The Cumbria Way is a very scenic and popular 112 km (70 mile) long distance walking route that starts in Ulverston and goes north through the centre of the Lake District, finishing in Carlisle.

The route is well documented online and in good several guidebooks, including one by Paddy Dillon, a professional guidebook writier who lives in the Furness area and has published many books covering long distance trails in the UK and abroad. Paddy is also one of our PathFix volunteers.

The paths used by the southern end of the Cumbria Way are some of the most used paths in our Furness area. And as with many paths, espcially outside the Lake District National Park, its stiles and waymarking has been sadly neglected over the years, so it quickly became our top priority to start fixing things on the southernmost section from Ulverston to where it enters the National Park at Gawthwaite.

So we did a thorough survey of the route from Ulverston to Gawthwaite and started fixing several stiles that we already knew were in very poor condition, but soon realised that the problems were not just infrastructure, so PathFix has now made various other improvements: –

• New Waymarking:
  While surveying the route and working on stiles, we met lots of passing Cumbria Way walkers, who when asked about any problems they’d seen mostly talked about the very poor waymarking – some had gone astray and had to backtrack to get back onto the route. So we decided to sort this, and we are now well on the way to having installed new waymarks on the whole of the Cumbria Way. See Cumbria Way Waymarking for details.
• Route Change:
  The original Cumbria Way route had a problem only a mile after the start in Ulverston, where it goes through the farmyard at Old Hall Farm, a very active working farm with large vehicles and cattle often moving in the farmyard. This caused problems for both the walkers and the farmer, and there’s a very simple, safer and more pleasant route available that avoids the farmyard. So we had discussions with The Ramblers Association and the local council Countryside Access team, and it was agreed to change the route to the safer option. See Cumbria Way Route Change for details.
• Stile and Infrastructure fixes:
  Our teams have now fixed multiple stiles on the first section of the Cumbria Way, from Ulverston to Gawthwaite, where it enters the National Park. For details see Cumbria Way Fixes.