Please state the nature of your emergency...

Jet lag is finally just a past inconvenience as we rise at the more respectable time of 6am.  We have our last breakfast at 'our' Patisserie before making our way to Euston station for our 10:30am train to Carlisle.  The next few hours are spent in luxuriously smooth and indulgent travel as we leave London behind and speed towards the north.  

This is it.

Months spent preparing on training walks, daily walks to work and numerous hard slogs back home up the steep misery of Mount Street, research and bookings made through Contours, and last minute shopping trips to Macpac (all essential of course:o) all culminate here.  We're on our way to the start line and the walk begins tomorrow.  While Alfred Wainwright's book is still the definitive guide, we will be using a different Wainwright guide, this one by Martin Wainwright (no relation - what are the chances?!) updated in 2012.  I use the train journey to study the guide and maps for tomorrow.  It still seems a bit surreal to be honest and ever so slightly daunting to think we'll be walking at least 22km tomorrow.

The Wainwright guide on the Coast to Coast, which started it all...

We change trains at Carlisle for the much older, slower and cramped train to Barrow which stops at St Bees.  It is a very warm afternoon and the coast is bathed in brilliant sunshine as the train wends its way south, stopping at various stations along the way.  We are delayed outside Whitehaven for over 30 minutes due to a problem with the track.  It is prescient perhaps of what is coming.  As it happens we will be one of the last trains to pass along this track for a few days after tonight.

When we finally pull into the station at St Bees we see a familiar face.  My Dad is there to meet us together with our lovely cousin Veronia who has been showing him around sites in the district that are significant to our family history.  They take us to our B+B for the night which is conveniently right next door to the station.  Unfortunately we then have to haul cases up stairs to our room on the top floor but as we are also to discover this will be de rigueur over the coming weeks.  Our room at Stonehouse Farm is comfortable, bright and airy and we use the time before dinner to get our gear and backpacks ready for tomorrow.  

We have a splendid dinner at the pub next door with Dad and Veronia.  Dad explains why he hasn't been in contact since arriving in the UK.  His mobile phone purchased in Australia designed 'for seniors' combined with the SIM card he purchased on arrival in Manchester has a tendency to call emergency numbers only.  Despite best efforts to contact Mum back home and me in London, the phone kept putting him through to 999.  In a panic he had to hang up every time his call was answered with 'please state the nature of your emergency....'  He has now given up in case he should be arrested for making vexatious calls or triggering the loud siren the phone is also capable of sounding when tampered with.  It's too funny.  Fortunately we will be travelling together for a couple of weeks now so the phone can safely be switched OFF.

We while away the hours in the comfort of the pub with good food and company.  The setting sun dazzles through the large french doors.  It's a glorious evening.  If the weather holds like this the walk will be perfect.

Later that same night...

As we turn out the light for bed, the first heavy drops of rain start splashing against the skylight in our room.  The sky is inky black but later there are flashes of lightning and the discrete little drops become sheets of continuous rain.  We keep waking up during the night to the sound of rain and tempest.  We don't say anything.  In the land between sleep and waking, in our safe and warm positions under the bedclothes and separated from the start of the walk by a few hours, we have only our own thoughts which turn over and over in our heads ... 'shit, I hope this rain stops before morning, what have we signed ourselves up for?!'