Tarn Bay to Silecroft Beach

This leg of the England Coast Path took us past the cottage where we were staying, about a mile and a half inland as the crow flies. In getting our two cars into position, we therefore initially turned right onto the A595, heading south.  After passing through roadworks (resurfacing) we turned right again, through Silecroft (more roadworks) and down to Silecroft Beach.  There is a car park here (SD121812) with an honesty box, and we dutifully paid £2 to leave one car, on the basis that we want councils and communities to keep this sort of car park open. In the other car, we then drove back to the north through Bootle and back to the place where we'd parked yesterday, at SD080907. Someone had parked where we'd parked yesterday, so we went slightly further along the coast from the bend. The tide was higher than it had been when we here yesterday, otherwise the view was much the same. 

Today's walk was lovely, but it didn't get off to the most auspicious of starts. The woman who had parked in "our place" was just setting off along the path with her dogs. We set off behind her - and gave her quite a surprise when we went to overtake. However, this meeting was most fortuitous as she was able to alert us to the fact that the coast path had crumbled into the sea around Tarn Point, and to advise us to head down onto the beach. We quickly saw what she meant; the path above us really had been completely washed away in places.  So much for the England Coast Path! 

The dog-walker had also alerted us to the fact that by the time you've past the section of cliff with no walkable path, the cliff is quite high so you can't get back up it so, as advised, we continued along the beach, watched by two sheep, and before too long the cliff lowered again and we were able to rejoin the route as shown on the, now on a track which climbed gradually - and what a lovely surprise we got from the top of the slope. We were heading down, not onto a beach but onto the glorious green of Hyton Marsh, separated from the beach by the River Annas.

There was a clear footpath across the grassy land adjacent to the river, and we were amused by a cow standing on its own peninsula. Eventually a modern footbridge took us across the river and we continued, now on a strip of land between the beach and the river. To our left, we were beginning to recognise some of the farms we'd passed on our walk from the cottage to the coast on Saturday, with Black Combe (today part obscured by low cloud) behind. We reached the beach near Annaside and the track we'd taken on our return leg to Fell View Cottage on Saturday.  The next little section, walked in the reverse direction today, was much as it had been then; the campers had gone, but the grass was still long and wet!

We continued on a better track just slightly inland from the coast, but there was some more interesting walking ahead, through another landscape that wasn't at all what we'd expected. It was tougher walking than we thought we'd encounter on this section of the England Coast Path but also very enjoyable.  Our track climbed and then, wow, there was a stunning view ahead of us, with cliffs,  beach  and sea and Haverigg Wind Farm in the distance. We descended steeply to a track at the bottom. I wanted a break and had hoped that we might reach the place where "Bog Hole" is marked on the map and that there might be a bench or similar on which to sit. However, we hadn't reached Bog Hole yet (indeed we weren't completely sure where it was) and there were no benches, so we resorted to setting on the step of a stile to eat some nuts. It wasn't as if we were in the way of anyone else; the woman who had alerted us to the problems back at Tarn Bay was the last person we'd seen.

We weren't sure of the exact direction of our onward route, but we headed diagonally towards the coast, climbing again. We emerged above the cliff (apparently with Bog Hole beneath us) then descended again. Here we reached a track. To the left the track headed inland towards the hamlet of Gutterby, with a wind turbine visible across the fell, and Black Combe beyond; to the right the track sloped steeply down towards the beach at the base of the cliff. However, we continued ahead, climbing again on path that headed diagonally back to the cliff top.

We continued along the cliff which meandered around a bit because of slumping below.  There were several occasions where a spur of land headed towards the sea, and our path went that way...only to loop round and return close to the place where we'd been previously. We had get past a number of cows on the path and later, there were sheep in some rather precarious locations.

 A couple of miles from the Bog Hole area, a path led us onto the beach. I headed out to the harder sand closer to the sea, and very much enjoyed the walk. It was only when we got to the Silecroft Beach car park, where we'd parked, that we realised that the official route back the way we'd come was not on the beach but rather on a path along the (now low) cliff behind. We're not quite sure whether we were meant to stay on the cliffs all the way or walk along the beach for a while before returning to the cliffs.