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HAVING slept like a log in my hotel in Heswall, I awoke about as speedily as a tree grows in breadth. I was warm and comfy and had no great desire to get out of bed but I also knew that the Seacombe to Liverpool ferry stopped running shortly after four pm and thus, if I wanted to catch it, I needed to be ready to go immediately after breakfast at eight. And I knew breakfast started at eight because I’d checked.
The breakfast was a lie
Continue reading “CXVII – Heswall to Liverpool”
IT IS early December as I write this and winter is closing in. It is already much darker and colder than when I last walked and that was but a few weeks ago in mid-November. And autumn was already skulking home, wrapped in a coat and muttering, even then.
I HAD a plan that, while not exactly cunning, had at least had some cunning described to it once. The plan was this: stay overnight in Llandudno, catch the train back to Llanfairfechan and then walk back to my hotel, where all the heavier things from my bag would be waiting for me. It was a good plan. I liked my plan. But it had one tiny little flaw.
It relied on trains
Continue reading “CXII – Llanfairfechan to Llandudno”
THE last weekend in July witnessed my return to Rhosneigr, alighting from a train in the late morning to discover, if not sunshine, then at least that the promised rain was holding off. For now, at least.
I made my way back to the centre of the village and took the time to enjoy a leisurely late breakfast. Eventually, fully fuelled with coffee and bacon and coffee — oh, and some more coffee — I was ready to go.
Continue reading “CV – Rhosneigr to Trearddur”
THE sky was cloudy and the temperature warm as I returned to Malltraeth at some ridiculously early hour. The village shop, a strange mixture of newsagent and fish & chip shop, was open for the purpose of the former and I unashamedly purchased an ice cream to serve as my breakfast. This I sat and leisurely devoured, while enjoying a view of the estuary from the Cob. It was an excellent start to a day’s walk.
IT WAS just before six in the morning when I returned to Llanfair Pwllgwyngyll, having negotiated the cunning and secret railway challenge designed to prevent you from doing so:
Not only is the station saddled with the impressive (if contrived) name of Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch but it is also a request stop, which means that the train will only stop to let you off if you can successfully tell the guard that that’s where you are going. It also helps if you can stop saying it before the train hurtles past.
Continue reading “CIII – Llanfair PG to Malltraeth”
I AWOKE at an unearthly hour in Portmeirion, which was not entirely unconnected to the discovery that my phone’s alarm clock remains active even if the phone is turned off. Its beeping and warbling thus ate up any charge it had managed to recover overnight. Still, this meant that I was awake and, after a light snooze, I was able to watch the sun rise and to amble about the village in its first rays. It was lovely.
ON GOOD Friday, I returned to Harlech at an hour well before any shops would have opened even if it hadn’t been a bank holiday. To achieve this I had cunningly left London the night before and stayed overnight in Aberdovey.
Sadly, my cunning hadn’t extended as far as remembering either a bottle of water or my phone charger and my phone decided to register its discontent by rapidly dropping down to one bar of power. This was annoying, not least because I would be ending the day’s walk in Portmeirion, a place I wanted to take photos of.
Continue reading “XCVI – Harlech to Portmeirion”
I AWOKE from a deep and restful sleep to discover that the electronic beeping I could hear was not in fact a bumblebee reversing — it’s funny how something that makes perfect sense in a dream makes none at all when you wake up — but rather my alarm clock telling me that it was an hour that no sane man should see.
Given the bumblebee thing I probably deserved it.
Continue reading “XCV – Friog to Harlech”
ONE problem with the increasing distance from my home of these coastal walks is that I now require so much longer to get to the start and back from the finish that I essentially lose whole days just travelling. I was quite keen to minimise that on my most recent trip so I endeavoured to return to Aberdovey as early in the day as was possible in order to get some more walking in from the very moment I arrived.