13/03/11 - Hest Bank

Weekend Away
Number of Pubs - 4
Best - All of them (except the wetherspoons)
Number of caches - 6
Walk Distance - 5 Miles
From Country Walking Magazing in 2002.

13/3/11 - Hest Bank at EveryTrail


Staying up for a weekend in Lancaster.  Always wanted to explore this city - its on the doorstep of the lakes, has good rail links to London, Edinburgh and Manchester and has a lot of history.  It didn't disappoint and looks like a target as a potential place to live.

Saturday was the drive up, drop car off at the Waggon and Horses and head into town for an explore.  Started at Wetherspoons for an exceptionally good value breakfast but slight disturbed by the amount of people drinking bottles of wine with their breakfast at 11am.  Still - you need to drink in a Wetherspoons as they are anti-pubs.  With nice toilets.  Wander around the shops and up to the castle, a nap and a decent meal at Quite Simply French in the evening.

Sunday was for walking and we drove the three miles up to Hest Bank.  Parked by the beach and could see the tide was out - this was good for a cache that we were hoping to do on the way back.  Head south along the coast before crossing the railway line and getting down to the canal for a 2 mile stretch north to the camp site at Bolton Holmes.  Canal has lots of interesting buildings, including one with its very own bridge.

Swing Bridge

At the camp site there is a cafe - whcih we snuck into for tea and scones.  Sonia won't contemplate a walk without some form of cream tea although the lack of jam caused some mutterings under her breath.

Here we pick up the coastal path again.  There are exceptional views over the mudflats, the lake district to the North and Morecambe to the south.

Lakes in the background

The mudflats are well known as dangerous... we kept well to the edge to avoid quicksand but had to get a bit closer to someone who had risked parking.

Let's go off road!

We had found three caches by this point but the highlight was Hest Bank Wharf which was at the end of the Geogian Jetty.  This is only available at low tide and we were lucky to time it right.  Sonia showed me up on the caching front by finding it quite quickly.  We then had the russian doll experience of extracting the log.

Hest Bank Wharf Cache Site

This brought us back to the car.  Here for 28 hours - drank excellent beer in nice pubs, had the best breakfast of my life (no exaggeration), bought another book of lake district walks to ogle and had a bracing walk in the sea air..... all with great company.