The tide was high at Robin Hood’s Bay, waves licking the cobbled slipway, inching towards the village’s tumbling, smuggler-y streets. Boots swapped for sandals, I stood daringly close to the water’s edge, part hoping the steel-blue sea would engulf my sore but triumphant toes. I’d made it. Walked across northern England, coast to coast. All in, about 200 miles. Three national parks. Lakes, fells, dales, moors, some flat bits in between, market towns, valley-tucked villages, numerous pubs, plentiful pints.
The Coast to Coast Path runs from the red rocks of St. Bees Head in Cumbria, on the west coast, to cliff-clinging Robin Hood’s Bay, in Yorkshire, on the east. It’s a route first devised by the legendary British walker, writer, and curmudgeon Alfred Wainwright in 1973, and it’s been followed by many hikers since. But it’s always been unofficial. However, in 2026, the Coast to Coast will finally become one of Britain’s recognized National Trails, a change in status that means improved signage, access, and path quality, and a greater focus on landscape conservation.
Official or not, it was the best adventure. Two weeks of moving, slowly, through England at her most elemental, where people and deep layers of human history were never far away, but with many moments — late afternoon atop St. Sunday Crag, deep in the bruise-hued heather of Urra Moor — where I felt I might be the only one in the world. A test for the body, a boon for the soul.
Macs Adventure offers a range of self-guided walking trips along the Coast to Coast Trail.
-- Sarah Baxter is a freelance travel writer and the 2025 UK TravMedia Awards' Domestic Travel Writer of the Year
