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.
Tag: harbour
CCLII – Kirkcaldy to Aberdour
ON DAY five of my April 2024 trip, I bounced out of bed, ready and eager to continue my peripheral perambulation of Great Britain by walking from Kirckaldy to North Queensferry. Sorry, did I say ‘bounced?’ I meant ‘slumped.’ For one reason and another, I had become slightly out of practice at the hiking thing and, while that hadn’t been too bad an issue so far, four days’ worth of cumulative fatigue had suddenly manifested all at once. I briefly considered making it a rest day, but I knew I didn’t want to do that. I resolved instead to set off and see how far I could get before fatigue forced me to quit…
CCLI – Anstruther to Kirkcaldy
I WOULD be hard pressed to tell you if what woke me up on the fourth morning of my April 2024 trip was the sound of seagulls mewing or the threateningly thunderous rumble of my stomach demanding that it be properly fed. I lay in bed awhile, listening to the noises, until I found myself thinking ‘I wonder what seagull tastes like?’ and conceded that my stomach might have a point. I reluctantly arose and, hoping to still the strident seismic sounds, ventured out in search of breakfast…
CCL – St Andrews to Anstruther
FOR the third day of my April 2024 trip, I was to be joined by a friend for part of the day. This friend is unpredictably elusive – she had spent the last four years living in a completely different country to the one I had expected, for instance – so in honour of her unpredictably migratory nature, we shall call her the Wanderer. I arranged to meet her at Leuchars Station, from which we would travel together to St Andrews in order to commence our walk…
CCXLIX – Dundee to St Andrews
HAVING worked up an appetite for breakfast with my early morning amble around Dundee, I did not begin the second walk of the second day of my April 2024 trip until about the second hour after stopping. So that was pleasantly synchronous, at least. Fully fed and fairly rested, I then set off again…
CCXLVII – Arbroath to Dundee
IN LATE April 2024, I headed up north once again to continue my intermittently-ongoing amble around our shores. Since my last walk left off in Arbroath, it was to that town that I now returned, alighting at the station at some unsociably early hour in order to give myself the whole day in which to go easy. I had done little to no long-distance walking since my last trip and was concerned that I would be out of practice. The test of that would be to get going…
CCXLV – Stonehaven to Montrose
I ALIGHTED at Stonehaven railway station early on 13 Sep 2023, ready and eager to resume my migration southward. I had already breakfasted, prior to departing Aberdeen, and so was already fuelled up for the journey, with a particular emphasis on being sufficiently caffeinated – early mornings and I are not what you might call natural acquaintances, except when I see them from entirely the wrong end, having somehow forgotten to go to bed. Fortunately, on this particular morning, that was not the case and I was sufficiently rested as well as fuelled. No excuse, then, for not immediately getting on with it…
CCXLIV – Aberdeen to Stonehaven
OVER Breakfast on the twelfth day of September 2023, I wrestled with a choice of routes by which I might head south from Aberdeen. There was a coastal path for at least part of the way to Stonehaven, and it had been my original intention to take it. I had, however, since learnt of the existence of a mediaeval drovers’ road named the Causey Mounth, which had served as the main highway between Aberdeen and Stonehaven until the current A92 was constructed in the 1960s and 70s. This faced me with something of a dilemma; after all, I could hardly do both, now could I?
CCXLIII – Aberdeen Loop
I RETURNED to the great grey granite city of Aberdeen just before mid-September in a largely successful bid to get a few days of walking in before the weather changed from summery to autumnal. A train journey lasting several hours conveyed me north from London and it was early evening when I finally alighted at Aberdeen station. From there, it was a very short walk to check in at my hotel, after which I was faced with the question of what to do with the rest of my evening. The obvious answer was to find food and go over my plan for the following morning’s walk. What I actually did was go for a walk right there and then. In the rain.
CCXLII – Newburgh to Aberdeen
IT HAS taken me a while to get around to writing up the last day of my April 2023 trip (over four months, in fact) but that delay should not be in any way taken as a commentary on the experience. On the other hand, it is very much an indicator of my propensity to get distracted by stuff and things since then. On the day, 19 Apr 23 yielded a very pleasant stroll along a sandy beach. A ten-mile stroll, plus a few extra miles on each end. And they went something like this…