 The Cumbria Way is a 73 mile linear hike through some of the most beautiful and contrasting landscapes that Cumbria has to offer. Join myself and Fern as we head from the historic town of Ulverston, taking in the mountains, lakes, woodlands and glacial valleys of the Lake District, ending in the equally historic city of Carlisle. Loser socks! Loser socks! Loser socks! Loser socks if you don't stop ruining the yard here mate. That's it, we've started the c- this is us! We've started the Cumbria Way, cheers Fern, cheers to the Cumbria Way. There it is. We've started the hike in Ulverston, fashionably late and after a couple of pints we've headed off to find a camp spot for the first night. We've started the Cumbria Way, we've only just started and we've not even started. We're fighting about Fern's trying to actually kill me with her phone, rock and roll. It's our first encounter with heifers and if you don't give them grief they won't give you grief. I feel like they can sense my fear. But you don't have any fear? Oh yeah. Do you remember? Fern's terrified of cows. Haha no, not really. I'm a bit. No. I don't think they're terrified quite strong. If you had to use one of them as a carpet in front of your fire which one would it be? The brown one. Yeah, which brown one? Now I've looked at it. But I don't want to. You're having a good time? Acting. Sorry guys, it's not me. I'll be better in the future. Just stay tuned for the next one. We've just got to do something rugged. Can you point over there? Sunrise Morning One. That's Night One. Night One's pitch to the east. I think that's Markham Bay I believe. The lighthouse. Got a lovely sunrise there. And we're off into these mountains. And we're making up some lost time for day two. And Fern's eating things out of the ground. Here we go. There's not been any latches and locks but this is a gate. I don't know if it's intentionally on an angle like this but it's using gravity a lot here. There you go. But he's made a little stone bridge. Ideal. Are we going to get a tap by or doh? He does, it says tumbry away. Okay. Here we are. Fern on gate duty. Well done. That's good. We're the sort of hikers that go missing on the film. That way. We're like... Excuse me sir, can I come in and fill up my water bottle? He's like, yes you can. Please do, it's down. It's down in the basement. It's the only tap that works. Okay, bait. So we've got... What are these again Fern? White blanket trotters. Lads, oh no. You didn't have to see that one, it looks. Hiya. Sheep whisperer. And these guys over here that stink a little bit. Alright lads. They don't smell too bad actually. Do you want some of that? Yeah, look at that. The nettle. I love it. You may find a small patch of nettles allowed to grow on the church yard and wonder why. Now you can do a sentence each. We try to keep our church yard tidy and at the same time manage it in a way that helps wildlife. But why nettles? Well, I'll tell you Fern. The nettle is a native plant that sustains a wide variety of wildlife. It is food plant. Okay, and sheltered home. You've missed an A out on that. Even I know that. It is food plant. Let's have trust, it might make sense as we go. It is food plant and sheltered home to a number of insects including the caterpillars of the beautiful peacock tortoise shell and red animal butterfly and some moths. It's stinging spines Stinging spines provide a safe habitat for other insects which in turn provide food for predators like birds, ladybirds and their larva and bird butterflies, bullfinches, goldfinches enjoy the ripe nettle seeds. Do you think there's a church now that's going on? Well, while we're doing this, I'll just not say a word. If we go in this door now there's loads of people in silence doing a prayer and we've just been ripping. We're not allowed in. But there is a side of church right now. Well, where are all the people coming from as well who are dead? What do you mean where they come from? Well, it's not like where, yeah. That's why it's so small, I guess. Just because of the farmers. So what I love about getting into the lakes is the stone. When you start getting in, they use all this sauce, the gray slip. Look, I'm a landscaper and builder. I do this sort of stuff. You do flowers and stuff with the perfect mix. I don't think you should try any old dove, honey. What is your sheet? Is it your sheet? Yeah. We made a terrible mistake. Dad, if you find this footage, I love you. Come back. Don't jump into it because that could be the end of you. God, I do jump in it. For the film. Come on. I should have assessed the situation first. Shuffling, shuffling. Go on then, shuffle. I'm only filming when there's times when things could go wrong. That's not good. Because I've come from the South Downs where the paths were just so like, this is a path. To this is like, I like it. You've got to make it up. I need to get my little foraging bag out. Beautiful. We can have them for dinner. We can have them for dinner. Jerky and mushroom sandwiches for all. There you go. Moist by Fern, literally. He's deaf. He's a deaf cat. Deaf cat one to deaf cat two. I don't want to like shock him. Oh my God, Paul, look. He had the one brown eye, one blue I think it would be like. I wonder if he can't see. He can see, he just can't hear. What I want is a deaf and blind cat. Scaredy cat. Scaredy cat, see you later mate. Medic! There you go. For regular viewers, you'll have seen these before. They don't look edible, do they? If in nature you saw something like that, you'd be like, come on mate, that's going to send me to the outer realms of me nodding, potentially death. But they are edible. They lose the colour a little bit when cooked. They don't look as vibrant, but amethyst deceivers will pop a mint bag. Fern, can you walk back down here? Walk through this bit of dappled light for me. Yeah, what are you? I'm here in the bright red t-shirt. Medic! Look at this. Below the yellow gate road. Wait, what do I pull? The gate. There you go. Look, teamwork. And you're wearing your yellow shoes. The yellow shoes. Come, be away. Be away. There you go guys, two people to open one gate. I don't know about it. Grasp me up for not paying like I can find. Medic! A little bag full of mushrooms hanging off her back. Like some sort of hobbit. That's art. Look guys, artwork, look. And then it opens out and reliably informed that this here is the old man of Coniston and that's where we're heading to the foothills of Coniston to actual Coniston where we shall get a pint and some food. Let's have a look in here. No, she's always posing like that. She didn't even know I was going to be filming. It's just a natural thing. Every time I look round even when I don't have my camera it's this, it's this, it's this. I was looking at the sun so I could sneeze. She was actually staring into the sun so she could sneeze. Tactics. I was really enjoying it. I was like, let's make the most of this sneeze. It's just really getting into the moment. Okay. Sometimes a sneeze is a very enjoyable thing. She's not wrong. It's not wrong at all. The reality is for you guys back home and watch it. You know the script. There we see the path sneaking its way through the bracken and I've said it before but I love these paths. They're like the sheep keep the grass down. They're sort of like stones intermittently spaced out. It's like if you could recreate this in your garden you'd be onto something and you can see it there as it snakes through and we're going to duck down here and have a swim in this tan. Right, I've just gazelled over there and Fern's going to do exactly the same. Okay, I'm only filming it in case it goes wrong. Easy. Light work. There we go. There we are anyway, frolicking. Frolick naked. And it's right. I'm up to my knees in the mulch. It feels quite weird and nice. But the the water clarity is brilliant and apparently Fern's just offered me out for a swimming race but I don't know because she lives by the sea. She swims every day. What chance have little old me got? The consequences for failing this jump are massive because look at that. From there to there isn't that bad? Yeah, I get a good run up. I won't go near my straps when these are. Because I'm thinking of the worst. In fact, I would hate it if you fell in because I'd have to deal with the aftermath as well. Okay, Fern. You've got this. Right, eventually it's somewhat on this hike. One of these jumps is going to fail. This is not the time you got this. That's what I did to be honest. No, I jumped it. Come on, stop swearing. No. Come on. No, Fern. To be honest, that's what I did. Yeah. It's easy. It's super easy. See, that's it. She's got herself the smarts there. No bravado, just smart. Just seeing if you're there. Seeing if she's making a sneeze or doing some sort of pose. Bro, has been a few of these come down recently as well because the pines are still quite green. And what's happened is we've lost a few of them. They've come down taking out this one and it's like a domino effect. Like pine trees don't have a tap root so their roots just spread across the top of the ground so they'll come out quite easy and I went to look at that all that perfect resin. And that's what's happened. They've all come down. You can't be going into a blue whale, baby. Can you or whatever? I'm not having the handful of people who have shot by it. Yeah, it's that situation where you're like, I need to know. I can't go up high. So we've got three different radars of different frequencies and then what measurements are you getting through? Are you looking at just movement? So radar gives you measurements as a function of range of reflectivity, so how bright things appear. And we can also measure their velocity, or Doppler. So if you've got moving targets you can separate them in range and velocity and that can help you discriminate between a fast moving boat say and a slow moving swimmer or a sea mammal or something. That's pretty cool. Pretty good office as well, isn't it? Yeah, you got lucky, aren't you? Yeah, it sure beats being in the office. Right, cool. Good luck with the rest of it. Cheers, guys. See you. Bye. You need to shut up. Full? What? Sorry, I'm hungry. I need you to take your dad looking at you. I need you. I need you. I need you to shut up. I need you to take a hard shut up pill. Hungry and tired, we ended up in Coniston, where we found a pub, had a couple of pints and a well earned bar meal. We had an impromptu state, the Udale Inn fuelled on a delightful breakfast. We headed off to see what the day would bring. There we go. Start of day two. This is a folly. I don't know much about the folly because I was reading but I've been sort of stolen the book. Can't get it back, so I'll just have to make it up. This is the folly of old Constantine. He used to use it as a hunting lodge when he used to hunt the poor and bewildered of the neighbouring villages. You learnt anything? Yeah, you're standing in a Gothic folly custom built for foxhounds. Just the dogs. Oh, and also, look, someone's been having westerns signs over there. Just a little heads up for people who are going to do this. It can get quite confusing because normally the arrows have a cumbria weight in the middle of the arrow and then sometimes it just doesn't. And it's saying go that way and that way but that is the way we should go. So don't expect to come on this and use the signs already there. You're going to need a map or at least a guide book to do it. I'll cut these back bits out on this one because it's a real video. Oh, will I? Of course not. I did buy, I bought the guide book the the Ciceroan guide book but what I'll say is that I goofed and then I'll also say stay tuned for an up and coming hike on the Cambrian Way in Ireland because that's what a book I accidentally got. Shout out the Cambrian Way but now we've got this and we've just hit the Lake District proper so you can see the mountains it's lakey as a lot of it is just farmland on the way in and on the way out apparently so this is the real deal and we're going to head towards Black Moss Pot for this evening through Langdale and just see what delights await. So first just said there's a latch a lot this hasn't got a lot going on and all I'm hearing is she doesn't know a lot because bring her back the simplicity of that like how much money has he spent on that that does the same job as everything else it's different, it's easy to use there's a wonderful patina where people have just worn away the paint over years and years of hiking and memory and look at the view of the mountains everything is perfect I've leaned into it a little bit too much because first I said you didn't like it you latch and lock and fuse you have to appreciate that look at it beautiful views you can tell the Chanterelles by the gills go all the way down there the stalk there smell beautiful so we're going to take these and cook them up a trail snack I guess you can't come on a trail with forage by further not forage and she's up there we found more than these there's more than just this one there's a few of them it's a beauty colour on it Hi, Paul's giving me his camera because we're doing a bit of mushroom hunting as we hike we've been to find some edible species so we can cook them up for lunch and anything we find I'm going to tell you a little bit about how to identify them so the first edible mushroom we found are these beautiful Chanterelles we've managed to kind of crush them all they were kind of tucked in to the side of the path so they're not the most beautiful specimens but they're going to taste amazing so what we want to do when we find Chanterelles is just make sure we have the right mushroom and we don't have a full Chanterelle so firstly we're looking for a nice unevenly shaped cap it's yellow in colour take a look at the underside and you want to make sure I don't know how to focus this thing is that it? Maybe make sure that you have grooves in the underside so they're almost like wrinkles you can't move them easily with your thumb they're not like the loose gills that you might find on a button mushroom and then you want to have a look at the stipe and just make sure it's yellow to white and then your final check as well is just to have a look at the inside so cut one open and make sure it's got white flesh so the full Chanterelle is going to be a lot more orange in colour the grooves aren't really going to be there it's going to be much more gills so the gills are going to be much looser you can move them around with your thumb and then importantly as well if you cut one of the full Chanterelles open it's going to be yellow to orange in flesh colour it's not going to have that beautiful white colour but we've got our edible Chanterelles so let's go and eat them and that panoramic was brought to you by me stood on a log the log full of money just had a little stop there ogling these lovely views I'm going to try, I don't know if we're going to make it we're going to try and get to the wind right in in where was it in where we haven't got a clue to see if we can get a drink get a drink you poos and then we'll rest and then we'll see how we feel I can't do me latch and lock because I can't do it what I did I don't deserve to be the CEO of latches and locks I'll do it because I'm using my foot to put it in I can't do it fun I don't normally have a look the vice president of done it teamwork makes the dream work look we've met these guys though see you guys there she is there she is there she is there she is there she is there she is there she is our work is done here we're done thanks for coming the midges are out my carpet cow the one at the back no middle him wonderful sunset look at this it's a classic lock and latch that's a bit pagged but you'll see I'm going to close it up clunk click there's your view thanks for coming and now in the distance is Fern she was cold in the pub she's got down trousers on and a down jacket I was like we're not going to be walking too far the last thing she said was I'm really hot and now she's just walking dressed as a sleeping bag fit for arctic conditions which is hilarious morning on day whatever it is look like shit I've got too many pants, how many pants do I have feel like I've got pissed lovely little pitch wake up no trace left we're heading up there to Dem Dare Hills welcome to map time and you can see map time has been upgraded look with all these little bits and pieces not my doing but I support it wholeheartedly right let's do my best to do a good map time because I let you down on South Downsway so here we go we were late to start we parked the camper in and we headed off on our way up here and you can see we didn't do much we must have walked for maybe 45 minutes maybe an hour, not much at all got up onto the tops and pitched our tent for the first night some lovely views the lighthouse and Markham Bay we were treated with a wonderful sunrise on the morning of day we're calling it day two but essentially it's day one because you know that's how far we were from the start so we went off through this field we went wrong here it's a bit of a it's a tougher one to navigate than first expected so the maps were used quite a bit especially here where we followed this contour and ended up in the top corner of this field had a bit of a head scratch came back joined the path through here through this farm we stopped off at St John's Church we had a little look around there carried on over this road and through this little village here it's all farmland at the beginning and then you hit this which is Broughton Beck followed that on over here over these two roads we got a little bit lost around here I think it was mainly me who got us lost we were falling a cat there was like multiple choices in ways to go on here and the cat distracted me so we ended up going the wrong way we went this way we went this way cat confusion was here and then we ended up going this way so we missed out on this section and we ended up going this way which you can do both so this was the detour we took we stopped here near these woods I made all our own trail snacks I did some jerky I'll leave a video link here if you want to know how to make that and put together some dry banana vegan chocolate and various nuts and things like that and Fern had made some nettle seed energy balls which were more than welcome all the trail snacks were welcomed along the way and off we went down here and we found some what's that one she's drawn there we found some mushrooms some beautiful chanterelles and we'll tell you about what happened to the chanterelles later in the video there's a bit of a road section here which you could I guess take if you wanted to do a shortcut but we wanted to stick to the path as much as we could so we came round here up here and we started to get into the fells and stuff up here and I believe Beacon Tarn is where we stopped off to swim to cool down there's a picture of us swimming there altitude 856 feet sinking mud and that's us me, Fern we didn't have a race in the end but you can guarantee a firm would have won so refreshed after our dip we carried on it's just beautiful man the scenery was just on point all the way through here the weather was lovely coniston water and we met these look you can see them here laser lake science guys we met these science guys we were doing some experiments by the side of the lake I was baffled I had no idea what they were on about but it all seemed pretty cool we started to get a bit tired here we were feeling it and we were pretty hungry and we made it to coniston I got the chat on with the owner and managed to get a pretty good deal at the you deal in so we stayed there in Promchew had a lovely breakfast and then set off again along we went past this old folly up and round and I was getting a bit giddy at this point I think we both were getting a bit giddy because we both can get over excited I mean I've got ADHD I don't know what Fern's excuse is but at the time we saw this butterfly and took a moment just to centre ourselves and the butterfly stuck around for quite a while so we took a few deep breaths and carried on and along we went up here to this car park and thankfully there was a little van selling drinks ice cream cakes so we got an ice cream we got a cake, something to drink and then carried on this bit was beautiful all around this this lake and through these woods some stunning scenery I'm doing good here this is good isn't it we hit this road went along the road for a little bit and then there's multiple choices here and we decided to do a detour around here we stopped off here for some trail snacks bit of a drink look at the map bit of a rest and then we carried on because we wanted to see this waterfall which we did do and actually we had a swim in it it was wild it was cold it was beautiful that was one of the highlights of the trip for me was this waterfall and swimming in it crystal clear water the cold water just invigorated us and helped us with our final push again multiple choices here we came this way I'm gonna say here right this is what we did we didn't come back on here and join this because we saw this track here so we took this and it's a nice little road actually to Ella Water where we stopped at the pub got a bar meal couple of pints we met a few people actually met a subscriber chatted to him for a bit and then the parking family who I know from Whitby and Mark I grew up with when I was a kid so it was a bit of a random encounter but we met them had a drink with them they went back to their campsite and then we carried on Fern was dressed as a sleeping bag we started to lose light around here so we were looking for somewhere to kip and we found the perfect pitch here and that's where we woke up and that's where we'll continue on from on the next video if you're not subscribed already please consider subscribing hit the bell notification if you want to be notified of the next upload and I'll see you again soon thanks for watching