Monday 5th October 2026

Our final walk for this trip and we decided to go for a biggie – the 16 mile circuit of Walney Island. If you fancy a 6 hour ramble this could be the one for you – it’s easy going terrain and incredibly varied – just very long!

We caught an early train to Barrow in Furness and physically prepared ourselves with a Wetherspoons Full English breakfast before getting the bus to Jubilee Bridge – the gateway to Walney Island. Another overcast day sadly and the weather forecast predicted high winds and rain later so we’d come prepared with warm coats and hats.

We walked through the residential area of Walney to start with and then this led to a long stretch of National Speed Limit road where we were doing our usual thing of balancing at the edge – it wasn’t too busy though so all good. But 5 miles of this felt a tad tedious – our only views being the mud flats and Piel Castle. We didn’t get to Piel Island but an interesting fact – it has a King – the current King is Aaron Sanderson, a former submarine electrician. The coronation involves sitting in an ancient chair while wearing a helmet, holding a sword, and having beer poured over his head! Now that would have been worth watching.

We could hear the sound of the waves long before we reached the South End but it was fabulous to reach this long beach section of the island. It was quite a varied selection of path – promenade concrete, farm fields, shingle beach, sand, wide open cliff top paths and narrow close to the edge paths too. We realised at one point that we’d got onto the wrong side of the fence as we neared a very large herd of cows, so we scrambled under the barbed wire fence to the other side. Lucky we did as they were exceptionally inquisitive even with a fence between us and we were only inches away on a fairly narrow path, plus it was pretty muddy their side.

By the time we reached Walney Island Beach with its vast stretches of sand, the sun had started to shine and we began to have hope that we weren’t going to get a soaking. Big coat and hat not needed anymore.

We stopped at 10 miles to have some lunch and became hopeful with some very lovely concrete paths and cycle way signs, thought this might take us all the way, but no. We think we could have saved ourselves a fair few miles if we’d cut inland but we stayed faithful to the Coastal Path signs and not only circumnavigated the airfield but also took in the North Walney Nature Reserve which to be truthful was not the most inspiring. Once out of that area we walked through some woodland, then across a few more farm fields and back into civilisation.

And then it was just another two miles or so to get back to Jubilee Bridge – those final miles are always the hardest and the last week of walking was definitely catching up on us.  As I was having a weary little sigh, Steve chose to tell me (jokingly) that it’s so much harder for him because as well as walking, he has to keep us on course, he has to carry the rucksack and he has to take the photos!  Boy was I chuffed later when Strava revealed that over the same distance, I had done 3,000 more steps than Steve – it’s SO much harder for me!!  Felt great to finish it though and we clocked up just over 16 miles.  And not a drop of rain.