tower Archives - helpful mammal

CCLXVIII – Redcar to Staithes

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…

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…

CCLXV – Newcastle-upon-Tyne to Sunderland

Helpful Mammal ON THE second day of my March 2026 trip, rain was forecast to arrive around lunchtime and then hang around for most of the afternoon. Now, I’ve squelched, dripped and plodded through many a deluge but I’d just as soon not, if given the choice.

Accordingly, I hatched a cunning plan to be up and about at the crack of dawn, getting most of my walk done before the wet weather arrived. It was a good plan. A sensible plan. And it might even have worked, had I not slept right through my alarm…

CCLXII – Alnmouth to Newbiggin-by-the-Sea

AS HAS become my autumnal tradition, I was distracted from the write-up of my summer walking trip and thus it’s now a quarter year since the actual walks took place. That being so, I suppose I had better get on with it.

The fourth day of my August 2025 trip found me up and about at an early hour wandering the streets of Alnmouth. Well, one of them, at least…

CCLXI – Bamburgh to Alnmouth

Helpful Mammal 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…

CCLX – Lindisfarne to Bamburgh

Helpful Mammal 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…

CCLVIII – St Abb’s Head to Berwick-upon-Tweed

Helpful Mammal IT WAS to a not entirely unfamiliar problem that I awoke on the second morning of my April 2025 escapade, which was that I was not where I needed to be. I had made my plans, and hotel bookings, on the assumption that day one would end in Eyemouth and it had not. Thus, while I was rising in Eyemouth at some ungodly hour, eager to resume my circumperambulatory shenanigans, I actually needed to be at St Abb’s Head – some six miles away – to begin them…

CCLV – Edinburgh to North Berwick

Helpful Mammal IT WAS at approximately stupid o’clock in the morning that the Lemming and I met each other in the foyer of our Edinburgh hotel. My plan for the day had been to walk from Prestonpans to North Berwick and I still very much intended that that was what we’d do.

The complicating factor was that this rather hinged on my having walked from Edinburgh to Prestonpans the afternoon before and, well, I hadn’t. Consequently, we’d now be doing both walks in one go…

CCLIV – Leith Walk & Edinburgh Loop

TOWARDS the end of August 2024, I returned to Edinburgh to continue my coastal adventure. The first day of the trip, I intended to do two walks, the first being a stroll up Leith Walk into the centre of Edinburgh, and then an ambling circuit around parts of that city centre. The second was to take me out of the city along the John Muir Way to Prestonpans but, as I looked out at a misty, grey morning, that part was definitely for later. So, Edinburgh in the rain, then…

CCLIII – Aberdour to Edinburgh

Helpful Mammal 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.