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…
Tag: simkin
CCLX – Lindisfarne to Bamburgh
TOWARDS the end of the first week in August, Simkin and I met in the breakfast room of our hotel on Lindisfarne and discussed our plan for the day. This was to walk to Bamburgh (pronounced ‘bamborough’) via the roundabout route of the Northumberland Coast Path (NCP), as shown on my physical Ordnance Survey map.
We soon spotted that this deviated considerably from the England Coast Path (ECP) shown online and I realised that my paper map, although purchased just a couple of weeks past, was revised in 2015. So, just a decade out of date, then! Pfft! Whatever! We were going to follow it anyway…
Continue reading “CCLX – Lindisfarne to Bamburgh”CCLIX – Berwick-upon-Tweed to Lindisfarne
FOR my return north to Berwick-upon-Tweed I had two would-be companions, one being my good friend Simkin, who had long proclaimed his wish to join me when my walks drew close to Lindisfarne (also known as Holy Island). Having now got to that stretch of Northumberland coast, I had planned that one of my walks would end upon the island and the next start from it – can’t really get much closer than that!
The second, uninvited party was Storm Floris, which initially made its own arrangements to await us in the north. Then, perhaps belatedly realising that it was unwelcome, it opted to skulk out of sight and spitefully cancelled all our trains. After all, if it couldn’t come, then why should it let us go?
Continue reading “CCLIX – Berwick-upon-Tweed to Lindisfarne”The Queue
THIS was a walk of about 3½ miles between two points that are only 1½ miles as the crow flies. Actually, it was less a walk than a stop-and-start shuffle and it took my friend Simkin and I nine hours to do it. That’s just over 2½ hours per mile. And if you’re measuring speed in hpm instead of mph, that suggests something’s afoot…
XXXVI – Bigbury-on-Sea to Plymouth
HAVING gone to bed without an alarm, I awoke at about four in the morning and vaguely snoozed until about six. I freely admit that I didn’t really want to get up and look out of the window because the dull grey half-light strongly suggested rain. By the time I had performed my ablutions and got dressed, it was a grimly unavoidable truth that Plymouth was firmly enveloped in low cloud and drizzle.
XXXV – Salcombe to Bigbury-on-Sea
THE last Saturday in September saw me return to Plymouth on an overnight coach, only to then jump on the first bus out of the town. I was joined on this public transport extravaganza by Simkin, who hadn’t been to Plymouth in a while and so used the gap between coach and bus to wander about, much as I had before, taking in all the changes.
XIX – Emsworth to Portsmouth
YESTERDAY saw what I now consider a ‘short’ walk even though not that long ago I would have considered it a sizeable distance, i.e. twelve miles. The length of the walk was determined by a moment of unexpected synchronicity – it just so happened that I would reach a handy station (Portsmouth Harbour) twelve miles on from Emsworth and that twelve miles from Emsworth would, quite coincidentally, also be my three hundredth mile.