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”
TOWARDS the end of March 2026, I headed north from London to Newcastle-upon-Tyne at a fairly ungodly hour, arriving at the latter sometime mid-morning. I promptly left it again via the Tyne & Wear Metro, returning to Tynemouth, where I last left off. From there, I planned to trek back up the River Tyne to Newcastle. So, that’s what I did.
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…
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…
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…
TOWARDS the end of May, with a weather forecast of ‘heavy showers’ interspersed with ‘heavy rain’, I returned to that part of Gwynedd that used to be Caernarfonshire to embark upon a challenging couple of walks. The first, from Pwllheli to Aberdaron, was about 25 miles, which promised to be hard going in the expected rain.