You are standing at the very beginning. Ahead of you lies the whole breadth of England, sea to sea — but first, this old red-sandstone church, its great carved doorway, and a thousand years of prayer settled into the ground beneath your boots. Take a breath. Wainwright's Coast to Coast starts right here. A church has stood on this spot for well over a thousand years, long before any walker came this way.
It is bound to the name of St Bega, remembered as an Irish princess who is said to have fled across the Irish Sea in the ninth century to escape a forced marriage, and to have landed on this coast to live a life of quiet devotion. The priory you see rose later, founded by Benedictine monks around the year 1120, in the confident decades after the Norman Conquest.
Through reformation, ruin and restoration the building endured, and it stands in use to this day — a working parish church, not a museum piece. For those setting out on the long walk across the neck of England, it makes the natural threshold: the last roof of the settled world before the fells begin.
Below the churchyard the shingle shore waits, and beyond it the grey shine of the Irish Sea — the first of the two seas that will bracket your whole journey, and the water you will soon leave behind for weeks. Let me point out what to look for. First, lift your eyes to the west doorway, the glory of the place.
Four concentric Norman arches spring from slender shafts, carved with zig-zag chevron and rows of beak-head ornament, small birds and beasts biting the mouldings. It is among the finest Norman carving in the north of England, and it has framed this entrance for some nine centuries.
Second, run your hand near the warm red stone itself, the local St Bees sandstone that colours cliffs, farms and field walls all along this coast. Third, if the church is open, step inside and feel the long, calm nave, its flagstones worn smooth by generations of feet. Fourth, listen for the older story hidden in the name — St Bees, Bega's town, a whole village grown up around a single saint.
And fifth, before you go, find the path down toward the shore, because tradition asks every Coast to Coaster to walk to the water's edge, dip a boot in the Irish Sea, and pocket one small pebble to carry the whole width of England, to be set down at last on the far beach at Robin Hood's Bay. Choose your pebble well; it has a long journey ahead, and so do you.
The legend of St Bega is worth carrying up onto the high ground. The story goes that a local lord, perhaps half in jest, promised her as much land as should lie under snow on the following midsummer's morning — certain, of course, that no snow could ever fall in the warmth of June.
But when midsummer dawned, the tale says, a miraculous fall of summer snow lay white across the headland, and the promised ground was hers to build her holy house upon. Whether or not you believe a single word of it, the shape of the story is lovely: a small act of faith, rewarded against all the odds. Keep that thought close on the days when the weather turns. From here the route climbs to the cliffs.
The way rises north onto St Bees Head, where the red sandstone falls sheer to the sea and seabirds wheel and cry below a white lighthouse — the true edge of England, and the first great view of your walk. Settle your pack, feel that pebble in your pocket, and go. The North Sea is a very long way off. Walk safe.
