Best foot forward

The three or four people reading this blog already know that I successfully completed the Coast to Coast Walk yesterday afternoon at around 1:40pm. Either because they were there to cheer me in and buy me the obligatory pint (thanks Mum and Dad) or because they have since been sent copious amounts of photo evidence. I dipped my boots in the North Sea, which must have added an extra 200 yards to my walk as the tide was fully out, and made a wish as I cast our pebbles carried from St. Bee’s beach into the water. How do I feel now that I’ve done it? I think it’s too soon to say. Perhaps more on that in a day or two. As Terry Marsh, the writer of the excellent guide that has accompanied me on this journey puts it: “success, in the final analysis, is a very personal thing. Few people will know of your triumph and most of those will think you are mad.” He also says, “There will have been bad days, almost certainly, when spirits were low, or feet and shoulders ached, or the p...

For some reason, I was particularly eager to get away from the Lion Inn and back on the trail for Day 15. I must be beginning to crave the solitude or maybe it’s just knowing that there isn’t far left to go. I had the strange sensation today of never being all that far from the real world, yet somehow being completely hidden from view. Like being in my own parallel universe. Perhaps it’s no bad thing that I will be brought back to earth with a bump very soon! I walked non-stop for the first three-hours over Glaisdale Moor and then Glaisdale Rigg, taking a fancy en route to Trough House, a solitary and now boarded-up building which apparently used to be a shooting lodge. You may yet see me on Grand Designs: “Philippa, a previously well-paid corporate communications professional from London, had heard that her 40th birthday was as good a time as any to panic, so packed it all in, spending her hard-earned money opening a yoga retreat in a crumbling building in the middle of nowhe...

In all my chat about gratitude yesterday, I forgot to mention something incredibly exciting: i could see the sea!! After climbing Beacon Hill and popping out onto Scarth Wood Moor, there it was. Just beyond what Brian reliably informed me was Redcar. It may not quite be my destination (that’s further south and further away) but it still felt pretty momentous to catch a first glimpse of the other coast of the Coast to Coast! Day 14 provided ample opportunity to prepare for the final push into Robin Hood’s Bay.  Breakfast was the biggest bowl of porridge I have even seen. I had already eaten the biggest schnitzel I have ever seen the previous evening, so please don’t expect this 192 mile-walk to have left me sporting supermodel proportions. All this food was provided by Heidelberger Wolfgang, quite a character who also happens to own the biggest dogs (German Schnauzers) I have ever seen. After climbing back on to the Moors and reading a helpful sign about all the things ...

I fear that I am going to sound a little like a yoga teacher in this post but please bear with me. Normal service will be resumed tomorrow.  When you reach a significant birthday, it can be all too easy to dwell on what might be missing in your life. That seems to be particularly true of turning forty. As Nicholas Crane puts it in his own account of going for a (very) long walk, “The approach of a fortieth birthday adds momentum to any physical project. Suddenly life looks finite: you are half way there; half way to the end; your friends are balding and comparing notes on middle schools; that fleshy flange that rides over the trouser belt has become a permanent fixture; it’s too late to do the stack of things you’ve been postponing since your twenties: run a sub-three-hour marathon, change career, build a house. Forty is as good a time as any to panic.” Yet, today, as I stood on Carlton Moor with what felt like the whole world at my feet, all I could think of was how...

Day 12 and I awoke feeling refreshed to the ominous sound of fierce winds and heavy rain on the skylight. The forecast had got it spot on. After about 10 minutes of walking into horizontal rain, my GPS app also stopped showing me the route (I’d forgotten to download it to make it available offline). The thing is, neither of these things troubled me in the way that they might have done two weeks ago. I pulled my hood down a little further over my face, dug the slightly soggy map out of my pocket and pressed on in the direction of Ingleby Cross. It was a good job the navigation was reasonably straightforward,  largely through farmland, as I didn’t spot another walker the whole way. I’ve got pretty used to bumping into one or two of our exclusive little gang at some point during the day but the weather meant that no one was stopping for breaks or they had decided to set off later in the hope of avoiding the worst of the wet. I did however encounter civilisation but no...

After a hearty breakfast, I set off once more in the pouring rain with my sights set on reaching the Yorkshire village of Danby Wiske. I was wondering if Dan may have had a lucky escape when the driving rain was joined by a decidedly whiffy whiff from the nearby sewage treatment plant but that was quickly put behind me and I was back into the beautiful countryside again. I soon fell into step with a couple of other walkers - Tina and Stuart (from Australia, of course) - and spent much of the rest of the day in their company.  One of Day 11’s big moments was going under the A1 near Catterick Racecourse - it may not have been the most attractive stage of the walk but it felt significant because I always think of the A1 as the road that leads me up the East Coast to my favourite part of the world. Not too long after, we reached the pretty village of Bolton-on-Swale and St. Mary’s Church, which again provided refreshments for the weary wanderer. In the churchyard lie the r...