IT WAS at approximately stupid o’clock in the morning that the Lemming and I met each other in the foyer of our Edinburgh hotel. My plan for the day had been to walk from Prestonpans to North Berwick and I still very much intended that that was what we’d do.
The complicating factor was that this rather hinged on my having walked from Edinburgh to Prestonpans the afternoon before and, well, I hadn’t. Consequently, we’d now be doing both walks in one go…
Continue reading “CCLV – Edinburgh to North Berwick”
TOWARDS the end of August 2024, I returned to Edinburgh to continue my coastal adventure. The first day of the trip, I intended to do two walks, the first being a stroll up Leith Walk into the centre of Edinburgh, and then an ambling circuit around parts of that city centre. The second was to take me out of the city along the John Muir Way to Prestonpans but, as I looked out at a misty, grey morning, that part was definitely for later. So, Edinburgh in the rain, then…
IT HAS taken me a while to get around to writing up the last walk of my April 2024 trip, with several things conspiring to get in the way of so doing, which include amongst their number a subsequent walking trip, but here it is. That day’s walk was a composite of the walk I’d originally planned for that day, plus all the parts of the previous one that I’d abandoned due to fatigue. A good night’s sleep had restored both energy and enthusiasm and I was raring to go.
ON DAY five of my April 2024 trip, I bounced out of bed, ready and eager to continue my peripheral perambulation of Great Britain by walking from Kirckaldy to North Queensferry. Sorry, did I say ‘bounced?’ I meant ‘slumped.’ For one reason and another, I had become slightly out of practice at the hiking thing and, while that hadn’t been too bad an issue so far, four days’ worth of cumulative fatigue had suddenly manifested all at once. I briefly considered making it a rest day, but I knew I didn’t want to do that. I resolved instead to set off and see how far I could get before fatigue forced me to quit…
I WOULD be hard pressed to tell you if what woke me up on the fourth morning of my April 2024 trip was the sound of seagulls mewing or the threateningly thunderous rumble of my stomach demanding that it be properly fed. I lay in bed awhile, listening to the noises, until I found myself thinking ‘I wonder what seagull tastes like?’ and conceded that my stomach might have a point. I reluctantly arose and, hoping to still the strident seismic sounds, ventured out in search of breakfast…
FOR the third day of my April 2024 trip, I was to be joined by a friend for part of the day. This friend is unpredictably elusive – she had spent the last four years living in a completely different country to the one I had expected, for instance – so in honour of her unpredictably migratory nature, we shall call her the Wanderer. I arranged to meet her at Leuchars Station, from which we would travel together to St Andrews in order to commence our walk…
HAVING worked up an appetite for breakfast with my 
ON THE second day of my April 2024 trip, I did not one but two walks, although one was much shorter than the other. For the first, I arose well before breakfast and went for a wander around Dundee, which I would be leaving later. Ordinarily, I would roll this into the following walk but I quickly realised that there was enough to be seen to make this its own thing. And so it was…
IN LATE April 2024, I headed up north once again to continue my intermittently-ongoing amble around our shores. Since my last walk left off in Arbroath, it was to that town that I now returned, alighting at the station at some unsociably early hour in order to give myself the whole day in which to go easy. I had done little to no long-distance walking since my last trip and was concerned that I would be out of practice. The test of that would be to get going…
THE final day of my mid-September 2023 trip saw me alighting from a train at Montrose railway station at an unsociably early hour, keen to continue southwards towards Arbroath. The weather felt slightly less warm than it had been but the skies were mostly clear and good conditions were forecast, so my sartorial choice of a t-shirt and shorts was not being brought into question. Except, maybe, for the small but excruciating detail that said shorts would potentially bring my legs into full contact with every single stinging nettle on the route. Again.