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: promenade
CCLXVII – Hartlepool to Redcar
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”CCLXVI – Sunderland to Hartlepool
DAY three of my March 2026 trip saw me return bright and early to Sunderland. Although in practice my brightness was slightly dimmed by the earliness, which was more extreme than originally planned. This last-minute change – or should that be first-minute? – allowed me to double back along the north bank of the River Wear and take several photos that my rain-soaked phone had been too sulky to manage the day before.
By the time that little errand was complete, the clock had ticked onwards to reach my planned start time. I was, for the moment, exactly on schedule…
Continue reading “CCLXVI – Sunderland to Hartlepool”CCLXIV – Tynemouth to Newcastle-upon-Tyne
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.
CCLXIII – Newbiggin-by-the-Sea to Tynemouth
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.
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…
CCXLVII – Arbroath to Dundee
IN LATE April 2024, I headed up north once again to continue my intermittently-ongoing amble around our shores. Since my last walk left off in Arbroath, it was to that town that I now returned, alighting at the station at some unsociably early hour in order to give myself the whole day in which to go easy. I had done little to no long-distance walking since my last trip and was concerned that I would be out of practice. The test of that would be to get going…
CCXLIII – Aberdeen Loop
I RETURNED to the great grey granite city of Aberdeen just before mid-September in a largely successful bid to get a few days of walking in before the weather changed from summery to autumnal. A train journey lasting several hours conveyed me north from London and it was early evening when I finally alighted at Aberdeen station. From there, it was a very short walk to check in at my hotel, after which I was faced with the question of what to do with the rest of my evening. The obvious answer was to find food and go over my plan for the following morning’s walk. What I actually did was go for a walk right there and then. In the rain.
CCXLI – Peterhead to Newburgh
AFTER breakfast, I began my penultimate coastal walk of April 2023 by – and this should hardly be surprising – walking along the coast. I finished it like that, too, with some coastal walking in between. Although, technically, I suppose I didn’t actually begin with coast as I initially detoured a few metres further inland to take a better look at some Peterhead structures I’d glimpsed the previous evening on my way to my hotel.