Walks in 2016
2016 was an incredibly busy year work-wise, but somehow that concentrated the mind and we managed to complete a number of long distance paths too in this, the 10th anniversary of JordanWalks. On 16th August 2016, at the moment when we reached the junction of St Oswald's Way and St Cuthbert's Way, we had the satisfaction of knowing that we had walked every inch of the way from Land's End to Scotland via home in Norfolk (though the walking has not all been in one direction and it has most certainly not be done in one continuous walk). We passed Land's End back in May 2007.
We took a break from our wanderings towards Scotland to complete the Cotswold Way (in three legs in January, March and April) and immediately went on to walk along the Kennet and Avon Canal from Bath to Devizes, thus linking up with the Wessex Ridgeway.
In late May and early June we walked Hadrian's Wall Path in its entirety, from Bowness-on-Solway to Wallsend. Something over five miles of this route were coincident with the start of St Oswald's Way and we also found a lovely route from Haltwhistle to the Hadrian's Wall Path. We returned for two separate weeks in August to "fill in the gaps".
On the first of these we completed the South Tyne Trail from Garrigill in the North Pennines (which we had reached in August 2015) to Haltwhistle, then we returned to St Oswald's Way to walk from Rothbury to Alnmouth. A week later we returned to Alnmouth from whence we followed St Oswald's Way to Lindisfarne and then continued along the Northumberland Coast Path to Berwick-upon-Tweed.
Meanwhile, I still work part of each week in Milton Keynes and we completed the Milton Keynes Boundary Walk in April and then walked the Greensand Ridge Walk (along -yes, you've guessed, the Greensand Ridge from Leighton Buzzard to Gamlingay Cinques) in a series of short Sunday afternoon walks through the summer. We have also linked up with other paths; in July we walked the Two Ridges Link from Ivinghoe Beacon (where the Icknield Way Path joins the Ridgeway) to the start of the Greensand Ridge Walk in Leighton Buzzard, in September and October we followed the Clopton Way from Wimpole Hall to the other end of the Greensand Ridge Walk in Gamlingay Cinques, and in October and November we walked the Wimpole Way, from Wimpole Hall (Clopton Way) to Cambridge (Fen Rivers Way). At the end of the year we had nearly completed the delightful North Bucks Way, which links the Ridgeway to the Ouse Valley Path - just one more short leg to go, hopefully in January.
We were incredibly lucky with the weather all year; we hardly needed our waterproofs on any of our longer walking holidays, and we were not been prevented from walking by bad weather on any of the Sundays on which we planned to walk (en route from home to our usual Sunday night stopping place, the Bedford South Premier Inn). However, towards the end of the year our serious walking was somewhat compromised by family illness and, much nicer, by a weekend in Woburn with Helen and Tom celebrating Richard's 60th birthday.
Page last updated 17th February 2020
