I AWOKE early on Monday morning, refreshed after a deep and restful sleep. I leapt from my hotel bed with a bound of enthusiasm, keen to get on with more walking. I threw back the curtains and looked out of the window, ready for whatever the world chose to throw at me. What I saw out there was Newport.
Tag: island
LXIV – Severn Tunnel Junction to Newport
SUNDAY saw me catch a train at the relatively civilised hour of 7 am, brimming with boundless excitement at the prospect of three more days of walking in South Wales. My optimism was not diluted by the Met Office’s advisory notices (it was Wales, of course it was going to rain) nor even by the prospect of Newport, a town so lovely that a friend of mine who hails from there chose to move as far away from it as Canada.
LXI – Weston-Super-Mare to Yatton
BY MEANS of the time-honoured method of not actually going to bed, I was up bright and early on the last day of June and so caught the first available train back to Bristol. There I met up with ‘Alice’ and together we caught another train to Weston-Super-Mare.
LVIII – Minehead to Combwich
MY CUNNING plan for the middle of last week was intended to involve my catching an overnight coach to Taunton and to grab a short nap in the process. It was a good plan. It was also a simple one.
And yet Von Moltke was still right.
Continue reading “LVIII – Minehead to Combwich”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.
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.
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.
XLVII – St Ives to Portreath
LAST weekend, with the Met Office promising snow for much of the country, was obviously going to be dangerously unsuitable for walking further along the coast.
Or was it?
Continue reading “XLVII – St Ives to Portreath”XLVI – Sennen Cove to St Ives
WITH the January weather proving variable, my forty-second birthday saw me ambling gently along five miles or so of the Thames from London Bridge to Greenwich in the company of two good friends. This was entirely lovely. It also reawakened my desire to walk around the coast again.
Thus, a week later, I found myself dozing fitfully through the eight hour overnight bus journey from London to Penzance.
Continue reading “XLVI – Sennen Cove to St Ives”XLV – Newlyn to Sennen Cove
I SPENT my seventh day in Cornwall having a day of rest, on which I took the Scillonian III over to St Mary in the Isles of Scilly, accompanied for part of the crossing by dolphins, and generally had a pleasant time chilling out on the mist-shrouded island.
But I’m not going to tell you about any of that; I’m blogging about the walks.
Continue reading “XLV – Newlyn to Sennen Cove”