Arrival at St Bees

We had a leisurely morning in Glasgow organizing our duffle bags and backpacks to get into hiking mode. I was able to check my DSLR camera bag full of equipment at the hotel until our return. The Sherpa service would not handle fragile equipment during the hike so I will be relying on the Sony a6300 and my iPhone for photography during the walk.

It was raining on and off all morning with more rain forecast throughout the day. The group of six of us, Jim & Sharon, Mark and Marie and Chris and I made our way to Glasgow Central Station for our train ride to St Bees England.

The first leg to Carlisle was on a modern Virgin Rail train, very fast and comfortable.

At Carlisle we switched to a smaller "milk run" train which stopped at a number of towns along the Irish Sea.

The weather seemed to get nastier the closer we got to St Bees.

Rain and 25 kt winds gusting to 40 kts. Luckily it was only a block or so to the hotel after disembarking from the train.

We are staying at the Manor, an old pub/restaurant which seems to the the happening place in town. A traditional pub with an attached restaurant and party room. Our rooms are above the pub.

The rain let up for a while and I managed to do a short photo walk around the small village of  St Bees which features a nice red sandstone church and homes from the 16th century.

It started to rain again so i hustled back to the pub for a beer with the gang. Jim, Mark and I started our hike beer quest to see how many different brands we can sample during our hike. I think we scored five tonight.

We had a nice meal in the restaurant and retired to our rooms to get ready to start our walk tomorrow. Hopefully we get some sleep as we appear to be over top of the party room adjacent to the pub. The weather forecast does not look very promising for tomorrow with rain and wind for most of the day.