I HAD what I thought was an excellent plan to return to North Yorkshire on the August Bank Holiday weekend and squeeze more walking into the gap between the summer’s blistering heatwaves and the cold wet weather brought by autumn. The weather, wilful as always, immediately tried to disrupt my plan by developing a forecast for mostly rain right after I’d made all my bookings. And then, when that failed to dissuade me, it tried another sneaky tack…
Tag: mansion
CCLXII – Alnmouth to Newbiggin-by-the-Sea
AS HAS become my autumnal tradition, I was distracted from the write-up of my summer walking trip and thus it’s now a quarter year since the actual walks took place. That being so, I suppose I had better get on with it.
The fourth day of my August 2025 trip found me up and about at an early hour wandering the streets of Alnmouth. Well, one of them, at least…
Continue reading “CCLXII – Alnmouth to Newbiggin-by-the-Sea”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…
CCLVIII – St Abb’s Head to Berwick-upon-Tweed
IT WAS to a not entirely unfamiliar problem that I awoke on the second morning of my April 2025 escapade, which was that I was not where I needed to be. I had made my plans, and hotel bookings, on the assumption that day one would end in Eyemouth and it had not. Thus, while I was rising in Eyemouth at some ungodly hour, eager to resume my circumperambulatory shenanigans, I actually needed to be at St Abb’s Head – some six miles away – to begin them…
CCLVI – North Berwick to Dunbar
IT WOULD have been nicely synchronous if the last day of my August 2024 trip had also been the last day of that month but, alas, it wasn’t quite. Instead, the Lemming and I found ourselves alighting onto the platform of North Berwick station at some ungodly hour on the morning of the 29th, like the devil-may-care, unconstrained hikers we were inside our own heads, synchronicity be damned! And then, in a manner more befitting of two blokes now both inexplicably in their fifties and whose previous day’s walk had been quite tiring, we struggled to find the energy to get going…
CCLV – Edinburgh to North Berwick
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”CCLIV – Leith Walk & Edinburgh Loop
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…
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.
CCLII – Kirkcaldy to Aberdour
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…
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…