Saturday 3rd October 2026
I know it’s Cumbria but boy have we climbed a few hills today, I can laugh now that I’m relaxing on the sofa blogging, but it was painful at times.
Our Saturday of course had started with a parkrun and getting to the local Lancaster one involved a mile walk to the very picturesque Williamson Park – UPHILL. And, although we appreciated the beauty of the park with its monuments and its stunning views over Lancaster, the run was hugely hilly with a lot of trail thrown in. We dragged ourselves around, as you do, and as always, the other runners and organisers were a friendly bunch. Then it was time for the mile walk back – this time DOWNHILL.
So just the 5 miles of exercise completed before we had breakfast and caught the train to Grange Over Sands for todays coastal walk. Steve had been trying to plot a route between Grange Over Sands and Ulverston but the usual blog guide we follow warned us against attempting it as it involves a major road with no pavements. It seemed that we could get as far as Cark easy enough so this short walk seemed perfect for the afternoon.
A scenic promenade was our first section of path, and being a Saturday was well populated with walkers. We enjoyed the ease. This eventually led us on to a quiet road, then some muddy lanes (a huge puddle provided us with wet feet for the day), a path running alongside the railway and into the village of Kents Bank. Some very beautiful houses here and we were saying how lucky they were to be so remote and yet have their own railway station. Then we had to tackle a humungous HILL and I’m not exaggerating … it was both steep and long, you needed a good set of lungs to get to the top. Not another walker in sight – funny that! Still following our OS app, we literally turned a corner and then were guided down ‘Jack Hill,’ and incredibly steep descent – the type that pulls on your calf muscles.
At the bottom of the hill there was a little cluster of very grand but rustic looking houses and they clearly weren’t keen on ramblers as there were “Private’ signs everywhere, and a lot of barking dogs, guarding said properties. But we had it on good authority, from our OS app, that there was a Public Footpath somewhere – but finding it was a little tricky. We tried several paths through a wooded area, back tracking each time, before Steve spotted the narrowest of passageways with a hidden Public Footpath sign … and we got back on our way.
The next section was across a couple of farm fields, rather boggy and knobbly fields I’m afraid, no path laid out particularly … long wet grass. And to my delight, a herd of inquisitive cows – as always I got anxious as they moved towards us … and as always Steve managed to shoo them away using his long limbs and loud voice to let them know that we didn’t have anything for them and we didn’t particularly want them following us. Yet another stampede avoided!!
From there we got onto a lovely flat tarmac lane and we hopefully had our destination in sight. We were near an airfield and saw a lot of parachute activity and then some low flying planes which proved exciting. We had hope of finding an embankment wall which seemed to be indicated on the map, but no such luck. We had to make another u-turn and back track our way down the long road that took us into Cark. Just nearing the village we stumbled across a cafe and treated ourselves to coffee and meat pies as recommended by the lovely lady running it. From there it was the final UPHILL trek to the railway station … and we had covered a further 6 miles of the coastline.
Despite the hills it was a fabulous day (Parkrun + Coastal Walk = 11 miles) but I can certainly feel it in my legs tonight. And you know we’ll be back for more tomorrow – there’s no stopping these Rambling Roses. xx
