We started 2025 with rather a lot of unfinished walking business. In addition to the Jubilee Trail and the southern loop of the Shropshire Way, both of which we have deliberately been walking in Dorset-based and Shropshire-based holidays over a number of years, we still hadn't finished the Grand Union Canal Walk (completion requires a 2-day walk from Kingswood Junction to Birmingham) or the Avon Valley Path (probably again requiring 2 days of walking to get us from Ringwood to Christchurch). We also wanted to complete as much as possible of the gloriously isolated section of the King Charles III England Coast Path between Boston and Skegness in Lincolnshire; there is a missing river crossing near Gibralter Point, so it isn't possible to walk all of it yet.
We also started 2025 with a certain optimism and determination to advance the other paths listed above and maybe even to complete one or two of them. I'd decided to retire at the end of July and was looking forward to having more time, and I had found a wonderful podiatrist and had some hope that the problems with my right foot were easing. We want to continue walking long distance paths for as long as is sensible, but we want to enjoy the walks. We've accepted that the distance we can walk in a day is less than it was, leaving more time for other sightseeing, and some of our holidays now combine walking with time spent with family and friends - and family history research. For these reasons, beyond completing the paths described above, our ambitions for 2025 were relatively modest. We wanted to walk the Jurassic Way from Stamford to Banbury and to walk some additional sections of the England Coast Path, including a section in Kent, where we had a holiday cottage booked for a week in July.
That was the plan, but what about reality? Despite having to alter our plans for the first weekend of the year because of various weather warnings, we had a most enjoyable short walk on the Lincolnshire Coast and two weeks later we started the Jurassic Way, albeit at the Banbury end not the Stamford end. We were off! By early March, we'd made quite good progress on the Jurassic Way from the Stamford end and, in the process, we'd also walked a couple of legs of the Rutland Round! Then Richard's 99-year old mother died on 7th March; given her age it would be wrong to be too sad about this, but was still rather a shock (we'd begun to think she would live for ever) it has altered our plans - for walking and other things. Then there was the marriage of my niece on the Isle of Wight, also in March, and I ended up on the Island for a week after this, which gave me the opportunity to walk two reasonable sections around the Island's coast - and I returned to the Isle of Wight in August to meet my new great niece and managed to walk another couple of short legs.
We had a wonderful week's holiday, staying at Pound Cottage on the Kingcombe Meadows Nature Reserve in Dorset. The weather was glorious and amazingly warm for April and we both spent some time with our daughter and her family and progressed along the Jubilee Trail from the Hardy Monument to Mapperton House near Beaminster. We were less fortunate with the weather for our holiday in Kent in July, with rain most days. This bothered us less than you might think, as I was just getting over yet more problems with my feet (this time an insect bite had resulted in my right foot and ankle swelling so much that, for a week, I had only been able to wear slippers) and there were masses of historic houses and castles etc. to visit in the area. We managed a couple of short stretches of the Kent section of the coast path, from the White Cliffs Visitor Centre to South Foreland Lighthouse and from Walmer Castle to Deal Castle. We also enjoyed two short walks on the North Downs Way, which was only a few miles from the peaceful hamlet of Bodsham, where we were staying in the lovely Smithy.
A further complication in the Spring was the discovery that our house in Norfolk needed rewiring, so we moved to live full-time in our flat in Milton Keynes for a few weeks, before returning to Norfolk and spending most free weekends in the summer decorating the entire house. By now, we had decided to sell the house and move closer to our daughter and her family and Richard had decided to retire at the end of September. and we'd rented a cottage in Conwy at the beginning of October in the hope that we'd manage to walk a section of the Wales Coast Path (Llwybr Arfordir Cymru) from Prestatyn (where we finished the Offa's Dyke Path).