It occurred to me recently that I could use this platform and my walk to raise awareness for a favored charity. There are so many organizations that need and deserve our help in these fraught times but after a little thought, I have decided to ask you to support McAuley Ministries in Providence, Rhode Island. Let me explain why. McAuley Ministries got its start 50 years ago when a small group of nuns from the […]
Coast-to-Coast Blog
17 posts
Today was just supposed to be the unremarkable start of the trip home. But enough unfolded today that I think a post of its own is warranted. First of all it is important to note that I am checked in to the Marriott Bonvoy Hotel at Manchester Airport with a drink and a dinner under my belt. It is also worthy of note that this is the first stop on this entire journey where I […]
This was the finale of this trip and my arrival at the slipway in Robin Hood’s Bay could not have been any more different from the experience that Mike and I had in 2023. When Mike and I arrived then, the “end of the line” was busy with locals who were smoking and drinking in all of the space outside of the Bay Hotel. Only after retreating inside did several other hikers appear and a […]
The stay at the Wainstones Hotel was an over-the-top surprise. When Mike and I were booked into this place in 2023, it could only be described as dreary and close with dark panelling, small windows and low ceilings. After a top to bottom renovation done last year, the place is now a four-star destination. No detail has been untouched by the project. Every bathroom is fitted out with a deep tub and gleaming space age […]
There was a chill in the air when I emerged from my digs at Ingleby House Farm for breakfast. I did not sleep well having been haunted by ghosts much like Ebenezer Scrooge’s “bit of undigested beef” which, in my case, was pork from the Blue Bell Inn. I was knackered as I ambled over the gravel path to the main house to have breakfast. Once there, I downsized my preordered breakfast to eliminate the […]
Not much of a day to report other than I rested my legs. Some gap in communications disrupted plans with Jeff from Florida so I executed Plan B on my own and spent the day strolling along the river front in Richmond. Having seen the Castle and its museum in ‘23, I skipped that stop. Instead I first attended Mass at St. Francis Xavier parish church where I enjoyed the comfort of old rituals. And […]
Today I walked a mere 10.5 miles. I left Reeth just after 9am and arrived at 66 Frenchgate in Richmond at 4PM. That tallies to a measly 1.5 miles per hour. MACS, the company that’s booked the walk for me, estimates that one should arrive in Richmond about one and one half hours earlier. But who cares about that? What has dawned on me during this trip is that there is extraordinary value to be […]
I must admit to feeling some loneliness as I sat in my room at Keld Lodge last evening anticipating today’s walk to Reeth. All of my human contact thus far had been with the functionaries who make the world go ‘round – airline ticket agents, flight attendants, B&B proprietors and the like. All perfectly nice people but words between us were delivered and received with no true connection beyond what is needed to complete the […]
Those who followed Mike and my journey in 2023 will recall a day that Mike dubbed “The Bog Slog.” This phrase beautifully summed up the day we walked from Kirkby Stephen to Keld via the Nine Standards Rig. Once we crossed the peak on which the standards sit, the path took us across a featureless bogland where the invisible path required us to navigate ravines filled with mossy muck that could be knee deep in […]
There is something quite surreal about airports before dawn. Our Airbus 330-300 touched down – several times actually due to a stiff cross wind – at a few minutes after 4AM. Hordes of Boston travelers suddenly filled the passageways that meander gradually upward from the jetway until we joined a concourse of sorts. But it’s not a concourse with gates and shops. It’s just a long empty hallway with occasional openings into rest rooms. Traversing […]
Tomorrow afternoon I will depart Narragansett and travel to Logan Airport and thence to England to begin my walk. I realized that I have given precious little information about the route I will follow. So here it is: Alfred Wainwright, a revered English fells walker, in 1975, mapped a route that would traverse the entire width of England from the Irish Sea to the North Sea. He dubbed it “a coast to coast walk.” Wainwright […]
One of the longest days of my upcoming hike is a 23-mile stretch from Richmond to Ingleby Cross on Sunday April 19. Thankfully it is also the single flattest segment of the entire Coast to Coast Path traversing the farmlands of the the Vale of Mowbray before the next ascent into the Cleveland Hills and the North York Moors National Park. But this part of the walk has one daunting feature known as “The A19.” […]
In five days I will embark upon my walk across the north of England. Plane, train, taxi and hotel reservations have been made and confirmed. American and British currency has been collected and hidden away. The checklist has been printed out. Supplies have been purchased or retrieved from closets and drawers. Now everything is splayed out across two twin beds to receive a final inspection and to be checked off the list before being deposited […]
In less than two weeks I will board a great big airplane in Boston to start my ten-day adventure in the English countryside. I have spent the past week sorting out the electronics I will need to record video of the walk for publication as I walk and perhaps to assemble a feature-length version of my experience upon my return. The challenge is to have the right equipment to record, edit, publish and store the […]
I wrote a bit in my last post about the challenge of walking 110 miles through England entirely on my own. I wrote glibly about dining alone or my reaction to meeting unlikable people on the trail. But there was no real contemplation on what it will actually feel like to undertake this walk in solitude. I owe it to myself to give some consideration to that reality. _________________________________________ The state of alone-ness will begin […]
Early on April 16, I will leave the comfortable confines of The Old Croft House B&B in Kirkby Stephen and set out on my solo journey to the North Sea, some 110 miles away. In the late summer of 2023, my brother and I walked the entire width of England along the popular Coast to Coast Path. It was an enormous undertaking that had us crossing mountain tops and seemingly endless hills and valleys to […]
February 2026 ___________________________________ There’s a wonderful scene in the film “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” set in a medieval village at the height (or depths) of a terrible plague. The setting is a muddy and excrement-strewn village whose sickly denizens are crawling, coughing and rooting in the muck. Eric Idle plays a character who is walking alongside a wooden cart laden with dead bodies. He is clanging a triangle and calling on people to […]