Walks in 2025

We both retired in 2025 and we are very much enjoying having more time for other things: this is just as well because there's a lot going on! We both had some health issues during the year, and we aren't sure how much walking we'll be able to do in the future.  Whatever, we have had some delightful walks during 2025. We've accepted that the distance we can walk in a day is less than it was, leaving more time for other things, and some holidays have combined walking with time spent with family and friends, doing family history research (in both Cumbria and East Anglia during 2025) and visiting historic houses and other places of interest.

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 section of the England Coast Path, and two weeks later we started the Jurassic Way, albeit at the Banbury end not the more usual Stamford end.  We were off! The Jurassic Way crosses the lovely and largely undiscovered county of Northamptonshire,  and a few weeks later we also started walking from the Stamford end, meaning that at the end of the year we just have a gap from Stoke Albany to Chipping Warden to complete. Early in the year, after walking along the Jurassic Way from Barrowden  (shown) to Harringworth, we realised we could turn the walk into a circuit, making use of the Rutland Round from Seaton to Barrowden. So the Rutland Round was added to the list of walks in progress, and by the end of the year we'd completed the south-eastern corner of it.

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) and it has altered our plans for walking and other things.  The next event, also in March, was rather happier; the marriage of my niece on the Isle of Wight. I spent more than a week on the Island which gave me the opportunity to walk two reasonable sections around the Island's coastal path - and I returned to the Isle of Wight in August, shortly after my retirement, to meet my new great niece, and I managed to walk another couple of short legs then.

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 near Salisbury. The house went on the market immediately after Christmas.

We still had time for holidays! In April, we had a wonderful week at Pound Cottage on the Kingcombe Meadows Nature Reserve in Dorset. The weather was glorious and amazingly warm for April, and we  spent some time with our daughter and her family and  and also 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.

I had two visits to Whitehaven for family history research, and while Richard was moving out of our house prior to its rewiring, I was swanning around old stomping grounds in Durham and Manchester. Richard joined me after I'd been at a conference in Liverpool, just before my birthday in August, and we spent a very enjoyable weekend exploring the city and its environs. We also had weekend visits to Yorkshire (to see our son and daughter-in-law, and visit old haunts in the Peak District) and to Shropshire (to meet up with a school friend and walk some more of the Shropshire Way, with glorious autumnal colours).

However, the highlight of our walking year was probably the holiday we spent in North Wales immediately after Richard's retirement at the end of September. We travelled by public transport and walked along the Wales Coast Path from Prestatyn (where we completed Offa's Dyke Path 19 years ago) to the Menai Suspension Bridge. We stayed in a single base, the lovely Ty Llewelyn in Conwy, travelling to and from the start and end points of each walk by train or bus. We didn't rush and had time to visit other attractions in the area, particularly enjoying Plas Mawr in Conwy on the day when Storm Amy closed just about everything else, and our trip to the top of the Great Orme by the Victorian Tramway (shown at the top of this page).