What is the England C2C?

aka Wainwright's Coast to Coast Path.  305 km (190 miles) across England from St. Bees on the west coast (Irish Sea) to Robin Hood's Bay on the east coast (North Sea).  The route traverses three national parks - Lake District, Yorkshire Dales and North York Moors.  Alfred Wainwright was a bit of a British walking icon.  In 1973 he published "A Coast to Coast Walk", an illustrated guidebook to the long-distance trail he created through the valleys, hills and moors of northern England.  The route is not, however, a nationally recognized footpath and does not carry any official status.  So - no official trail which introduces the requirement to find our own way in places and the potential for getting lost.  Stay tuned!  Supposedly the prevailing winds will be behind us by going west to east, but then we know how that worked out for us riding across the US last year :(  

I'm opting for a bit of a princess tour this time around.  I have outsourced the planning to a company in England.  They've made all the lodging arrangements, provided us with guidebooks and maps, and will be transporting our luggage each day.  Our stops will be mostly in very small villages and we'll be staying in quaint-looking renovated buildings several centuries years old - B&Bs and pubs, mostly.  We'll just be carrying a daypack - lunch, water, raingear, an extra layer, etc.  We will have 16 days of walking plus a day in St. Bees at the start.  We'll fly into Manchester and catch a train to St. Bees.  At the end, we'll take a train to Edinburgh, Scotland and spend three days there before flying home.  I'll be travelling with 2 friends from Calgary (Nony & Trudy) and 1 from New Zealand (Marilyn).  

The walk starts on June 4th.  Assuming that we have wifi & spare time along the trail I will update from time to time.