Day 82 – Workington to Flimby

A major transport problem was bound to happen at some stage, and perhaps we’ve been fortunate that nothing of real significance has happened during the first 81 days. Our plan today is to go by train to Carlisle and then take a cab to Workington in the hope of getting the day’s walking under way around noon so as to reach our overnight stop at The Ship in Allonby by early evening. However, due to an incident at Carnforth involving a maintenance train, all mainline services from the south are terminating at Preston. In addition, earlier delays caused by trackside/signalling problems mean that we’re over an hour late arriving into Preston and have missed another train which would have got us to Lancaster in time to catch the train round the coast to Workington. Replacement bus services are available, but the queues are very long and slow moving. The prospect of waiting for what would probably be a couple of hours to take an unpredictable bus journey to Carlisle and then still need to get to Workington, is unattractive at best. Careful consideration of the limited available alternatives results in us deciding that the best option (i.e. the one with fewest things to go wrong) is to wait for the next coastline train from Preston to Workington – changing at Barrow. Therefore, just after noon, rather than starting our walk from Workington as planned, we are ensconced in a pub outside Preston station having a drink and an early lunch. The coast trains eventually get us to Workington around 4:30, and it then takes another 10 minutes or so to retrace our steps to where we finished on day 81. This leaves us with a maximum of two and a half hours walking, of which the first hour is spent getting round the western and northern sides of Workington before turning north and spending much of the second hour alongside roads or on cycle tracks due to supposed erosion of the coastal route. We had hoped that even this limited amount of walking might get us as far as Maryport, but we eventually finish almost a couple of miles short of there at Flimby. A lady who sees us at a bus stop poring over maps and smart phones informs us that no buses run through to Allonby at this time of day but, with her assistance and following a couple of phone calls to The Ship, we manage to track down a local cab driver (so local that his car emerges from a side street almost opposite the bus stop) who takes us to Allonby and agrees to come and take us back to Flimby in the morning. We arrive at The Ship soon after 7:30 and, because the chef has stayed on to cook supper for us, we eat as soon as we’ve taken our bags to our rooms. Tasty food washed down, unusually, with a couple of beers and followed, less unusually, by a glass of malt.