In the Beginning - Hiking England's Coast to Coast Way: Landscape, Laughter and Love - page 5

egg-shaped talisman of hope and endurance that they would carry with them on their walk
to the North Sea. Then they assiduously dipped their boots in the brine, in homage to Al-
fred Wainwright, who initiated this rite as a reverence to the Walk. Skeptics suggest he was
in league with hiking boot manufacturers, since salt water and boot leather is a corrosive
cocktail. We enjoyed most the family with the dog. They carried backpacks of descending
size, the smallest one belonging to the dog—forced to carry his own kibble we supposed.
In a lapsed Christian country, there were nevertheless many rituals to follow; the first fit-
tingly, the reverence of a “full English breakfast” before we were commissioned to step
forth. To Texan Chris, this was nothing short of a revelation, an epiphany, a solid blessing
of the stomach before the start.
We followed all the other rites. In obeisance, we dipped feet, picked pebbles and smiled at
the camera God, and then we were away, up the headland and north, west even before we
swung doggedly east.
The monument to Wainwright overlooks the beach at St. Bees .
And so it began: the beginning that put an end to preparations and a start to tackling this
new adventure. If we had deluded ourselves that this was more a spiritual than a physical
journey we were soon disabused. At the first rest stop, without a flushing toilet, or toilet of
any kind, we regretted the morning coffee and its diuretic aftermath! At the second, a be-
lated lunch, we wondered if this had really been such a good idea after all. As we breasted
Dent, a nippled hill of steep proportions, we feared what mountains lay ahead, and began
to hallucinate about sleeping in the good “Shepherd's Arms.” As it turned out many miles
later, this was no mirage, no delusion, but our first overnight spot at The Shepherd's Arms