light_rail Archives - helpful mammal

CCXLII – Newburgh to Aberdeen

IT HAS taken me a while to get around to writing up the last day of my April 2023 trip (over four months, in fact) but that delay should not be in any way taken as a commentary on the experience. On the other hand, it is very much an indicator of my propensity to get distracted by stuff and things since then. On the day, 19 Apr 23 yielded a very pleasant stroll along a sandy beach. A ten-mile stroll, plus a few extra miles on each end. And they went something like this…

CCXXVII – Wick to Lybster

THE last day of April 2022 began with my awakening early enough to be downstairs and ready to eat the very moment breakfast service began in my hotel. Then, pleasingly filled with both bacon and enthusiasm, I headed outside to walk through Wick and then southwards to Lybster, the name of which I had as yet no idea how to pronounce (it’s ‘libe-ster’ not ‘lib-ster’).

CLI – Girvan to Ayr

THE sky was blue and the sun blazing fiercely when I returned to Girvan late in August. Doused head to toe in my own bodyweight of sunscreen, I strolled back towards the harbour ready to continue from more-or-less where I left off. This would be the first of three days of walking, covering the sixty-odd miles or so between Girvan and Largs. Day one’s objective was Ayr, Ayrshire’s historic county town, where I would stay overnight.

CXXII – Lytham St Anne’s to Fleetwood

I AWOKE early in my hotel room in St Anne’s, dazzling sunlight reflecting off all the walls. The sun was up, the sky was blue and my stomach was ready for breakfast, which seemed the correct order of things. Had the sun been blue and breakfast all stomachs I think I’d have just stayed in bed. I fancied that I could smell bacon and decided that it needed to be mine.

CXIX – Formby to Southport

IT TOOK five different trains — two of which involved an underground station on a Northern Line in completely different cities — but I fled the spring sunshine in which London was bathing, in favour of what the weather forecast led to me believe would be the greyly clouded north.

It was wrong of course.

XXI – Southampton to Lymington

MONDAY’S walk is perhaps best characterised by ‘fun and failure’, which, if it wasn’t a phrase before, might well become my walking motto.

Failure number one was on the part of South West Trains, whose service over the bank holiday weekend was looking to be less than Sterling.

I Spy… the Kingsway Tramway Subway

MY PLAN to get up early and go for another walk today was derailed by my failing both to get up early and to go for another walk. So I idled away the day doing stuff and things and then, mid-afternoon, decided to go and look for something I’d recently read about but hadn’t actually seen — the Kingsway Tramway Subway.

Just because.

XVI – Bognor Regis to West Wittering

IF LAST week’s walk was brought to you by the words ‘flat’ and ‘dull’ then yesterday’s walk was sponsored by the noises ‘brrr’ and ‘thud-clang!’ The latter is of course the sound of a metal alloy simian undergoing meteorological castration. The Met Office had promised, more or less, that the day would be bright and sunny but only sunny enough that the ‘brisk’ wind (their adjective) would elicit surprise as one’s sunglasses froze to one’s face.

XIV – Newhaven to Worthing

MY CUNNING plan for my fourteenth coastal walk was to walk from Newhaven to Shoreham on Saturday. Indeed this plan was so cunning it mutated to keep everyone guessing.

In truth, the weather forecast for Saturday was one of bucketing rain, which didn’t sound a bundle of laughs. The best day this week, according to the Met Office, was yesterday (Thursday). So yesterday I went.