Day 139 Carlisle to Maryport

 

Date: Thursday 1^st August 2013   Distance: 43.0 Miles

 

What a strange day! After breakfast we set off on roads to the city, onto the cycleway under the main road. The cycle-path followed the edge of the river for 2 or 3 miles. It was quite rough and shingly and then we had to climb stairs pushing the bike up a groove on the left side ( but surely most people are right handed!)

 

 At a cycle gate we had to take a pannier off to get through and another we had to go underneath- to what purpose as a motorbike would have got through too? We met several walkers taking the Hadrian’s Wall Path.

 

Burgh by sands, though not right by the sea, is a lovely village of stone and brick cottages. Burgh is pronounced Bruff apparently. Restorers were working on St Michael’s church, built from stones from Hadrian’s Wall and it looked interesting to visit if we had the time with its Norman doorway and 14th century tower. We passed a statue of Edward 1 in bronze in the village though a monument to his memory is older and in need of some attention in the salt marshes a mile north of the village. It marks the spot where Edward was killed.

 

We followed the Roman wall, though there are no stones left now only the grassy mound it stood on, alongside mudflats of the Solway Firth. As we came into a collection of buildings we noticed a tea and ices sign. It led to a farm with a little hut with a table, chairs and a self service drinks machine. There was a fridge with cold drinks, a sink, kettle and just one mug. An array of cereal bars were also there for the peckish. An honesty box and a book to write comments in were dutifully used and we whiled away our rest time chatting to fellow cyclists whose brother in law was in the same school and class as me in Lewes. Father and son were doing a coast to coast organised trip and we hope they enjoyed it. It was a nice little stop and the toilet facilities were good and surprisingly that was all we found until 4 pm when we stopped at a Garden Centre- nowhere for lunch. We’d just stopped at a churchyard and shared peanuts, bananas and a few oatcakes when we were desperate. A little shop later let us use their loo. Bob had earmarked several pubs, all shut until the evening.

 

We went by some radio transmitters sited on an airfield. We found out this was a NATO radio station at Anthorn which began life as an airfield for HMS Nuthatch in the 1940s. It later became a link between Flyingdale in North Yorkshire and United States air defence system when VLF (unaffected by nuclear explosion) was used to transmit orders to submarines. Anthorn had 3 Atomic clocks. From here we could see parts of Scotland that we had visited recently.

 

They had been building a new cycle path, parts nearly completed, on the left hand side of the busy road. We wondered why there had been so many big lorries, full of soil, going our way.

Next we were off road on the promenade past red slabs of stone on the beach. Perhaps the Sweetheart Abbey stones were sent from here by water to New Abbey. We were at Maryport soon after.

 

At the B and B, The Golden Lion Hotel, a little way up from the harbour we settled, then had a tasty meal in seclusion in their restaurant. Everywhere seems to be suffering from a lack of tourists. We walked down to the headland where a redundant rail line meets the coast for taking coal to the ships. The docks and harbour were built for the coal trade by Humphrey Senhouse in the 18th century and Mary was his wife, hence the name for the place. Maryport seems to have many pubs though some may not now be open. There are several museums and a brilliant climbing wall in something called The Wave. Youth seem to be wandering aimlessly here or in large hostile groups around cars playing loud music. We haven’t seen this much elsewhere.

 

There is an archaeological dig at the top of the hill- the roman fort at Alauna with the Senhouse Roman museum next to it. It opened too late in the morning for us to go in.