Pathfinding through the fells

Three weeks from today, I'll be flying en route to London, preparing to hike the western half of the famous Coast to Coast path -- as discussed in an earlier post.

This will be the fourth hike of this sort I've done in Britain, and I suspect the most difficult.  The path starts from St. Bees on the Irish Sea, cuts through the fells and dales (the ups and downs!) of the Lake District, and becomes more horizontal as it traverses Westmorland, ending up at Kirkby Stephen near the Yorkshire border.

Three years ago, Maya and I discovered how easy it is to lose one's path when hiking in the Lake District high country.  A combination of fog, rain, a faint path, and lack of signage finally doomed us.  We had to retrace our steps to our former night's accommodation and call a taxi to take us circuitously (and expensively) to our next night's rest.

I blamed myself for our misadventures, but the guide book I'm reading in preparation for the C2C (as they like to call it) warns us that the signage is intentionally poor in Britain's national parks (one of which includes most of the Lake District).  The point seems to be that real men don't need signs.  Hikers of the proper sort have a compass, a wet and soggy map, and the brains that God presumably gave them to put the two together.  Unlike American national parks -- whose shiny, well-engraved wooden signs remove all ambiguity as to the proper direction -- at least on dedicated trails.

The C2C path has standardized locations, of precisely known longitude and latitude, designated by number as "waypoints," points that can be located on my iPhone's GPS. I have downloaded maps showing the path's waypoints by number (and they are also marked on the sketchy maps provided by the company that has arranged my accommodations).  However, I'll be going into this hike with no previous "on foot" GPS experience, and I don't want to rely on aiming for waypoints as my primary means of finding my way over and through the misty fells.  (GPS waypoints are intended only as backups to more normal path-finding techniques, in any event -- you can't use them as you would a GPS in your automobile.  "Turn left at that funny looking oak tree and then follow the path for 3 tenths mile.")

No.  Luckily, I'm provided with an excellent pocket book containing highly detailed hiking maps along with precise instructions.  I just have to keep the book reasonably dry during inclement weather.  But the book does repeatedly suggest that various portions of the route are tricky to follow, even using its expert guidance.  The book's maps are sketches emphasizing landmarks, not contour maps.  I do have a good compass, and I'm hoping to locate contour maps -- at least for the area covered during the first couple of days, when route-finding will apparently be most difficult.

I always tend to worry about these difficulties more than proves necessary once I'm on the scene.  And it's a pleasant kind of worry, reassuring me that the hike will be a challenge, and that I won't be just trudging alongside a road (which, unfortunately, too much of the Hadrian's Wall hike -- as fun as that hike was, historically and scenically -- proved to be.)

It's a mere seven day hike, with a warm bed and great food awaiting me at each day's end.  If I get lost -- well, let's face it.  It's not like getting lost in the North Cascades.  Nor can I pretend that I'm Daniel Boone, struggling through an unknown countryside, and fighting off wild animals and Indian attacks.

But it should be enough of a challenge that I'll have a few stories to relate when I get home.