Day 76 – Barrow-in-Furness to Broughton-in-Furness

We revert to the traditional morning timing for our outbound trip to Cumbria, arrive on schedule, and are back by the pedestrian bridge (submerged) shortly before midday. The route out of Barrow takes us along largely deserted streets and, as such, is somewhat reminiscent of the equally unremarkable – and rather tired looking – outskirts of Blackpool. But within an hour, a narrow track takes us from the road in Ormsgill back down to the coast, from where there are good views back over to the north end of Walney Island. However, these are as nothing compared with what we see when we’ve walked round the tidal bay of Scarth Bite and then Lowsy Point. The vista along the Duddon Estuary towards the Scafells in the distance is described by the Coastal Way guide book as “stupendous”, and this is no overstatement. The sands stretch out before us in the sunshine, the indications from the guide book, John’s GPS logger and Ben’s OS map are that the route along the beach is not dependant on tide timetables, and we look forward to a few hours of relaxed and scenic walking towards Askam and beyond. How hopes can be dashed! Things remain relaxed and scenic for the 45 minutes or so that it takes us to reach Roanhead. This is apparently where “Barrow goes to the seaside”. It’s also where an abnormally high tide prevents us from getting round a rocky headland – and because our various maps and books all assume that it’s always possible to continue along the foreshore, there are no alternative routes which don’t involve very considerable diversions. It is far from easy to summarise the events of the next hour, but they include a steep – and heavily wooded – grassy bank up to a barbed wire fence which has to be negotiated to reach a field; a brief period of respite crossing the field and walking a short distance along a lane before heeding the warning of “Private Property” and, more significantly, “Bull in Field”, and diverting down a track to a woodland pool; realising that this is in fact the only track to/from the pool; and finally thrashing our way through bracken which is often at shoulder height (for John and Gary – Ben almost disappears on a couple of occasions) to get back to the beach on the other side of the rocky headland. During the course of this “adventure”, John loses his watch and, when we’re beyond the point of no return in the  bracken, and still  some way from the beach, we learn from the logger that our completely covered legs and feet have been walking over an area which contains several disused mine shafts! Might it have been better simply to sit on the beach and wait for the tide to recede??? It has to be said that all of this excitement seems to have a somewhat sobering effect on the rest of the day. Certainly, the scenery doesn’t look quite as spectacular as it did earlier, and occasional small problems with underfoot conditions and consequent minor diversions (particularly crossing and re-crossing the railway line between Askam and Kirby-in-Furness) create slightly more irritation than they would otherwise merit. As a consequence, after getting through Kirby and reaching the railway station at Foxfield, the unanimous decision is speedily reached that we should complete the remaining couple of miles to Broughton-in-Furness by roadside footpaths rather than risk further difficulties arising on a slightly more direct route through woods, fields and farms. We arrive in Broughton around 6:00 pm and any lingering “sobering effect” completely disappears when we enter the extremely welcoming and convivial bar of our overnight stop, the Manor Arms. During the course of our on arrival couple of pints, we are almost tempted to accept the invitation to participate in the quiz night which is due to start later in the evening but decide that, after freshening up, we should honour our booking for supper at the Black Cock Inn (a couple of hundred yards away) instead. Good food – and red wine – and also very good timing because we arrive back at the Manor Arms during an extended interval of the quiz thus affording the time for a couple of stickies to be taken on board and to get to our rooms before the resumption of the local hostilities.