Words by Rob Savin
The boots were finished before she started. Jennifer Stevens knew that going in. Five years old, a couple of thousand miles through them, the waterproof seal gone since a walk in May. She'd thought she could probably get one more out of them.
She was right, just barely. The first day brought rain hard enough that by Coniston she was arriving at her accommodation dripping, muddy, and carrying the unmistakable smell of someone who'd been outside since eight that morning.
The inn looked nice.
She felt the usual hiker's anxiety — that specific social discomfort of arriving somewhere that serves proper food to normal-looking people, while you're wearing saturated gaiters and wondering whether the person at reception can smell your pack from the other side of the lobby.
Then she reminded herself it was the Lake District. Of course they get hikers.
· · ·
We're talking a few weeks after she's finished the Cumbria Way for the second time. Jennifer Stevens makes hiking films — careful, unhurried things — for a YouTube channel called Tiny Pine Outdoors. She built a following by doing what most outdoor content doesn't: slowing down. Stopping at cafes. Saying hello to animals. Turning around mid-climb, because that, she'll tell you, is where the actual views are.
The Cumbria Way runs seventy miles from Ulverston to Carlisle through the heart of the Lake District. She first walked it in spring 2021 and knew before she'd reached the end of it that she'd be back. It took four years. Some trails wait.
The One Who's Done It Eight Times
She passed him on the first walk, somewhere in the second-to-last day. A man heading south as she was heading north. She asked the obvious question: which direction do you prefer? Southbound, he said. Downhill from Carlisle, ending near the sea. He'd done it eight times at that point. She's been thinking about what he said ever since.
For now, though, she's still going north. Stake Pass on day three, climbing out of the Langstraths, cresting the ridge and turning — always turning — to find Windermere sitting between two fells in the far distance, a sliver of silver in the afternoon light. She hadn't been expecting it. That's usually how the best things on trail arrive.
The route is quieter than people imagine. Keswick is busy, as Keswick always is. The final miles toward Carlisle carry a different energy. But between those two points the Cumbria Way runs through remote valleys, past small slate villages, alongside lakes and through farmland where the main pedestrian traffic is a Border Collie doing its job. Jennifer encountered almost no other long-distance walkers heading the same way. A few dog walkers. Locals. Someone going the other way.
She found this restful. Not in a solitude-as-lifestyle way — just the ordinary pleasure of having the fells to yourself on a weekday in October.
The Langstrath in Autumn
There's a valley she'd written off. The Langstrath, just after Stake Pass, before you reach Stonethwaite and Borrowdale. In 2021 it was spring, the vegetation not yet through, the whole thing beige and a little underwhelming after the climb. She'd remembered it with mild affection, if that.
This time, in autumn, she rounded the same corner and thought: oh.
Green, orange, bracken-rust. The valley doing exactly what valleys do when they're in season — making you feel slightly stupid for ever having underestimated them. She says she appreciated it much more. I think she means she fell for it properly this time.
· · ·
The accommodation varied. One night in a guest house near Bassenthwaite — alternative route, slightly off the main line — with horses outside the window and a room that smelled of rhubarb. King-size bed. A flat screen with a Netflix account assigned to each room. She describes it as luxurious despite being on a rustic farm. I'd suggest those things aren't in contradiction in the Lake District.
Her last night was in a shepherd's hut near Hesket Newmarket, just outside Caldbeck. The woman who ran it asked if she'd like something to eat. Jennifer hadn't been expecting that. She got a jacket potato with beans and cheese, a wood burner lit and left going, a small portable television receiving three channels, and the sound of cows and donkeys somewhere outside in the dark.
She thinks she just likes staying on farms, really.
Herdwick Standard
Ask Jennifer what the Cumbria Way looks like, and she comes back to the sheep. Specifically the herdwicks — that short, grey-faced, slightly bewildered-looking breed that has grazed the Lake District fells for centuries. They appear on steep ground and flat ground, in bracken the colour of copper, at the edges of villages, in fields that back onto slate walls.
"You've got your sheep around you, your nice stone buildings and your dry stone walls. It just feels adventurous. And comforting."
That combination — adventure and comfort, held at the same time — is not the easiest thing for a landscape to pull off. The Cumbria Way manages it. The fells are serious enough to demand your attention, but the villages that punctuate them feel genuinely inhabited. Small pubs with fires going. Cafes that open when they open. Farmers moving stock down roads where the only traffic is walkers who know to stand aside.
· · ·
She's going back. A third time, probably southbound — ending in Ulverston rather than Carlisle, the way the man with eight completions recommended. She's filed it away.
The boots, at least, are finished. Five years, thousands of miles, one last walk. She'll buy the same pair again.
