LII – Bude to Hartland Quay

Hasteful MammalFOR ME, the last day of March began with an overnight coach from London to Plymouth and then, after breakfast, I jumped on the first bus back to Bude.  Not entirely coincidentally, it was also the last day on which the 576 Bus from Plymouth to Bude would be running a full service; Cornwall Council would no longer subsidise the route as of the first of April and thereafter there would only be one bus per day, arriving in Bude in late evening. 

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LI – Trebarwith Strand to Bude

Hasteful MammalIF MY fiftieth coast walk had been a milestone by virtue of being a nice round number, my fifty-first was also significant as it encompassed my eight hundredth mile since Gravesend.  It also passed Tintagel, which was as much as an important goalpost to my mind as Plymouth and Land’s End had been. As a child, I was always bewitched by Tintagel and its association with Arthurian legend.

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L – Padstow to Trebarwith Strand

Hasteful MammalLAST Monday was my fiftieth walk along the coast.

This noteworthy adventure began on an overnight coach to Plymouth. Having arrived in my favourite city, I immediately left it on the first train out, which conveyed me to Bodmin Parkway, a station which is essentially in the middle of nowhere. 

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XLIX – Newquay to Padstow

Hasteful MammalTHE last day of February saw me continue with my walking, such that I had achieved three day’s worth of planned walks in two.  Even though it was the twenty-ninth, and therefore a leap day in a leap year, I didn’t do any leaping from any of the cliffs.

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XLVIII – Portreath to Newquay

Hasteful MammalTHE penultimate day of February saw me once again arriving in Plymouth at an ungodly hour in order to catch the first train out to Redruth.  Having arrived in this old mining town, I immediately tried to leave it again. On the wrong bus.

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XLVII – St Ives to Portreath

Hasteful MammalLAST weekend, with the Met Office promising snow for much of the country, was obviously going to be dangerously unsuitable for walking further along the coast.

Or was it?

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XLVI – Sennen Cove to St Ives

Hasteful MammalWITH the January weather proving variable, my forty-second birthday saw me ambling gently along five miles or so of the Thames from London Bridge to Greenwich in the company of two good friends.  This was entirely lovely.  It also reawakened my desire to walk around the coast again.

Thus, a week later, I found myself dozing fitfully through the eight hour overnight bus journey from London to Penzance

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XLV – Newlyn to Sennen Cove

Hasteful MammalI SPENT my seventh day in Cornwall having a day of rest, on which I took the Scillonian III over to St Mary in the Isles of Scilly, accompanied for part of the crossing by dolphins, and generally had a pleasant time chilling out on the mist-shrouded island.

But I’m not going to tell you about any of that; I’m blogging about the walks.

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XLIV – Mullion to Newlyn

Hasteful MammalDAY six of my week in Cornwall saw me rise bright and early and open my curtains to the sight of a wall of dense, white fog. It was, I decided, a faerie fog.

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XLIII – Porthallow to Mullion

Hasteful MammalON MY fifth day in Cornwall I was missing a walking sock, despite there being absolutely nowhere it could have gone. Eventually, having searched repeatedly, I asked the piskies nicely if I might have it back.

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