St Bees to Drigg

If you park down by the beach at St Bees you have to pay, but yesterday we had noticed that the car park next to the station is free, so that was where we headed - and there was plenty of space. We parked, and set off to retrace our steps to the beach. Unfortunately it started to rain within metres of the car park, so we stopped to don waterproofs, just by a little statue of St Bega; the photo  has the Abbey in the background.  The rain didn't come to much and we didn't have any more today. We continued on to the seafront and walked a short distance along it. However what used to be a route all the way along the cliffs here now heads  inland, around a small golf course owned by St Bees School.  As we turned right to head towards the club house, we realised that we were on an access road just a few hundred metres from where it had left the road we'd used to walk down to the beach; it had been nice to go back down to the beach, but we'd walked around three sides of a rectangle. 

After continuing our walk around the golf course and passing some grazing horses we returned to the coast at Seamill Lane Beach, at the far end of St Bees Bay from the point at which we had descended to it yesterday.  For the next section, the Cumbria Coastal Way (the precursor to the England Coast Path in these parts) used to be at low level, probably on the beach. However, we went under the railway line, which returns to the coast at this point after taking an inland route while we'd followed the coast round St Bees Head, and climbed. There followed a new and most enjoyable section of England Coast Path,  up above the railway and the beach. 

It was near Coulderton that we spotted cottages/beach homes beneath the cliff to our right, at the back of the beach. I think these continue along from this point. We emerged close to Nethertown Station, but rather than descending to the station we went up the approach road to join a minor road at the top. This is where the station sign is; this has to be a contender for the most isolated station I have encountered. We continued through the  village of Nethertown. It's a quiet place now but that fount of all knowledge, Wikipedia, tells me that  during the second world war an anti-aircraft training camp was established here, which later became the contractor camp housing the workers who built Sellafield in the 1940s and 1950. I suspect that the site of the camp is where there is now a "village" of park homes, which Richard commented on because of the presence of security cameras.  We'd wondered if this had some link to the military or to Sellafield,  but it was a more recent link we were wondering about. 

If you are ever looking for some spare England Coast Path signs, we'd recommend the next little section.  I should emphasise that we were walking on a very minor road; i don't remember being passed by any cars, and it was also rather narrow. But yet, on the left hand side of the road,  was a sign telling us to cross to the right, mirrored by another sign on road with the reverse instructions...and slightly further on, the whole thing was repeated. Good views to the Lake District fells were emerging to the left and, about a kilometre from the centre of Nethertown, we turned off the road to the right and climbed (acquiring good views to Sellafield). There was some amusing signage here too, with a tendency to direct us in a series  of straight lines connected by right-angled turns even when there is an obvious diagonal route between the two, but the way back to the coast here is fiddly; so it is probably best to follow the signs however frustrating they are. Essentially, after walking parallel to the coast for a while you head away from it again to get around a rise and so to reach a little stream without a rather steep descent to it. The stream then leads back to the coast .

After passing underneath the railway we were back at the row of what I described earlier as cottages or beach homes. Without any offence intended to the people who own them or live in them, I should probably point out that some would probably be more accurately described as shacks, though describing them at all is difficult.  There is a curious, and not unattractive, temporary feel that is shared by residences we have encountered in several out-of-the-way coastal  locations, including parts of the Norfolk coast. For now, we followed a track in front of the shacks, with with the beach to our right. Just before Braystones Station, we passed a dog walker talking to a resident of one of the dwellings. From Braystones Station  the route heads onto the beach itself, not our favourite type of walking, but before getting on with that we stopped for lunch sitting on some of the lumps of rock which have been deposited here, presumably to reduce coastal erosion.  We enjoyed watching dog walkers on the large expanse of beach. We also saw a couple of trains passing. Unsurprisingly, Braystones is a request stop, but we noticed that the trains hardly slowed down at all and were left wondering just how often anyone gets off or on at this remote location.

The walk along the beach was OK, and after a short distance we were once again able to walk on an access track in front of the coastal dwellings and then along a low scrubby bank  (presumably a slight progression from sand dunes) behind the beach. We were quite close to Sellafield now, but because we were down by the sea, you couldn't see it and area had a lovely remote feel to it. We reached the River Ehen and crossed under the railway here, then over the river and now we were higher up with good views to the various buildings of the nuclear site, which incorporates what was previously known as Calder Hall (the first full-scale commercial nuclear power station, operational from 1956 to 2003) and Windscale (the "Windscale Piles", operational in the 1950s prior to the Windcale fire in 1957, were built to produce weapons-grade plutonium for use in nuclear weapons).  Now the focus is on the reprocessing of nuclear fuel and the decommissioning  of the site.  We have memories of visiting the visitor centre in 1989 with our children, then 1 and 3, and going on a coach trip around  the site, which Michael then described as a "factory". I'm not sure how much the children got from the experience, but their physicist parents were interested and are quite sad now to learn that the visitor centre has closed. 

We passed Sellafield Station and found ourselves walking right next to one of the more sensitive bits of the site; apparently where  nuclear waste arrives from elsewhere. We were separated from it by a high security fence and it is also safe to assume that the guard in his box by the gated railway entrance/exit was watching us as we walked by. Past the River Calder, it was quite a relief to return under the railway to the shore. We then followed a narrow path on through low dunes, being passed - not always quickly - by occasional joggers and cyclists.  This path took us to Seascale, a quaint Victorian seaside resort.  We had wondered about stopping here, but there was still plenty of walking time remaining so, after a break, we continued.

The onward route was initially on a sort of promenade which led from the corner of Seascale's (potentially very useful) car park but we were soon directed down to the beach, with appropriate warning signs to watch out for high tide. Safe in the knowledge it was nowhere near high tide, I suspect we could have walked along the wide expanse of beach all the way to the Drigg Sand Dunes and Beach Carpark at SD048985, but after a little while we followed the England Coast Path signs up from the beach and through the attractive dunes, part of the largest system of sand dunes in Cumbria and a breeding site for the Natterjack toad.  We'd have struggled to find our own route through the dunes, but thankfully the signposting was good.

From the little car park, we initially took the access road, and we could have stayed on this all the way to Drigg Station. However, the route of the England Coast Path is shown as turning off the road onto a track on the other side, and so we did this. We were now crossing a low-lying peaty area of land and the signposting effectively disappeared. The route-finding was fine while we were on a track, and we were overtaken by a farmer in his vehicle, heading off to feed the cows and their young which we'd passed, so we didn't feel too much in the middle of nowhere. The views were lovely, both to Ravenglass on the other side of the combined estuary of the rivers Irt, Esk, and Mite, and inland to the  Lake District mountains around Eskdale . However, close to the place where the farmer was feeding his cows, the route was shown as doing a left hand turn onto marshy ground and so did we. We eventually found a way through, but only with the help of the apps running on both phones, after attempting to head in the wrong direction, straight to the (unbridged) River Irt, and after squelching through some muddy bits. 

We reached a track, surprisingly good really given that if you turn right it takes you to an unbridged ford over the River Irt. Curiously, heading back from the ford, we also saw the first person who we'd seen on foot for a while, an elderly man. Where the path reaches the track the route of the England Coast Path on the map just stops, to be resumed about a kilometre to the east, the other side of the ford. A fat lot of good that is, on a National Trail which claims to be open all the way along this section of coast. We're not impressed, though fortunately we had spotted the issue in advance and were planning to turn left onto the track in any case. However, we'll be keeping hold of our old paper Outdoor Leisure 6 map (copyright 2005) which shows an alternative route, as was taken by the Cumbria Coastal Way. This has been superseded by the gappy England Coast Path on more recent mapping, though thankfully the old rights of way seem to remain. 

For today, all that remained for us to do was to walk the short distance to Drigg Station, en route being reminded by signs that Drigg's principle claim to fame is probably the site closeby of the UK's long-term store for low-level radioactive waste. The site was well screened, and Drigg Station proved to be an idyllic  little place, with "Spindlecraft",  a cafe and craft shop in the station building, and the little Victoria Hotel beyond.  There were flowers and old-fashioned signs all around the station, and the level crossing  still gets manually closed when a train is approaching. We had quite a long wait for a train, but that wasn't a hardship. The journey back to St Bees was good; lots of people got on at Sellafield and lots of people (Sellafield workers and those about to start the Coast to Coast, including a couple from Belgium with enormous suitcases) got off at St Bees. For us, this was our final serious walk of this holiday. 

Following leg