Day 7 - St Bees

Distance Walked: Don't know, Time Taken: Don't care, # Beer: 1/2 pint of Wainwright Amber Ale

Today I headed to St Bees to meet up with my tour group.  Tomorrow we start the C2C walk for real.  There are six of us in the group - Aaron and Robin (an Australian couple from the Sunshine Coast), Mark from the USA, Liz also from the USA, Sue from Yorkshire and me.  Our guide is Paul and our luggage wrangler is Tim.  Can you believe I've remembered everyone's name?!   Below is a photo of the most important piece of kit for this holiday.

 

Today involved a lot of waiting around so not much to report.  I had to wait for my train from Carlisle, then I had to wait to check in at my hotel here, then I had to wait to meet up with the tour group for a briefing on how this was all going to work.  Now I think of it, we had been promised tea and cake at the briefing.  I'd complain about missing out but dinner was enormous.

The only notable events in my day were my meals - which were generally bad.  I had breakfast in the hotel restaurant and had my first really bad cup of coffee (a real ciofeca).  Most of the coffee I've had up until now has been decent as it has been plunger coffee and that is typically OK if you use enough coffee and it is fresh enough.  This morning it was barista made and the barista was not very competant.  For breakfast I had eggs benedict but with smoked salmon instead of ham.  For some reason, the chef decided to season this with a good sprinkle of sea salt. That seasoning, along with the saltiness of the smoked salmon, made it all Not Very Good.

 

I had lunch here in St Bees at a seaside cafe.  I had the quiche of the day with chips and salad.  I didn't ask what the flavour of the quiche was.  It wouldn't have mattered if I did, because whatever they told me would have been a lie.  It just tasted like a massive hunk of baked eggs.  All in all, very Dull.

 

We all had dinner together in the hotel.  All meals are included in our tour price.  We were told we could have all 3 courses if we wanted, but we all just opted for mains which provided to be wise.  The servings were massive.  I began as I mean to go on and had the pie, but with mash, rather than chips.  It was Harmless.  Paul ordered the lamb chop and got 3 huge ones along with mash and peas.  Aaron ordered the steak and chips but asked them to leave off the extra trimmings.  When they brought it out they had omitted the mushrooms but still included grilled tomatoes (a whole branch (?) of cherry tomatoes) and a bowl full of onion rings.

 

After dinner we eventually levered ourselves up from the table and went outside to watch the sun go down.  Tomorrow we will climb up this headland, gratuitously heading a good way west and north before finally heading east towards the opposite coast.  Tomorrow is a middling day.  The distance is 22km but only one significant climb - right towards the end of course.