Towpath Trail - The Lancaster Canal
3 Days
Preston through to Kendal
98 Kilometres
139,000 Steps
Day 1
We start about two hours later than planned, setting off from Preston with triple-checked packs and spirits high. Pacing and chattering, eager to begin clocking some miles. This isn’t a walk; it’s a sacred cousinly pilgrimage. Becky’s parents (my aunt and uncle) are crewing the mission, due to collect us from Forton at 7pm and deliver us to hot food, showers, and beds. That deadline makes today the only day we are bound to a specific time and place, so we march briskly. Averaging nearly five miles an hour and noting that this is one mile per hour faster than a canal boat.
The route begins gently, lined with canalside rockeries and the occasional tearoom. Dog walkers pass by, and velvet cygnets sleep in clumps beside the water. But the politely tended edges of suburban canal life soon give way to wilder stretches, hemmed in by broadleaf woodland and steep embankments. Ivy-draped bridges shine in the water below, and the air is heavy with the scent of damp moss and leaf mould. It feels like slipping through a crack in time — into the kind of British countryside that’s been forgotten and outpaced by road and rail.
It’s quiet, and then it’s not. Birdsong bursts out, sudden and sharp and ricocheting from tree to tree. “Just ten minutes of birdsong a day can reduce your blood pressure” Becky says. I nod, heart lifted by the sound and by the mystery of what old mill or crumbling village might sit around the next bend. My blood pressure must be at an all-time low.
With a dinner to reach and a decent portion of towpath still ahead, we keep walking. Only slightly alarmed by the blisters already forming on our toes. At around 6pm, the sun hanging low and glaring, we realise we’re approaching marathon distance and that the repetition is getting to our minds before it’s getting to our legs. So we phone friends and partners and laugh through real-time reflections on the day so far, mulling over where we are headed and what we’ve seen. Finally we see our aid station waving a bag of jelly babies at us in the distance signifying it’s very nearly time to call it a day. One third down.
Day 2
We get an early start, shuffling along on raw feet, lured forward by the promise of pancakes mid-morning in Lancaster. The sun is already warming the towpath. Dragonflies hover over reeds, midges form little galaxies in the air, and something like chive flowers dot the verge with burst of purple. Three miles in, we duck beneath a bridge and see a blur of orange-red up ahead, four-legged and charging towards us. A calf, unsteady but fast, hurtles down the towpath, its bright white face wide eyed and skull-like. It spots us, halts, blinks, then turns and bolts the other way. We follow at a distance, watching helplessly as it throws itself down a meadow bank, hurtling through a gap in the barbed wire fencing. It cries out in pain — an awful sound that echoes round my head for hours — then bursts free again, charging into the field from whence it (hopefully) came. A dramatic first hour of our ramble.
The landscape changes slowly but decisively. Stoic stone farmhouses give way to sleek canalside apartments. The towpath widens and across the water an elderly couple swigs coffee silently on a polished patio. The canal no longer feels only ours, forgotten; it has integrated with the surrounding world. Meadows, hills, pubs and restaurants all seem to slot themselves neatly around the water, as if the canal always been there — which really it has.
After lunch we feel energised, though our feet ache even more after the lengthy pause. We experiment with running, five kilometres at a time, then a rest, grateful for the change in rhythm and shifting of pressure to different parts of the feet. Neither of us has made the ideal footwear choice. Becky in hiking boots where the ankle support feels cumbersome and me in low trail trainers, my eyes watering from the lack of cushioning. A super cushioned trail shoe, about a size too big - that would have been the optimal choice in hindsight. But then there’s not much advice online on what shoes to wear in order to walk the length of a canal.
We count bridges. Note weathered stone markers with growing precision. This many miles from where we were, this many miles from where we’re going. I’ve never been so aware of my exact position within a landscape — and never has it felt like it mattered so much. It’s grounding. It’s good.
Day 3
Our committed crew decide to join us for the first 8 kilometre leg into Cumbria. This morning the weather is wild- wet, windy and cool. Hoods are drawn tight, and conversation comes out in muffled bursts between strong winds and heavy downpours. Eyes fixed on sodden cobbles and marching feet.
From Tewitfield, we enter the abandoned Northern Reaches - the final stretch toward Kendal. Here the canal is no longer functional: choked with giant reeds and tiny lily pads arranged like green constellations. A matcha coloured foam sits thick on top of the stagnant water and then, the water runs out all together. All work on this section of canal stopped in 1955 and much of the canal is now filled in or culverted. But ghosts of the canal’s past linger, disused tunnels and impressive aqueducts.
We pass near a couple of market towns, and at one point the rattle of an auctioneer’s voice carries across a few fields. It’s a farm show and of course we detour. Inside one of the marquees rare sheep and goats stand patiently in straw filled pens. Some of them with so many horns that they look mythical. We buy pineapple in plastic cups for £1 and consider watching the terrier racing, but a rest doesn’t count if your feet are still moving. After admiring a pair of women each with a ferret tucked under one arm, we return to the towpath.
These diversions are a kind of tourism rooted in rhythm and place, a sleepy celebration of every day triumphs and the communities that cluster around the waterways.
Another spontaneous detour leads us to the private grounds of a Christian retreat. A secluded and grand old manor house where we can make out figures walking past in the windows. I Google it while we’re peering out from behind a rhododendron bush. One review describes the “facilities are great” and the “godly presence high.”
Eventually, the rain eases. I peel off my new Berghaus to find I’m bone-dry underneath. Excellent. Gear test has been a success. We continue in single file, quiet and inward-facing and occasionally tuning in to a chapter of something interesting one of us has found on Audible. We definitely spent too long at the farm show and the final six miles drag. We pass beneath eerie ghost bridges that lead from nowhere to nowhere, over nothing, stranded in open meadows surrounded by bewildered sheep and wizened trees. The canal resembles nothing like a canal and the towpath is barely a line in the grass, but it’s persistent and guides us on.
This is a softer kind of adventure. A meandering journey through industrial ambition, abrupt decline, and then something quieter on the other side. As we close in on Kendal we share the path with many runners and cyclists each no doubt finding acute joy in the simplicity of the trail. A doorstep route into wilderness with no navigation needed, just follow the path.
We meet a woman who feeds a family of swans all year round and a little later her partner with a hole in his hat who confirms we’re on the final stretch. This is a trail that still connects. A thread through time and place that is now a thread of shared experience between two cousins.
At last we hobble in to Kendal, just in time to have to run for our train. Nothing marks the end of the canal, just a nice housing estate and a small park. I barely have time to be furious about the fact that 'they couldn’t have even put a little sign somewhere before we’re on the train and rushing back parallel to the countryside we’ve just traipsed through.
The train takes half an hour to get back to Preston. It’s a jarringly quick reminder of why the canal became obsolete in the first place but we’re already busy thinking about our next soft adventure.