Log No 173. Tue 29th Oct 2013 - Abbeytown to Silloth, 8 miles (2659 miles walked)

I had planned on going back home to Orkney next week for one of my regular breaks but it's going to have to be a week early as I only have maps for 2 days walking left.

Unfortunately it now takes me 2 days to get home using buses as I can't get to Aberdeen in time to check-in for the 17.00 ferry but I can return here in the one day.

The ferry is on Thursday so today is my last walking day and it will only be a short 8 miles to Silloth as I need to find somewhere to leave the camper.

There's been no sign of the hurricane up here and it's a fine sunny day.

Leaving Abbeytown I took a minor road north to the River Waver, when the road met the river I saw an information board showing the route of the Cumbrian Way footpath.

The route was also shown on my map as a path which went through the marsh land to Skinburness.

The path was supposed to leave the road and follow the side of the river for a bit but I could find no evidence of it so I stayed on the roads.

The roads came inland a bit heading for Silloth but after a while I took the minor road turnoff to Skinburness.

This came back to the low lying marsh area and there was a Sea Dyke embankment alongside the road for flood protection. The embankment had flood gates at the access points through it.

The Sea Dyke went right to Skinburness but the village itself was on higher land.

The coastline at Skinburness had a lot of groynes to help stop the erosion.

Silloth itself was not very big but, unusually, had very wide roads.

There were also 6 chalet/caravan parks and I hoped I would be able to leave the camper at one of them.

The first park was only a small one but he wanted to charge the full pitch fee of £16 a night.

The next park I tried was vey big but they only wanted £4 a night, very reasonable, so I paid for 12 nights and she didn't charge any extra for me sleeping here tonight.