WITH flood warnings in place for much of Wales and heavy rain predicted for most of the foreseeable future, I had almost resigned myself to postponing any future walks indefinitely. But when the Met Office predicted that last Thursday would be one clear day amid the ongoing deluge, I seized the opportunity with almost reckless abandon.
Tag: marsh
LXIX – Port Talbot to Swansea
THE LATEST two days of walking almost didn’t happen. I decided not only to wait until my feet were fully healed from the last sole-destroying misadventure but also to wait until I had bought some new walking boots. Which a distressing lack of inward cashflow promised to postpone indefinitely. And then…
LXIV – Severn Tunnel Junction to Newport
SUNDAY saw me catch a train at the relatively civilised hour of 7 am, brimming with boundless excitement at the prospect of three more days of walking in South Wales. My optimism was not diluted by the Met Office’s advisory notices (it was Wales, of course it was going to rain) nor even by the prospect of Newport, a town so lovely that a friend of mine who hails from there chose to move as far away from it as Canada.
LXI – Weston-Super-Mare to Yatton
BY MEANS of the time-honoured method of not actually going to bed, I was up bright and early on the last day of June and so caught the first available train back to Bristol. There I met up with ‘Alice’ and together we caught another train to Weston-Super-Mare.
LIX – Combwich to Highbridge
UPON waking in an enormous room in an early Tudor farmhouse (very early Tudor – it was built in 1486, the year after the Battle of Bosworth Field) my thoughts were, in order, ‘wow’ and ‘I’m hungry’.
LVIII – Minehead to Combwich
MY CUNNING plan for the middle of last week was intended to involve my catching an overnight coach to Taunton and to grab a short nap in the process. It was a good plan. It was also a simple one.
And yet Von Moltke was still right.
Continue reading “LVIII – Minehead to Combwich”LVII – Lynmouth to Minehead
MY TUESDAY morning began with waking bright and early and devouring an excellent full English breakfast. I then checked out of my hotel and went in search of a shop that could sell me water for my walk. It wasn’t a difficult search on account of the hotel receptionist having already told me where to look. As I ventured outside, I found myself once again stepping around the Blackbird Without Fear.
LV – Barnstaple to Ilfracombe
THE length of my walks in North Devon are, to some considerable extent, dictated by which towns still have any kind of useful public transport links. For the most part the railways were closed down in the 1960s and the buses are not exactly plentiful. I was struggling a little with finding an appropriate break point between Barnstaple and Ilfracombe, settling uncomfortably on Croyde, which gave me two walks of about thirteen miles each, but for the first of those, which is very easy going, that felt a bit too lacking in challenge.
LIV – Westward Ho! to Barnstaple
LAST Monday, I awoke bright and early, stretched out in an enormous bed in a rather large room and, for a moment, didn’t feel like getting up at all. But the lure of walking beckoned, so I arose and performed my ablutions before pausing to look out of the bedroom window at a view across the River Torridge.
XXII – Lymington to Bournemouth
WEDNESDAY’S walk began with an almost traditional start insofar as, having set off to catch the last night bus at just before four am, I got to the bus stop just in time to watch its rear lights disappear down the road. While this did throw my timings into disarray, it also felt reassuringly familiar. Also, In the end, it made just an hour’s difference.