Walks in 2013
The year got off to a good start for walking - New Year's Day was sunny so we got back to a rather muddy Hereward Way. However, life soon got in the way - first of all there was snow, then flooding, then a tree went through the roof of Richard's elderly parents' house in Sussex. They got away without a scratch, but Richard had trips from Norfolk to Sussex to deal with the aftermath - and as usual I had too much work - so we didn't do much walking in January, February or March.
Easter was early and bitterly cold, but we were determined to get back to the Hereward Way, so we walked Welney to Peterborough over the Easter Weekend - and really enjoyed it. Two fairly lengthy legs on subsequent Saturdays brought us to the pretty towns of Stamford and Oakham and that was the Hereward Way done!
Our main walking ambition for 2013 was to complete the South West Coast Path and on 28th May we did it, after walking from Sidmouth to the outskirts of Weymouth at the end of April and the final 42 miles in May. There are photographs elsewhere on this website showing us at the start of the South West Coast Path in Minehead in 2008, at the halfway point in Porthallow in 2010, as well as at the end, South Haven Point, in May 2013. There are also photographs of our first serious encounter with the path, walking from St Ives to Penzance by way of Land's End in April 2007. Beginnings, middles and ends are important - and the sense of achievement we felt as we reached South Haven Point in May was tremendous.
However, there is so much more to walking long-distance footpaths than getting to the end. We walked the South West Coast Path quite slowly, walking at least some distance along its 630-mile route on each of 60 days, spread over 10 walking holidays over 7 years. We go quite slowly partly because we are not mega-fit. On the SWCP's many ascents we are slow but steady, but my nervousness (having fallen off a cliff when I was 10) and gammy knees mean that I am sometimes exceedingly slow on the descents. So in completing the path we confronted personal challenges too, such as the scarily steep descents around Swyre Head (amazingly close to the tourist honey pot of Durdle Door), and in passing through the Lulworth Firing Ranges. It was worth it for the glorious walking though!
The other reason for our slow progress is a deliberate decision to take our time in order to enjoy the countryside and the pretty villages. We enjoy coastal walking and the South West Coast Path has mile after mile of amazing coastal scenery, but it sometimes misses equally beautiful inland scenery, just a few miles from the coast. This year we sometimes had to take inland diversions in order to find suitable accommodation. This took us to some lovely inland spots including Branscombe Village, Uplyme, to the centre of Abbotsbury and to Corfe Castle. The bad weather earlier in the year had left the path in a fragile state, so there were also many diversions caused by landslips etc. These were sometimes a bit annoying, but we were hugely impressed by the speed with which (generally) well-signposted diversions had been put in place. On one occasion when the signposting was less clear, in the middle of the Tout Quarry on the Isle of Portland, some other walkers kindly told us the right route - and it turned out that one of them was an OU tutor who I've known for years...It's a small world.
It was a glorious summer and we completed The Ridgeway (of which we had walked just a few miles back in 2011) with two three-day walks from Tring Station to Goring in June and from Goring to Overton Hill in July. The latter coincided with a heat wave, but we managed to complete the trail and enjoyed it much more than I had expected to. We shared part of our second leg with runners and walkers on the inaugural 100 km Race to the Stones, which added to the fun - though rather them than me in that heat!
From the end of The Ridgeway we walked along back roads to Marlborough, and we returned to Marlborough on my birthday at the end of August to start the Wessex Ridgeway . We had a four-day walk then and another four-day walk back on the Wessex Ridgeway in October, taking us through Wiltshire to Shillingstone in Dorset. This is a superb long distance path, but surprisingly little known. It goes through glorious isolated countryside, which makes for wonderful walking but means that it is quite challenging to find accommodation and to get to and from our start and end points. For this reason we are not intending to return to the Wessex Ridgeway until Spring 2014, when the evenings are lighter and so we have longer each day. Another 4 or 5 days of walking should bring us to the end the path, back in Lyme Regis (which we passed through on the South West Coast Path this year).
