In spring 2025, Vodafone and UK National Parks announced a new three-year partnership with an aim to support the parks communities, while exploring ways to protect the National Parks vital ecosystems using the power of Vodafone’s network.
Passing through three of these parks – Lake District, Yorkshire Dales and North York Moors – is the Coast-to-Coast trail. Originally devised by Alfred Wainwight, the roughly 317km route runs between St Bees on the West Cumbria coast to Robin Hoods Bay in North Yorkshire.
And, this year, the path officially became a national trail. To celebrate, we asked a couple of walkers, who were among the first to walk the Coast-to-Coast under official national trail status, to test our coverage on the route.
Along the way, we also met with our friends at the National Parks to understand more about how connectivity supports them.
How does the Vodafone network perform on the trail?
Many towns and villages across the route already benefit from the lightning-fast speeds of Vodafone 5G. The Cumbrian tourist hotspots of Grasmere and Shap, for example, show speeds of 352 Mbps and 230 Mbps, respectively.
Meanwhile, locations such as the cliffs around Robin Hoods Bay, Clay Bank Top and Blakey Ridge in the North York Moors National Park, registered fast Vodafone 4G.
Reeth in the Yorkshire Dales National Park saw speeds of 133 Mbps and even the highest point of the trail – Kidsty Pike, overlooking the beautiful Lake District National Park– had very respectable speeds of well over 10 Mbps on Vodafone 4G.
How VodafoneThree is transforming UK connectivity
VodafoneThree is currently building the UK’s best network, as part of an £11 billion investment programme, which will see further improvements for the trail and its surrounding areas.
In fact, since the Vodafone-Three merger in June 2025, VodafoneThree has already:
- Removed 16,500 km2 of mobile not spots across the UK – an area ten times the size of London.
- Upgraded thousands of sites, allowing up to 28.6 million Vodafone and Three customers to connect to the best available coverage, at no extra cost.
- Successfully shut down Three’s 3G network to use its radio frequencies for faster, more reliable, and more energy efficient 4G and 5G services instead.
The commitment also includes the roll out of 5G Standalone (5G SA) to 99% of the UK population by 2030, extending further to 99.96% by 2034.
Plus, there are plans to start customer trials of a satellite service, with a view to introducing strong, reliable satellite coverage to consumers, businesses and public services in remote and hard-to-reach areas across the UK.
This will see VodafoneThree using the only technology able to offer superior direct-to-device satellite connectivity capable of data, voice, and SMS.
So, whether you’re exploring the UK’s newest national trail, one of its 15 National Parks or simply living, working or visiting some of the remotest parts of the UK, VodafoneThree is continuing to find ways to keep you connected.
