LAST WALK AT 64

LAST WALK AT 64
At 6 this morning I creaked up from my tent and three bus rides later ( including the aptly named and very walker friendly 'coast hopper') I am back in Stamford with all gear in the wash and tent drying on the line in fine sunshine. Boots/tent/tea boiler etc all performed well (not sure about the owner). An old boy (even older than me) in Peterborough bus station took a long look at my pack and said wonderingly-"Are ye really goin' to carry that?) Managed about 9 miles and 2 overnight camps along Norfolk Coast Path linking such quaint places as Holme Next the Sea, Burnham Deepdale (with unique round towered church) Burnham Ovary Staithe and Wells Next the Sea. The landscape is so flat that land, sea and sky seem to merge into one. Most of the walking was atop dykes with sinister, muddy, marshy, estuarine channels alongside and despite the benign weather one could feel what the threat of the sea would be when driven in by storm tides.

It was so solitary with no other humans in sight (apart from distant tractor drivers ploughing fields at the water lines edge and the sails of yachts gliding towards the sea mouth)-just as I would want it. Needless to say swans and other water fowl were abundant. This kind of English walking is so benign that just as a passing Aussie bushwalker would warn you of a snake on the path ahead, a very proper gentleman cautioned me, as I started out, about "doggy doo ahead"!!!!

Man holds tenuous possession of the land here which is on temporary loan from the north sea, whose treacherous waters must have contributed to the development of the great navigators who grew up on its coast-Capt Cook in Yorkshire, Nelson had much to do with the villages I walked through (hence a pint at the hero), the Capt of the Cutty Sark lived in Burnham Ovary Staithe and the master of Bligh's Bounty was born and buried in Wells next the sea.

Someone with my wild, unbridled, imagination and romanticism (and lots of time with nothing else to exercise a mind idling in neutral in an overheated body) could easily imagine misty dawns as Viking raiders slipped in along the channels for a pint or two and a bit of ravishing for afters and the long lonely vigils of coast watchers anticipating that Hitler might come that way. Alas didn't manage any ravishing but amazed at how each stage of a walk here ends up at a pub and hooray for 24 hr licensing and smoke bans! Un-gaseous, hand pumped ales that are cellar, rather than refrigerator cooled and really taste, are balm to the soul and anaesthetic to the aching body of an almost 65 year old walker.

Looking forward to tomorrow and I enjoyed this last walk at 64.