I AWOKE on Mothering Sunday a little before dawn and, in my half-asleep state, careered about my room like a drunken elephant with numb legs. A shower helped wake me up, as did a splendid Continental breakfast left on a tray outside my door (I would be leaving before the inn’s usual breakfast time and they had offered – practically insisted in fact – that I could have something left out for me). Breakfast mostly comprised a croissant with some excellent ham and tastily mature cheddar, washed down with a glass of apple juice.
Tag: sheep
LXXVIII – Tenby to Bosherston
WITH a whole month having somehow passed since my previous walk, I thought it was high time that I embarked upon another perambulatory adventure. I thus found myself alighting, on a cold, bright and misty Saturday morning, from the earliest train to reach Tenby from Cardiff (where I had stayed overnight).
LXXVI – Carmarthen to St Clears
THIS weekend’s walking adventure was something of a triumph. Not a triumph in the Roman sense, nor even remotely like it unless the victorious general’s processional route was first inundated by the Tiber. Nor in the sense of an old British motor marque, now owned by BMW, whose vehicles would quickly have been mired.
What I’m trying to say here is that it was successful despite being ever so slightly muddy.
Continue reading “LXXVI – Carmarthen to St Clears”LXXI – Penmaen to Rhossili
HAVING given my feet a fortnight or so to recover from any new-boots inflicted damage, not to mention having had other things to do in that period, I thought it was high time I returned to the splendorous scenery of the Gower and traversed a little further along the coast.
LXVIII – Merthyr Mawr to Port Talbot
I WOKE up early on Sunday morning, stretched, yawned, turned off my alarm and got out of bed, ready to do some more walking. As I stood up, I almost swore under my breath but I didn’t, mostly because that breath had just exhaled itself involuntarily. I had, it turned out, most definitely got blisters on the balls of my feet.
Clearly I wasn’t going to be walking all day. Or if I was, it was going to be with pain accompanying every single step. And that would just be silly. Right?
Continue reading “LXVIII – Merthyr Mawr to Port Talbot”LXVII – Barry to Merthyr Mawr
I MAY, as the twilight began to lighten the horizon on Saturday morning, have wondered to myself why I thought it was a good time to be sitting in Cardiff Central Station (or Caerdydd Canolog in Welsh). The answer, of course, was that it enabled me to catch the first train to Barry and so to resume my walk around the coast. It didn’t, on the other hand, do much for sating my body’s desire for sleep. But hey, it had had a two hour snooze on the overnight coach from London. That would just have to be enough…
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’.
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.