Alfred Wainwright’s Coast to Coast walk covers a distance of 190 miles from St. Bees in Cumbria to Robin Hood’s Bay in North Yorkshire. One of the most popular long-distance walks in the country, parts of this spectacular route are now heavily affected by erosion - but the BMC and its charity are helping.

Packed with stunning scenery including the North Pennines Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) and three National Parks, it's no surprise then that the Coast to Coast walk is a firm favourite with the whole of the UK.

The popular problem

When Wainwright devised the route, he never imagined that, 43 years later, thousands of walkers would be completing the journey every year. This high amount of foot traffic along certain parts of the route is exacerbating the peat erosion and damaging the structure of the peat.

To combat the erosion, the Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority (YDNPA) has set up alternate routes to be taken during the winter months in an attempt to re-direct walkers away from fragile sections. Despite their efforts, the area near Nine Standards Rigg continues to deteriorate and has lost a lot of its vegetation. Without anything to hold it in place, the peat is slowly being washed away into nearby streams and has become very soft and boggy. This weakening of the landscape leaves walkers with no clear route to follow, which has lead to a number of wanderers finding themselves lost and some even becoming stuck in the bog. 

Adrian Cottrell, team leader from Kirkby Stephen Mountain Rescue said: “An unfortunate chap got stuck, literally stuck up to his waist in the bog – like being in quick sand, it was really quite surprising.”

Flagging up a solution

The North Pennines AONB Partnership, in collaboration with the Friends of the North Pennines, aims to lay stone flags along a section of the route which crosses the border from Cumbria into North Yorkshire. The flags will ‘float’ on top of the damaged peat and will not only protect the peat, but give people a stable surface to walk on and encourage them to stick to a dedicated route. 

To help support this work the BMC Access and Conservation Trust (ACT) chipped in £5,000 in spring last year, along with another recent donation of £500 to fund new fingerposts to mark the route and a camera to take timelapse picures of the work in progress.

But the most significant boost for the project's future came when The North Pennines AONB Partnership, working alongside the YDNPA, ran its own Crowdfunding campaign to raise £15,000 in support of the project in spring last year. This campaign was  also supported by the BMC, along with the Wainwright Society, television presenter Julia Bradbury, the YDNPA, Kirby Stephen Mountain Rescue Team and Kirkby Stephen and District Walkers Are Welcome.

The Nine Standards Rigg project was part of a bumper crop of path improvement works the BMC and ACT supported last year, which also saw our Mend Our Mountains campaign fund eight projects totalling more than £100,000 in iconic upland landscapes across England and Wales (click here for an update on how these projects are progressing.)

Julia Bradbury, who famously walked the route as part of her popular BBC One series, said: “This type of fundraising tends to bring together like-minded people and fellow travellers who will support this particularly wonderful walk in any way they can and are lovers of our great British countryside.”

This section of the Coast to Coast is not a Public Right of Way but accessed as a permissive route and under the Open Access legislation. To ensure future maintenance of the route, Cumbria County Council has agreed to dedicate the route as an official Right of Way once the improvement works have been completed.

Work on Nine Standards Rigg is now well underway. Watch this space for updates as it progresses over the winter. 

We want to say a big thanks to every BMC member who continues to support us through the Coronavirus crisis.

From weekly Facebook Lives and GB Climbing home training videos, to our access team working to re-open the crags and fight for your mountain access, we couldn’t do it without you.

Did you know that we've just launched a new U27 membership offer for just £1.50 / month? And with full membership from £2.50 / month, it's never been easier to join and support our work: 

https://www.thebmc.co.uk/join-the-bmc-for-1-month-U27-membership

« Back