THE final morning of my August 2025 trip saw me stagger bleary-eyed from my overnight accommodation to the end of Newbiggin-by-the-Sea’s High Street, ready – for a particular and very approximate value of ‘ready’ – to start the day’s trek, which would end in Tynemouth. Well, hopefully not actually in the mouth of the River Tyne, but in the town situated next to it.
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CCLXI – Bamburgh to Alnmouth
ON THE third morning of my August 2025 walking trip, I met my good friend Simkin for breakfast in Bamburgh’s Victoria Hotel and discussed our respective plans for the day. I would be continuing to Alnmouth, while he would be visiting Bamburgh Castle and then heading home to attend to other commitments. Assuming, that is, that rural Northumberland’s public transport would permit him, which it did with obstructive reluctance. Fortunately, I had only to rely on my feet and they were considerably more reliable, with a timetable of my own choosing…
CCLX – Lindisfarne to Bamburgh
TOWARDS the end of the first week in August, Simkin and I met in the breakfast room of our hotel on Lindisfarne and discussed our plan for the day. This was to walk to Bamburgh (pronounced ‘bamborough’) via the roundabout route of the Northumberland Coast Path (NCP), as shown on my physical Ordnance Survey map.
We soon spotted that this deviated considerably from the England Coast Path (ECP) shown online and I realised that my paper map, although purchased just a couple of weeks past, was revised in 2015. So, just a decade out of date, then! Pfft! Whatever! We were going to follow it anyway…
Continue reading “CCLX – Lindisfarne to Bamburgh”CCLIII – Aberdour to Edinburgh
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.
CCLI – Anstruther to Kirkcaldy
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…
CCL – St Andrews to Anstruther
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…
CCXLIX – Dundee to St Andrews
HAVING worked up an appetite for breakfast with my early morning amble around Dundee, I did not begin the second walk of the second day of my April 2024 trip until about the second hour after stopping. So that was pleasantly synchronous, at least. Fully fed and fairly rested, I then set off again…
CCXLV – Stonehaven to Montrose
I ALIGHTED at Stonehaven railway station early on 13 Sep 2023, ready and eager to resume my migration southward. I had already breakfasted, prior to departing Aberdeen, and so was already fuelled up for the journey, with a particular emphasis on being sufficiently caffeinated – early mornings and I are not what you might call natural acquaintances, except when I see them from entirely the wrong end, having somehow forgotten to go to bed. Fortunately, on this particular morning, that was not the case and I was sufficiently rested as well as fuelled. No excuse, then, for not immediately getting on with it…
CCXLIV – Aberdeen to Stonehaven
OVER Breakfast on the twelfth day of September 2023, I wrestled with a choice of routes by which I might head south from Aberdeen. There was a coastal path for at least part of the way to Stonehaven, and it had been my original intention to take it. I had, however, since learnt of the existence of a mediaeval drovers’ road named the Causey Mounth, which had served as the main highway between Aberdeen and Stonehaven until the current A92 was constructed in the 1960s and 70s. This faced me with something of a dilemma; after all, I could hardly do both, now could I?
CCXXXVII – Lossiemouth to Cullen
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.