This is me on my way following Wainwright's Coast to Coast route from st. Bees to Robinhood's Bay. The mountain (hill) is called Striding Edge.

The walk is about 300 Km (190 miles) and visits 3 national parks. Especially the Lake District is great (we only had little rain). We should have walked the other way around, since the finish at the east coast was a bit flat (anticlimax). Coast to coast was a lot easier than the Pennine Way [1]. The later is about 430 Km (270 miles) from Edale (mid England) to Kirk Yetholm (Scotland). Quote from the Footprint map: "The Pennine Way is TOUGH. Long sections traverse some very high and lonely stretches of countryside, often with no distinct path or waymark to offer help. The southern sections over the peat moorlands of Derbyshire and South Yorkshire can be particularly demanding, more so after wet weather." We did have quite a bit of (horizontal) rain, but it wasn't that bad. No one went further than his waist into the soacked moor. It's the art of thinking light and spotting the firm patches to hop on ;-)



Bog hopping
Don't try this on your own after a rain period; keep high and avoid the dales. If you're going for it, don't be fooled by the little white flowers (they usually float in mud), thrust on the green patches instead. A few blades of grass is often enough to ensure a firm patch (sometimes not ;-). You might consider maintaining a fair speed. If you ever make a mistake, it might be interesting to know, the shoe you left behind got stuck in a layer of peat at least some thousand years old...

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