Back in 2017 we spent a night in a hotel at St. Bees, on our way up to Gretna Green to get married. This is not our van but it seemed appropriate at the time. Today we are setting out from the same hotel to drive to Drigg – a village some 13 miles down the coast – and then walk back.

From the carpark in the dunes of Drigg we head northwards, following a clear path along the coast.

After a couple of miles we reach the village of Seascale – a bleak featureless corner of the country which nevertheless gained some notoriety for the shocking shooting spree of June 2010, when taxi driver Derrick Bird killed 12 people from the area and injured 11 others.

We find nowhere for a cup of tea so we carry on, passing a public information board with warnings of the environmental damage caused by marine litter – I am surprised to read that it takes 600 years for a glass bottle to disappear.

On the outskirts of the village, industrial buildings can be seen behind the trees off to our right, an indication that we will soon be walking through Sellafield nuclear plant – Europe’s largest. No longer involved in generating nuclear power the plant’s main activities are now nuclear waste processing and storage.

The sign asking us to respect nesting birds seems a little incongruous, right next to the slightly sinister atmosphere of the nuclear site – but that may be fanciful. Having said that, there was a horrible accident here in 1957 which released enough radiation to cause from 100 to 240 deaths from cancer.

We move on, under a railway bridge and across a pipe line..

The plant is heavily fortified……

Moving into more pleasant territory we make our way down towards a strip of water winding its way through an area of green meadowlands, and it is here we miss the turning which would have taken us across the railway line and back to the beach. It takes a while before we realise that the path has disappeared, only to be replaced by very uneven ground, impenetrable undergrowth and rusty wire from abandoned fences. Trying to avoid a twisted ankle I keep my head down but at one point a flash of red catches my eye off to the left, where I see two people walking at a brisk pace on the other side of the railway line. Ah ha!

Not willing to retrace our steps we struggle manfully on and soon, to my immense relief, we spy an underpass under the railway line which puts us back on the straight and narrow.

The path now takes us past Braystones station, and at one point turns off right to follow a minor road – but we decide to stay on the shingle beach. Up ahead are a line of ramshackle beach huts in varying states of disrepair. It has the atmosphere of a trailer park but on further investigation we learn that a lot of the houses have been here since the fifties.

At some point we see an opening off to the right, under the railway line and onto a minor road which skirts a village called Netherton and takes us down to the station.

We climb upwards which gives us a view of the beach and realise that the bohemian site we walked though at Braystones, actually continues along the shore but has morphed into a stretch of solid suburban houses.

We continue to move upwards through an area of burnt bushes deliberate no doubt – to improve the health of the eco-system. The practice is known as prescribed burning.

Reaching the top of the climb we can now see the buildings of St. Bees in the far distance and at the first opportunity we drop down to the beach and walk the last mile to our accommodation.

This is the last walk of the summer – the rest of the west coast must wait until next Spring.

Distance: 10 miles