Lancaster - Coast, Castle and Canal 15 miler

Fancy something a little challenging distance-wise, but with less up and down hills?

Come along for a fairly long distance walk, around 15 miles, though things will be relatively flat as we'll be walking on two old railway lines and along the Lancaster canal for most of the walk.
Pace will be pretty constant to cover the distance before we lose light, so please remember this won't be a slow walk with lots of stops. Refreshment breaks will be taken occasionally though! I'm not evil.
Dogs are more than welcome to join us, please be aware the canal towpath does take us through the centre of town and can be quite busy with people and other dogs. There might also be some livestock on the route and the possibilitiy that your four legged friend may need a lift over the odd style. The Stork Inn welcomes well behaved dogs if they would like to join you at the pub once we complete the walk.

Starting out from Glasson Dock, here you can find a shop, snack shack and public toilets.
We first head alongside the beautiful Lune Estuary, which is as close to the "coast" as we actually get. Walking along the old Glasson Dock railway line towards Lancaster. Continuing along the path of the railway until we go under the live West Coast main line and skirt around the edge of the city centre. We will make a lunch stop at the impressive Lancaster castle, making sure to have some time to explore the castle grounds, if you so wish. There is a slight hill up to the Castle.

Lancaster Castle was home to the Lancashire Witch trials over 400 years ago. Here we can get a glimpse of the inner courtyard of the old but still rather scary looking prison, which only stopped being used to house undesireables in 2011; it has a visitors centre and a gift shop these days. The castle also houses the working Lancaster Crown courts, one of the oldest in the country. Best behaviour, please!

From the castle it's back down on to the old Lune Valley railway line, again skirting around the city centre for the most part, we then take the greenway alongside the river Lune past the Millenium bridge and beyond. The greenway continues past the city and then meets up with the stairs up to the Lancaster canal at the impressive Lune Aqueduct, completed in 1797 and now grade 1 listed; here we swap from old railway lines to canal and start heading back towards our start/finish point in Glasson Dock.

Once up on the canal towpath, we head through the city centre and back out towards the countryside, before disappearing into some deep tree lined cuttings feeling a millon miles away from anything. The canal then takes us all the way down towards Galgate where we head off over the fields and the second and thankfullt final hill of the route which gives us a welcome sight ahead, the whitewashed Stork Inn, with its cosy fire, food and drinks a plenty to finish off what will be a long but surely most enjoyable day walk.

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