British sandwiches and walking 300km of Wainwright's coast to coast
craigmod.comI do think they're right that the footpaths and rights of way are underappreciated here. Whilst I would appreciate a proper right to roam, it would be more about being able to legally wild camp. In terms of actually getting to places there aren't that many interesting places that aren't already accessible.
There's barely a field around my house that isn't crossed by a footpath.
There are a loads of fantastic long walks to take on. Personally I'd recommend the south west coastal path. In particular the wilder Exmoor section, although there's barely a dull moment over the whole 1000km. There is definitely something incredibly mindful and calming about just spending time walking.
Scotland is great for that with the right to roam also extending to wild camping. One of my best memories is wild camping the West Highland Way.
Did that a couple of months ago, was amazing! Apart from the midges..
One night we camped in a really wet grassy field and had to run back and forth from the midges to get set up. By the time we were done and in the tent there were at least as many midges inside the tent as outside. It was the only time we gave up, abandoned the tent and went to find somewhere else to sleep. Otherwise we were pretty lucky! 15 or more years ago now though!
It was ridiculously bad, even worse with having a dog who brought them in the tent through no fault of her own. Love the place, but Bill Gates needs to spend his money to sort them out.
The footpaths and Ordinance Survey maps. Combining those with the fact that most of the UK can be walked by a moderately fit and healthy person is kind of special.
What is the south west coastal path’s name? Thanks!
It's called just that!
This made me chuckle:
"And of course the many high-school students doing Duke of Edinburgh’s Award hikes, often with looks of total dejection and sadness, and certainly with much stink, but always with an impressive commitment."
Been there, done that, got the blisters. Totally worth it looking back, got me into walkin, but not sure I understood it at the time.
Is walkin' the british slang for hiking?
Why are you downvoting me for an honest question? I've seen it a bunch of times being used in a place where I would've used hiking and I'd love to hear more. People these days ...
To answer your question, no, it isn’t. It’s ‘walking’ with the ‘g’ omitted, presumably as that’s how the poster would speak in person (lots of British people, myself included, would say ‘walkin’ depending on their dialect/accent).
A hike is a long walk, but while you hike, you are walking.
Got it, thanks!
Don't know why you're being downvoted. Walkin' isn't really slang but most people use walking/hiking interchangeably.
Hiking is just more official/more serious, like 'running' as opposed to 'jogging'.
And ramblin, don't forget ramblin.
Love it! I'm also an avid long distance hiker haha
Okay got it, so it's not like hiking is more in a hilly area (but I would guess more probably because it's more serious) or something. I also wondered if when you use walking you wouldn't use hiking. Thanks!
As a Britisher I generally using hiking more when it is a slog; that is to say, when there are more hills or countryside involved.
Goodness, everyone seems to be getting very worked up over my typo. I meant to type "walking".
Downvoting you for asking was silly.
I think people might've gotten worked up because they felt I was mocking you because of the missing g. I just copied how you used it though, being quite aware that it's walking ...
Very enjoyable writing, though I must admit I never understood putting crisps in your sandwiches.
Uhh no don't oh dear I guess I must:
Two lightly toasted slices of NOT white bread, lightly apply very good mayo 1/8 lb of good smoked ham sliced very thin 1 large dill pickle sliced fairly thin
...aaannnnddd a bunch of ruffles potato chips.
Assemble a thin layer of ham, then pile the pickle slices in a second layer, add another ham layer, then pile the chips as the next layer, and add a final thin ham layer to insulate the chips from the top bread slice mayo layer
Eat quickly. Probably need two hands. Likely need to stop walking. There will be crunching noises. I'm not ashamed to admit I've been addicted for 50 years.
Just made this with homemade French fries, really holds up. Thanks for sharing. Does it have a name?
Hang on, is that chips or crisps? As in pommes frites or Walkers?
Can be either.
Crisp sandwich: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crisp_sandwich
Chip butty: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chip_butty
I think 'potato chips' is always American crisps, nobody specifies 'potato' for British chips?
Also fwiw, amusingly, your attempt to internationally disambiguate the terms fell down because Walkers is Lays everywhere except the UK!
Pretty sure that was crisps. Though a chip butty is also alright on occasion.
It requires butter. A lot of butter. It's not a French delicacy but it still requires it. The butter complements the dryness and crunch of the crisps.
The bread protects the mouth. One of the biggest risks to scoffing down a bag of chips is that it scratches and scrapes your mouth.
So butter to complement the dryness and crunch and bread to soften the blow. It makes perfect sense.
Well if we’re on the front page of HN discussing sandwiches, bring it on.
1. Toast one side only of two slices of fresh white bread.
2. Construct a sandwich with the untoasted sides facing out.
3. Inside the sandwich place mushed banana and a sprinkle of sugar.
As you bite through you get soft, crunch, soft, crunch, soft. It’s a thing of beauty.
Another weird combo is crispy bacon and marmalade. In regular toasted bread.
Ah, sandwiches. One of the great foods. Source: I’m from the North East.
You need good bread for that. Store-bought bread in the US is quite bad.
My local Walmart has about 100 different breads in the bread section - too much for a single aisle.
Even the Aldi, known for having just a single option for everything, has about 15 different breads.
I'm sorry if your options are bad, but don't claim that the entire US sucks.
You've just reminded me of a German colleague who moved to the US that was asked in his first week "How are you enjoying things? What have you found surprising?" and replied with "Shopping has been difficult because I don't recognise most of the brands or products. The supermarket has like 100 different types of bread, except as best I can tell it's actually just the 1 type of bread in 100 different shapes. Also it's not bread, it's more like a cake."
I mean it's the same in the UK - there are probably 30+ different types of bread in any supermarket, but it's all the same. It has the same shape, same taste, just different bakery that makes it.
I'd say the UK is somewhere in between, with different types of white bread actually being different (e.g., baps vs rolls). My early encounters in the US were similar to my German colleague where much of the variation in bread was simply to shape (e.g., rolls vs sliced loaf) but it was ultimately the same flavour and texture. Obviously in both countries you can go looking and find a much broader array of options. It's just a stark contrast to experiences in many continental European countries where almost any store that sells bread seems to have white, sourdough, regular rye, dark rye, etc. and each variety is so vastly different in taste and texture.
Yes, American bread is far too sweet - mostly HFCS, but even molasses make an appearance.
Let them eat cake.
P.S. But I do like the sourdough and rye bread (uncommon in UK).
From Qu'ils mangent de la brioche of course, and brioche is quite bready ...
Good bread is something you buy from a bakery. It's made from flour, water, salt and yeast. The stuff you get in supermarkets is full of additives to "keep it fresh" and a lot of it has added sugar.
Not every sandwich tastes as good with that style of bread tbh. Sliced store bread just "gets out of the way" sometimes.
What does the number of options have to do with how good they are?
I don't think this is generally true. It's very common for US grocery stores to have freshly baked bread, and there's always a huge variety of prepackaged sliced bread, it's not just like sugary wonder bread or something.
You can also just go to a bakery. Not sure how accurate this site is, but it looks like the US and UK have about the same number of bakeries per capita. https://www.ibisworld.com/industry-statistics/number-of-busi..., https://www.ibisworld.com/united-kingdom/number-of-businesse...
Certainly there are some places where your only option is a dollar store that probably won't have anything good, but I've been a lot of places in the US and I've never found this to be an issue.
The one time I visited the US the bread was alright! But I also had a PBJ made from a loaf of Texas Toast bread, and it was _by far_ the worst bread I've ever had.
And also in the UK.
I can see the appeal, but I offer:
1. thickly cut doorstops of wholegrain crusty bread
2. apply very mature crunchy cheddar
3. cut banana, not mushed, is layered on top
4. a blanket of either ready-salted or salt and vinegar crips
5. and the killer blow, on the opposing slice of bread, thickly, oh so thickly spread marmite.
I'm afraid, like a vampire, you've just invited me in.
My recipe, marmite and lettuce sandwiches.
Two slices of high fiber, low carb, multigrain bread. Toast if you can hold off your food-in-mouth-now need for a couple minutes.
Spread hummus on both slices. Hummus is a great butter/cheese/mayo replacement.
Sprinkle a mix of seeds (sun flower kernels, hemp, chia, flax, sesame) on one side.
Add red beet and cabbage sauerkraut, then turkey slices, to the other side.
Slap together and eat!
My personal recipe invention strategy is to constrain my experiments to high-flavor moderate calorie superfood combination bombs with construction times in the 30-60 second range. Prep: 1. Big jar of three months worth of high nutrition seeds. 2. There is no 2. This one is a staple now, but others' tastes may differ.
Even better, marmite & sliced cucumber
Wait until you see a chip butty then.
Urk: I’ve gone from “Chip buttie” to “chip butty”, I’m not a fan, I’ve had to correct my spelling twice, but I’m not trying to sneak my spelling corrections past anyone.
"butty" is correct, at least according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chip_butty (and me)
it's a texture thing. most things that go into sandwiches are pretty soft, so a crunch can be a nice texture.
it also helps that they are salted, and salt is a pretty good flavor enhancer.
Any sandwich plus crisps is a better sandwich.
One of my favourite sandwich places in San Francisco used to occasionally do a chicken roll that had corn chips in it. That extra textural element was ssoooo good.
I also love Lakeland, but that's because I love browsing kitchen things.
In Branston Pickle, the third word, "Relish", is silent. So silent that it is omitted from the label.
Lidl sells 'Batts' pickle, which is a little less sweet than Branston is, and has perhaps slightly more vinegar. I much prefer it to the 'real' Branston pickle. Tesco own-brand was the worst last time I tried it*.
* their recipe is probably: "1. Dump bag of sugar in bottle of vinegar. Veg? Haha, we don't use expensive vegetables here, every little counts you know!"
I prefer the old Pan Yan Pickle, but it went out of production more then 20 years ago. It has more fruit (apples, sultanas) and a Madras-style curry sauce. So more like a chutney than a pickle or a relish (i.e. Indian origin or influence).
The Slowways[0] project is a great resource on UK's walking routes
I tremendously enjoy Craig Mod's writing. I like to save up a few dozen of his newsletters and then spend a couple of hours reading them back-to-back, especially his huge walks in Japan. I find it very transportive, like I'm there with him despite having never been. I'm from the UK though, so this is also very cool!
In Larry Niven's 'Ringworld' the explorers are always eating 'hand meals': for the longest time I resisted the obvious interpretation and imagined some unfathomable futuristic repast, but let's be honest - they're sandwiches aren't they.
Could also be a pasty! A British meal of basically <whatever you want> (typically meal and vegetables) wrapped in pastry, supposedly created so farm workers didn’t lose half their sandwiches when eating it.
Ha, indeed! To test this theory, next time I re-read the book I'm going to imagine Louis Wu speaking in a West Country accent throughout :)
Isn’t Lakeland a shop?
Lakeland is how wainwright referred to the area in his guides, which is probably the main reason the author is using it: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pictorial_Guide_to_the_Lakel...
I was going to say - Lakeland to me as a Brit is a store, lake district sounds way more proper.
For us the shorthand term was always 'The Lakes'. I never really heard anyone use the term Lakeland, though there is a South Lakeland District Council so maybe some people do.
Lakeland makes it sound like a theme park!
That took me a minute - it's pronounced 'lake-lund' (as in French lundi), which doesn't sound so theme-parky!
I've definitely heard people refer to Lakeland the place.
But it's unusual, mostly people seem to just refer to it as "the lakes".
Always impressed how this person continues to write about nothing, capturing photos of nothing. Requires a special type of intellect.
My thought when I saw the pictures: they really know how to make digital pictures look as nice as film these days...
The photos in the article were taken with a film Hasselblad.
Yes, that was my point. :-)
Fantastic writing. My parents did this walk in their twenties (twenty?) and I've always wanted to do it.
“But I am not British, …” !
That just sounds like gibberish.
Where the hell are the pictures of Ella?
Ella is probably too fast for the Hasselblad
The bread in the UK is very different to the long life bread in USA.
If you were looking for sandwhiches... you will be disappointed.
Always glad to see Craig Mod come up here.
Word of the Day - pentimento.
> I got more daring with my sandwich orders.
I think author slept at some cottage every night. Taking sandwiches on through hike without resuply does not seem very practical..
I did wild camping in Scotland long time ago, but I would not recommend it today. Locals are not so welcoming now.
It's quite normal to stay in pubs and B&Bs doing the Coast to Coast - that's how my wife and I did it for our honeymoon. Wild camping is not lawful on any(?) part of the route, and organised camp sites are relatively scarce for most of it.
Plus it's a pretty unusual through hike. It goes through three national parks, but it's nowhere wilderness and you're never more than about 10 route miles from a village. Resupply en route is fairly trivial.
Globally unusual do you mean? I can't imagine where in England that would not be true.
Yeah, globally. Most long distance hikes seem to be a few hundred miles of mostly majestic wilderness, while the C2C is an unusually lovely and varied walk strung together from local footpaths...
It's a small and densely populated country. Twice the population of Canada over a fourtieth of the area. Scotland has a places a bit more like 'majestic wilderness', so that goes even more so for England.
If you want a pub walk though, no better place in the world!