Route: leaving the car parked outside the Swan Inn (riskily pushing the 1 hour disk parking with the time needed for a post run beer) and heading south down Lorton road to the link joining the railway footpath. Heading east for 200m and then turning left into a housing estate and onto Bellbrigg Lonning and then through a snickle-way to dog-leg left-right onto Kirkfell Avenue and then left onto Waste Lane: a pleasant enough green track between housing estates. Emerging and turning right onto St Helen’s Street and then left onto a path through to the leisure centre and then left and right onto Wyndham Row, crossing the Cocker on a footbridge and running along Waterloo Street tunring left onto Main St and then right to cross the footbridge to turn right on a path along the river opposite the Jennings Brewery and then castle. Finding a hand-gate onto a field and a stile on the far side, taking this to turn left onto a footpath back towards the earlier footbridge across the Derwent but heading right to take the road bridge, instead. Following Horsman Street to a footpath slightly uphill to join the railway footpath and along this - across a car park and a road - to go under, and then back onto, Lorton Road and back to the start.
Conditions: cloudy with hints of rain.
Pub: the Swan Inn, Cockermouth, for Bowness Bay Swan Blonde.