On today's walk there are about three small settlements between the start and finish points. Unsure what facilities would be available en-route, we carried lunch and the ever-trusty Jetboil for a brew-up.
There is a nice harbour area in Maryport in which, if we only had the time, we would happily have sat and watched the day pass by. In earlier times it was a busy port, used extensively to export coal and other products from the local mines. Maryport was also a fairly major Roman town, the port used to supply the defensive line of forts on the coast and along Hadrians wall. Shortly after you leave the pier you pass below the location of both the Roman fort (circa 120AD) and the Senhouse museum. As you progress along the beach there are beautiful views over the Solway to the area round about Kircudbright and Dumfries.
As many of you will know, despite the beauty of a beach, long-distance walking on sand is hard on the calve muscles and it would not be wrong to say that it was a slog at times. When you are walking on remote beaches, with long straight stretches laid out in front of you, it can be difficult to ascertain your progress or otherwise. Our tactic is usually to look for some feature of the landscape or the horizon for a marker. For much of our day after turning Dubmill Point, it was a tower structure on the horizon roughly where we thought Silloth should be. The problem with the strategy was, although it seemed we walked for miles, the structure never seemed to come any closer or larger and before too long it became an annoyance.
Increasingly walking in the middle of the sands or by the waters edge we only had the sun, sand, sea, sky and distant horizons as points of interest. When the tide is at its lowest point here the beach is immense and, on a sunny day with bright conditions there is a wonderful sense of space and light. The views across the Solway are the star of the show here, the far shore of Scotland coming ever closer as you move towards Silloth, the textures and colours of the near and far landscapes and horizons ever-changing as you progress.
Fortunate to have the tide in our favour today, as a consequence, we enjoyed a superb day's walking with, at times, sublime views over the Solway Firth. From start to finish on the beach section the views just continued to improve as the day wore on. Lucky indeed are we coastal walkers!