ON THE final morning of my March 2026 trip, I alighted upon the platform of Hartlepool station with a spring in my step and a rumble in my belly – I had skipped breakfast in order to get an early start. This proved something of a self-defeating effort as I delayed that start in Hartlepool in order to silence my body’s demands for fuel.
A short while later, both fed and provisioned, I returned to the station for a not-quite-so early-but-still-earlyish-I-guess start…
Continue reading “CCLXVII – Hartlepool to Redcar”
LAST week, I made my way back up to Scotland from London to resume where I had previously paused my perambulatory pastime. That, you may recall, was in Lossiemouth, which lies an inconvenient six miles or so from the nearest rail link, thanks to the likes of Dr Richard Beeching. This being so, I returned to Lossiemouth in a roundabout way by first spending a night in Inverness (where I had dinner with a friend who recently moved there) and then caught the first train to Elgin in the morning. It seemed like a plan. And it was.
FOLLOWING a day spent idling lazily in Durness (thanks to my plans re Cape Wrath coming to naught), the first Sunday of October 2019 saw me up and about bright and early. Well, early, at least. It wasn’t actually all that bright, being grey and overcast. But while brightness was elusive, earliness was unavoidable; I had a long day of walking ahead of me…
IT’S been a bit of an unsettled summer and I kept a careful weather eye on forecasts for Scotland with a view to picking the timing of my latest trip carefully. This turned out to be entirely pointless, though not because of the omnipresent threat of showers. Rather it was because, as a non-parent, I totally failed to account for the school holidays and their effect on accommodation. 
WITH wonderful synchronicity my one hundred and fiftieth walk also included my two thousand five hundredth mile. The objective for the day was to walk from Cairnryan to Girvan, which I made to be twenty-three miles.
ON THE second morning of my mid-August trip, I awoke to the grey diffuse light and gentle pitter-patter of the rain that had been promised by the Met Office. Fortunately, I had prepared for this eventuality by packing waterproof walking gear. Well, mostly waterproof. I walked in it anyway
THE storms that heralded the beginning of 2014 were followed by more storms and then more. The wettest January since records began was followed by a February that seemed to consider that a challenge. All manner of interesting coastal features were washed right away and I, not confusing ‘’suicidal’ and ‘intrepid’, remained in London and followed this on the news.
AS I sit and write this, the rain intermittently pattering at my window, a steady stream of news articles is indicating that most of the coastal towns and villages that I have visited in both Wales and the West Country are, to varying extents, underwater. We knew that more storms were coming, combining rain and gale force winds; flood warnings had been issued. And then they combined with the pull of the moon to coincide with high tides. The results look spectacular but are disastrous for the communities involved.
THE end of November 2013 saw my first walk in six months, a period of perambulatory abstinence that was by no means voluntary but which came about because midway through June I ran for a bus. 
I AWOKE last Sunday to the sound of rain and headed out into the almost-darkness of early twilight. I figured that where I had left the coast path at the southern edge of St Clears (Sanclêr) was about a mile away and so it should be just before sunrise when I actually resumed walking that path.