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.
Tag: swcp
LVI – Ilfracombe to Lynmouth
ON MONDAY morning, as most of my friends were commuting to work, I was arriving in Ilfracombe by bus, having already ridden the overnight coach from London to Exeter and then the first train of the morning to Barnstaple.
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.
LIII – Hartland Quay to Westward Ho!
I awoke early on the First of April, vaguely convinced that my phone alarm must be playing some sort of April Fool’s Day prank. Alas, it was not. Blearily, I crawled from my bed and prepared for a full day of walking.
LII – Bude to Hartland Quay
FOR ME, the last day of March began with an overnight coach from London to Plymouth and then, after breakfast, I jumped on the first bus back to Bude. Not entirely coincidentally, it was also the last day on which the 576 Bus from Plymouth to Bude would be running a full service; Cornwall Council would no longer subsidise the route as of the first of April and thereafter there would only be one bus per day, arriving in Bude in late evening.
LI – Trebarwith Strand to Bude
IF MY fiftieth coast walk had been a milestone by virtue of being a nice round number, my fifty-first was also significant as it encompassed my eight hundredth mile since Gravesend. It also passed Tintagel, which was as much as an important goalpost to my mind as Plymouth and Land’s End had been. As a child, I was always bewitched by Tintagel and its association with Arthurian legend.
L – Padstow to Trebarwith Strand
LAST Monday was my fiftieth walk along the coast.
This noteworthy adventure began on an overnight coach to Plymouth. Having arrived in my favourite city, I immediately left it on the first train out, which conveyed me to Bodmin Parkway, a station which is essentially in the middle of nowhere.
Continue reading “L – Padstow to Trebarwith Strand”XLIX – Newquay to Padstow
THE last day of February saw me continue with my walking, such that I had achieved three day’s worth of planned walks in two. Even though it was the twenty-ninth, and therefore a leap day in a leap year, I didn’t do any leaping from any of the cliffs.
XLVIII – Portreath to Newquay
THE penultimate day of February saw me once again arriving in Plymouth at an ungodly hour in order to catch the first train out to Redruth. Having arrived in this old mining town, I immediately tried to leave it again. On the wrong bus.