teashops, pubs, and medieval abbey ruins.

In the North York Moors, fields of purple heather remind me of how close we are to Scotland. On the last day, we walk through a holiday trailer park and see the North Sea through a blinding rain. At Robin Hood’s Bay, we go down to the sea to dip our walking poles and toss the stone we’ve carried for two weeks into the water.