Yoredale Way 2019 – Day 0

4th October 2019: Home to Garsdale Head An almost perfect set of train connections meant that I arrived at the Moorcock Inn exactly on time, about 8pm. I’d walked away from home about 1.30pm covering the 1.5 miles to the local station in plenty of time for the train to Crewe. A long wait there, […]

Getting back on the horse!

I felt I needed to get back on the horse that bucked me! I’ve had a pretty rotten year when it comes to long distance walking. I’m shockingly unfit, overweight and seem to have little motivation to change either situation, but I still feel the pull of the long path! Although I cancelled my walk […]

Herriot Way 2019 – Day 4

21st April 2019: Keld to Aysgarth – 14.5m When I set out this morning I had every intention of walking from Keld to Reeth along the new low route, beside the River Swale, that I’m adding to the fourth edition of the guide book. As it turned out, I ended up walking to Aysgarth instead. […]

Herriot Way 2019 – Day 3

20th April 2019: Keld to Reeth – 12m I slept like a log (an expression that has always baffled me), that is to say I slept soundly. Soft pillows helped immensely of course as did not having to listen to a neighbour’s TV all night. I stirred about 5am and drifted in and out until […]

Herriot Way 2019 – Day 2

19th April 2019: Hawes to Keld – 11.8m I dozed off about 8pm last night, but never got a decent period of sleep, thanks to the inconsiderate twat in the room next door who decided that full volume was the only way to listen to the TV. He/she was also one of those people who […]

Herriot Way 2019 – Day 1

18th April 2019: Aysgarth to Hawes – 13.1m I set out from Aysgarth in a mixed frame of mind this morning. It  was good to be walking again, but the disappointment from last night was still weighing heavy on me. City’s Champions League quarter final against Spurs was one of the most intense football matches […]

Herriot Way 2019

Next week I’ll be driving to Aysgarth to begin 5 days walking around some of my favourite northern Yorkshire Dales. The primary motivation for this is to do a complete re-walk of the Herriot Way route in preparation for the latest update of the guide book. For those unfamiliar with the walk, it runs from […]

Looking ahead into 2019

I wrote a similar post to this one, in March last year, setting out my plans for the coming year (see here) and I didn’t do too badly in the end. I walked the Eden Way and completed the guide book for that walk. I only managed a couple of days along the Tributaries Walk, […]

The Eden Way

A couple of weeks ago I finished writing my latest guide book; The Eden Way. This is the third and final book in a series of three guides, following the rivers that rise on the ridge above the Mallerstang valley on the border of Cumbria and North Yorkshire. The other two books in the Rivers Trilogy […]

Tributaries Walk Day 2

Another early night resulted in another early rise, I was conscious by about 5am and snoozed until 7am. A quick look out the bedroom window revealed grey skies but I could see all the hills and it looked like it should be a perfect walking day. As usual the first few steps out of the […]