Tag Archives: The Initiation of Ms Holly

Previews of Autumn Heat

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Inspiration in Blog-sized Doses

My feet have nearly recovered from the 192 mile walk across England, and I’ve blogged my way through the whole fabulous Coast to Coast. I can’t begin to say how inspiring the experience was for me, nor how much it stretched me and forced me to move beyond my comfort zone – always something I struggle with. The walk has convinced me to add a new Inspiration page to my website. It’s been in the back of my mind for awhile, and will now be a regular part of my blogging. In it you will find my Coast to Coast blog posts all together for easy reading for those of you who may have missed out on it.

I plan to use this new section of my blog to share those experiences that stir my imagination and inspire me to write. My hope is that whether you’re a writer, a reader or a house painter, you’ll maybe find inspiration in those experiences as well. And let’s face it, we all love to share the things that inspire us.

What Happens in Vegas

While what happens in Vegas may stay in Vegas most of the time, I plan to tell you every yummy detail when I head to Sin City for the Erotic Authors Association Conference at the fabulous Flamingo Hotel on September 9th and 10th. I’ll be doing some readings, visiting the Erotic Heritage museum and participating in an erotic romance panel. Plus I’ll be taking advantage of all the other great talks and events that are happening throughout the weekend. And best of all, I’ll get the chance to meet some of my fabulous American erotica writing friends who, until now, I’ve only known through social media.

Vincent’s Oregon

From Las Vegas, I’ll fly back to Portland, Oregon to meet my sister, with whom I’ll spend the next ten days tromping around the exquisite Oregon countryside visiting some of Vincent’s favourite haunts from The Pet Shop.  I’m very excited to be photographing and blogging about the Oregon Vincent loves so much because I’ll be getting in the spirit of things for the party to end all parties, The Pet Shop launch in London!

The Pet Shop Launch

Between the walking and the polishing of the first book of the Lakeland Heatwave trilogy, I’ve had plenty to keep me focused as I’ve waited impatiently for the print release of The Pet Shop. Most of you know, The Pet Shop is already out in eBook formats and has been getting fab reviews, but October 14th is the date I’ve been waiting for with bated breath.

And, as you may have guessed, the big launch bash for the print premier of Pets will be at one of my favourite places on the planet, Sh! Women’s Erotic Emporium  Hoxton!  There’ll be pink fizz, yummy delectables, readings, book signings and the whole titillating two floors of the Sh! store to explore and shop through. If that’s not enough to make for a hot party, some of the hottest names in erotica are going to be there to help me celebrate. And the celebration will be two-fold because the 14th is also the delicious Mr Grace’s birthday, so we’ll slap a candle in his cupcake and all party together. If you’ll be in the neighbourhood 14th of October, be sure to put it on your calendar and stop in for the fun. I’ll be giving more details as time gets closer. Needless to say, I’m very excited, and looking forward to turning my misbehaving Pets loose on London and the rest of the UK — in print. Once they’ve done their misbehaving best in the UK, they’ll arrive in the States in print in January just in time to celebrate the New Year.

Lakeland Heatwave on the Way

Most of you know I came home from the Coast to Coast walk and went right to work on the final polishing of Lakeland Heatwave: Body Temperature and Rising. I had the chance to pick Brian and Von Spencer’s wonderful brains for more Lakeland and Mountain Rescue information while I was on the Lake District leg of the Coast to Coast walk. As always, their help has been invaluable in making sure I get the details right. Once back home, getting the final draft ready to go out the door was priority one, and inspiration from the walk and from Brian and Vron’s helpful observations made it a pleasure rather than a chore.

Lakeland Heatwave: Body Temperature and Rising is the first novel of my paranormal erotic romance trilogy set in the Lake District, and will be published in February 2012. It’s intense, dark and hotter than hot. I’ll be working on the second novel by the New Year, if not before.

A Hopeful Romantic in Autumn

Besides the new Inspiration page on A Hopeful Romantic, there will be intriguing new additions of The Story Behind the Story and there will be some fabulous guests and interviews and field trips coming up as 2011winds down, so stay tuned.

In the meantime, what happens in Vegas will NOT be staying in Vegas, as my next update on all the latest will be coming to you straight from The Erotica Authors Association Conference in Sin City.

Coast to Coast: The North York Moors on to Robin Hood’s Bay

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Day 12 Ingleby Cross to Clay Bank Top 12 miles

At last, we left the flat miles of farmland and began the climb into the Cleveland Hills. Our first views of the North York Moors came as we climbed the path through the Arncliffe Wood along the Cleveland Way, which we followed all through today and will follow partly through tomorrow as well. Miles of blooming heather and red sandstone stretched out before us on either side of a very solid rock path. But every once in a while a view of the black peat bogs served as a reminder of what lies beyond the stones. And after our experience on the decent off Nine Standards Rigg, we were more than happy to stick to the path.

As we broke through the trees to open moorland for the first time, getting into the North York Moors proper, the views were astonishing. We could look back to the west over the Vail of Mowbray and the miles of farmland we’d walked across the day before, and to the east we could see the rise and fall of an undulating ocean of mauve heathered moors patch-worked with swaths of rich green pasturelands and the odd fringe of woodland. There was altogether a wilder feel to the place than anything we experienced yesterday. It was as we sat by the cairn on Live Moor having our lunch that we realized we were actually seeing our first glimpses of the North Sea on the horizon. Strange how we looked right at it for the longest time before we realized that we were seeing what we’d been walking toward for the last eleven days.

During the course of the day, we walked a series of plunging rocky descents and oxygen sapping climbs into even more exquisite views, culminating in a delicious scrambley ascent over the Wainstones before our final descent of the day. Since our B&B for the night was off rout, our landlady and her enormous black Airedale, Bonnie, met us in her Land Rover at the end of our last descent at Clay Bank Top. We were glad for the lift, as walking there would have meant an extra three mile descent to get to dinner and bed, and then another three mile ascent the next day to get back on rout. At the end of a hard day’s walk, neither of us were particularly anxious to add any extra mileage to our long-suffering feet.

The Buck Inn at Chop Gate was our final stop for the night. All in one, bed, breakfast, room on the ground floor, and dinner at the really lovely pub, along with a good WiFi connection, which we took advantage of in the pub until bedtime. And bedtime was not very late.

In spite of a path much to our liking with lots of rocky ascents and descents, it was a hard day. After twelve days of walking, the wear and tear of the miles is beginning to take its toll on both of us. Raymond had a new blister and I had a knot on the back of one knee. As we approach the end of our journey, three things have become massively important; getting enough rest, which we never can quite manage as time goes on, getting enough food and drink – doesn’t really matter what at this point, it just matters that it fills the void. And the void feels huge at the end of a long day. And finally, there’s the all-consuming care of the feet. Nothing has taken more of a beating in the past twelve days than our feet. Each morning we spend a half an hour treating blisters, taping up wounds and making sure no toe is rubbing where it shouldn’t and no hot spots are left untended. We’ve become fanatical as we get closer to the final day. We’ve heard horror stories of people who have almost made it to the last day, then gotten infected feet injuries, and that’s the end of their Coast to Coast. And few things are more miserable than walking on sore feet. So yes, I’d say we’re fanatical. We’re too close to the goal not to be careful. With the last two days ahead of us, we can’t afford not to take good care of our feet.

 Day 13 Clay Bank Top to Glaisdale 18 miles

We were walking by 8:15 this morning. Knowing just how far we had to walk today, getting an early start was just that little extra assurance. It was one of those days when the path before us was straight and easy after our first steep ascent back onto the moors. In fact we spent the first fast eight miles on an abandon railway bed with miles of bog and heather on both sides of us as we walked along pleasantly on terra firma. After walking in the bog, we can only imagine the engineering feat it took to build such a railroad. It was built to carry iron stone to the coast. It seems sad, in a way, that there should now be no real trace of such gargantuan efforts other than a long, straight path. Having said that, we were certainly thankful for those efforts.

A little before noon, we arrived at Blakey and the Lion Inn. The Lion Inn sets up on a rise above the rest of the countryside, and is the first and last outpost of civilization until the end of our day’s journey at Glaisedale. Lots of Coast-to-Coasters overnight at the Lion Inn, but we had ten more miles to go before we could overnight, so after a cuppa and a venison baguette, we walked on.

The weather was perfect for walking – Blessedly dry and cool with mixed sun and cloud. We found our rhythm early and it was a golden sort of day. We made good time walking along the great paths across the North York Moors and seeing very few people until we got on toward Glaisdale. At this point in our journey, we were meeting people who had started their Coast to Coast walk at Robin Hood’s Bay and will finish up at St Bee’s Head in Cumbria. My feet hurt for them.

It’s funny how our world has narrowed to the walking rhythm. Life is so simple walking every day. Our routine is easy and good. We get up, we eat breakfast, we walk all day, eating and drinking as needed, we get to the B&B in the evening, have our shower, wash out a few things, eat our dinner, look at the route for the next day and fall into bed. The next day we do the whole thing over again. I love the simplicity of it all. It fits so well, and it’s so much closer to what matters than what often passes for what matters in every-day life. I’m tired now, and looking forward to dipping the toe of my boot in the waters of Robin Hood’s Bay, but as sure as I’m sitting here, I know I’ll feel bereft when I wake up Monday morning with no more miles to walk, and there’ll be culture shock as surely as if I had been in another country. And is so many ways, I am in another country, a wonderful country. I suppose I’ll deal with the bereavement the same way I deal with it when I finish writing a novel. I’ll start planning the next walk. In fact, I already have a great walk in mind for next summer.

We’re now sitting at the only pub in Glaisdale, chatting with other Coast-to-Coasters who, like us, are excitedly anticipating their final day of walking, anticipating completion of something that seemed bigger that anything we could imagine when we all started it, something that, at times, was a lot more than we had bargained for, but something we would not have missed for the world. Tomorrow, we walk twenty miles to Robin Hood’s Bay. Tomorrow, I’ll write about how it feels to walk all the way across England. It’s almost a reality and yet at the same time, it seems like a dream.

Day 14 August 21 Glaisdale to Robin Hood’s Bay 20 miles

 I very naively thought because we did yesterday’s eighteen miles at speed and got in so much earlier than we thought we would that today would be the same. I couldn’t have been more wrong. Yesterday we walked a good bit of the walk on abandon railway beds, and other than the ascent to get back up on top of the moors at Clay Bank Top, most of the walk was flat, even slightly downhill. Also there was only the Lion Inn in the middle of nowhere at Blakey Moor to slow us down. For the most part we walked at speed without interruptions.

Today was completely different. Today the first thing on our agenda was to get back on route from our B & B and work our way out of the convoluted maze of Glaisdale, which is only a small village, but sprawled out higgledy piggledy up the flanks of the moors. We were barely out of Glaisdale before we had several other small villages to negotiate culminating in the walk through heaving Grosmont with its myriad holiday makers there for the steam trains and the views. The crush of humanity was followed hard on by a hellish five hundred foot ascent out of the village on a busy road. It was this ascent in untried socks that was responsible for my worst blister of the journey, driving me to shed boots and socks as soon as we were out on open moorland again and reach for the Compeed and sports tape and a different pair of socks. (I always carry a spare)

LESSON LEARNED: Socks DO matter. And what I can walk in at home on the Downs in the Soft South are not necessarily good for walking 2o miles at pace across massively varied terrains.

After the Ascent from Hell, for awhile we walked along open moorland, though we were still on the road for quite a bit longer. Road-walking does not make for happy feet. We descended steeply into Little Beck then walked through the Little Beck Wood for ages. It truly was a lovely place to walk, especially since the day had turned hot and sunny and the shade was very welcome. But I think the experience of busy Grosmont and the walk through the woodland full of holiday makers complete with kids, dogs, and picnics was the beginning of culture shock. Our Coast to Coast journey was coming to an end, and in a few hours we’d be thrust back into the rest of the world again, and back to our normal routine. We both found the experience of such a sudden deluge of people to be strangely jarring.

Aside from the slow schlog from village to village, making our way through crowds of holiday makers (read this to mean way more than the three or four people we had been encountering every day en route) and the long stretches along asphalt roads, there was that realization that tomorrow would be different. Tomorrow we would wake up and NOT walk. We both agreed that somewhere between the breathtaking views and the blisters and the putting one foot in front of the other, we had almost forgotten what it was like not to be walking. It felt like we’d always been walking, like walking was the natural order of the universe, like walking was just what was supposed to happen every morning. As we got closer to Robin Hood’s Bay, as we found our way through the caravan park to the coastal path that would eventually lead us to the end of our journey, we were both moving on autopilot, tired and a bit numb, our minds still trying to take in the experiences of the past two weeks.

As we rounded the corner and got our first view of Robin Hood’s Bay shining like a jewel in the low sun, the adrenaline boost of that first view drove us on. Descending toward the beach, we met a couple of our compadres with whom we’d had dinner the night before. They were coming back up the hill smiling with the elation at the feat they’d just completed. There were happy congratulations all around before they limped off up the hill and we found our way to the beach to finish the ritual we had begun fourteen days before at St Bee’s Head in Cumbria. At 7:00 pm on Sunday the 21st of August 2011, we dipped our booted toes in the North Sea and tossed the pebbles we’d carried throughout the journey from the Irish Sea, including the one I’d carried for Holly, into the water. Then we promptly commandeered a gentleman to take photos of the great event, and it truly did feel great.

We had been very lucky to get a B&B just at the bottom by the bay so we didn’t have to walk back up the long hill. We dropped our bags and went immediately for fish and chips, in proper Wainwright fashion. Apparently the great man always finished off a good walk with a meal of fish and chips. And since the weather was so lovely, at our landlord’s recommendations, we went to the local chippy for haddock and chips to eat on the dock as the tide came in around us. I don’t think I’ve ever had a better meal.

When we’d polished off the fish and chips, we went across the road to the Wainwright pub and had a pint to toast our success. Traditionally the pub is the first stop for Coast-to-Coasters after the boot dipping and stone tossing. The walls are decorated in Coast-to-Coast maps and memorabilia. It’s a great place to toast the journey’s end. Then we went upstairs, had another pint and talked walking with other Coast-to-Coasters until we found ourselves struggling to stay awake. But on our way back to our B&B we discovered that the sweet shop was still open, so we ended the day with ice cream.

Our room above the Boat Inn was small and close, and it didn’t matter. We showered and fell into bed. I’m not sure it was yet ten o’clock. Such party animals, we Coast-to-Coasters!

Afterward

It was strange to wake up with no walking to do. Breakfast was leisurely We had to restrain ourselves from hoarding some of the luscious fruit offered, which would have been the walkerly thing to do. We had a short wander around the town. I managed a bit of writing while Raymond did a bit of prep work for his course and we waited for our friends to arrive from Keswick.

Shortly after noon, Brian and Vron arrived. After hugs and congratulations, they loaded us in the car and drove us back to Keswick, where they fed us homemade lasagne, showed us pictures of some of their many long distance walks and listened while we shared our experiences and our photos. It was such a great way to end a great walk. Brian and Vron Spencer have been so instrumental in teaching us navigation and encouraging us to strike out on our own and walk the long, hard walks, that it was very moving to us that they would come all the way from Keswick get us. They pampered us and took care of us and sent us happily on our way this morning.

I’m now on the train back to Guildford still trying to get my head around the experiences of the past two weeks. In a few hours normal life will resume in earnest, and I will have to catch up with all that has been on the periphery of my life for the past two weeks and get back to work. But one thing I’m certain of, my life is much richer because I walked the Coast-to-Coast. I’m inspired in ways I don’t think I’ve even begun to unravel yet. It was good. It was so very good.

A Week Later

The feet and joints are recovering. I’m back working hard on the final polish-up of Lakeland Heatwave. When it rains now, I look out the window and stay dry. I wonder at times if I only dreamed the experience, but then I look at the healing blisters and even better, the mountain of photos and know that yes, we really did it. We really walked across England from Coast to Coast, and it was quite possibly the best holiday ever!

Reminder

My copy of The Initiation of Ms Holly has now been all the way across England, from the Irish Sea, through the Lake District and the Yorkshire Dales, Bog schlogging across the Pennines, across the farmland of the Vale of Mowbray and over the North York Moors all the way to Robin Hood’s Bay on the North Sea. Now I want to know where you read your Holly? There’s still time to enter the Where’s Holly contest to win an Amazon shopping spree and a signed copy of The Pet Shop — as soon as it’s available in October.  Contest runs until the end of August! Here’s the link

 

Coast to Coast with Holly: We Venture Beyond the Lake District

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Warning:

I’m tired and my feet are sore and I’m writing this blog post from a pub near Clay Bank in order to get a signal. It’s done on the hoof, so to speak. I apologize for any incoherencies that may occur, and hope very much that you’ll still take away from it all that we’re having an amazing time. Here are some of my pictures of where Raymond and I read our Holly, so please remember to send in your pictures so I can see where you read yours! Here’s the link for the chance to win really cool stuff.

Day 6: 13 August Saturday Burnbanks to Orton 13 ½ miles

We are lucky to have such good friends in the Lakes. Brian and Vron Spencer were kind enough to take us to Burnbanks, the starting point of the day’s walk. Now nice holiday cottages, Burnbanks was originally a camp for the workers who built the dam on Haweswater. We’ve picked Brian and Von’s brain about the rest of the walk, looked over the rout, even raided their walking larder for sports tape and extra shoe laces, so now all that’s left is to do the deed.

On our first day of walking on our own, Vron and Bonnie, the collie, who has been the star of more than a few of my Lakeland photos, walked with us the first few miles to the ruins of Shap Abbey. There Brian picked them up and we said our final good-byes, at least for the next nine days. But, as Wainwright said about leaving Lakeland, ‘It’s not good-bye, only so long.’ He adds to that no one would blame you if you decided to stay on in the Lakes and not go any further. But our path was set.

It felt strange leaving our friends behind and striking out across unfamiliar territory on our own. We walked on through the town of Shap, barley making it pass the smell of the fish and chips shop that we’re pretty sure Wainwright frequented. But we have turkey sandwiches and wanted to press on a bit before chowing. We crossed the enormous footbridge spanning the noisy, heavily trafficked M6 Motorway. From there the path rose and fell away from the motorway into hills showing the first signs of the limestone outcroppings that awaited us on the rest of the day’s walk.

We had lunch above the quarries then walked on across areas where limestone pavements pocked and scarred by endless water erosion, nestled amid miles of mauve blooming heather. I couldn’t look hard enough. We’d heard about the heather in bloom, but no picture could have possibly done justice to our first real sight of the much-anticipated moorland. We saw a hobby in pursuit of his avian meal, and a little later on, actually saw a buzzard kill a small rabbit. We startled her off her prey before we realized what was going on. She was training her young to hunt. They all congregated in a tree at the top of a hill and waited for us to pass.

Without the regimentation of a group, we took our time to enjoy the journey, and it was good to have decent weather and a leisurely pace. We walked into Orton around 6 p m and settled in for the night at the George Hotel. At the George’s restaurant, we wolfed down homemade chicken and ham pie and two pints of Black Sheep while swapping tales and gathering information from some of the fellow walkers, who were also en route. Then we celebrated the end of our first day alone on the trail by sharing an enormous banana split. Total decadence! Holly didn’t join us for dinner, but she enjoyed the limestone pavements.

Day 7: 14 August Sunday Orton to Kirby Stevens 12 ½ miles

We woke this morning to heavy rain, which came and went off and on until around eleven, so the already saturated ground got even more saturated, and we splorshed and splurshed our way through pastures until we got out into open moorlands, where there was still plenty of mud and running water, but only strategically placed sheep poo to slow our progress.

The hazard of the day: Stiles into cow pastures. Because the cows tend to congregate around stiles and gates, they turn the soft wet pastures into a deep mud bath and a cow toilet. Argh! We went in over our boots several times in the early bits of the walk, but fortunately we filled our boots with boggy rather than cow toilet! We got to be quite acrobatic at finding ways to keep relative uck-free. There was lots of open moorland walking today, some beneath limestone outcroppings. But not nearly as much heather. The best part of the day’s walk was Smardale oabove the remains of the old railway along Scandal Beck. The old Victorian viaduct is still standing arched across the valley like a work of art. We past the ruins of a lime kiln and an old boarded up railway cottage, while viewing in the distance a strange limestone scar called Giants Graves. The abandon railway line beneath the rail bridge would be a lovely to walk some other time.

Day 8:14 August Sunday Orton to Kirby Stevens 12 ½ miles

We woke this morning to heavy rain, which came and went off and on until around eleven, so the already saturated ground got even more saturated, and we splorshed and splurshed our way through pastures until we got out into open moorlands, where there was still plenty of mud and running water, but only strategically placed sheep poo to slow our progress.

The hazard of the day: Stiles into cow pastures. Because the cows tend to congregate around stiles and gates, they turn the soft wet pastures into a deep mud bath and a cow toilet. Argh! We went in over our boots several times in the early bits of the walk, but fortunately we filled our boots with boggy rather than cow toilet! We got to be quite acrobatic at finding ways to keep relative uck-free. There was lots of open moorland walking today, some beneath limestone outcroppings. But not nearly as much heather. The best part of the day’s walk was Smardale oabove the remains of the old railway along Scandal Beck. The old Victorian viaduct is still standing arched across the valley like a work of art. We past the ruins of a lime kiln and an old boarded up railway cottage, while viewing in the distance a strange limestone scar called Giants Graves. The abandon railway line beneath the rail bridge would be a lovely to walk some other time.

Day 8 Kirby Stephen to Keld 12 ½ miles Across the Pennines and Through the Bogs

We walked a good bit of the day in sunshine, and a dry day was essential as we crossed the Pennines at Nine Standards Rigg and descended into the peat hags and bogs into Yorkshire. I kept asking Brian and Vron in the Lake District if the boggy walks we endured on Greenup Edge compared to what we’d face on Nine Standards. They kept saying you couldn’t compare the two. How right they were! Raymond and I both agreed we’d never walked or even seen anything like the bogs we descended through today. Very fortunately for us, the weather was good and the descent was much more gentle than the descent off Greenup Edge and Far Easdale in the Lakes.

We started out the day with a fairly fast ascent up to Nine Standard Rigg, which is a series of nine stone cairns which dominating the top of this particular Pennine Ridge, and can even be seen descending into Kirby Stephen the night before. I was very excited to actually get on top of the ridge and see the impressive standards. No one knows how they got there or who built them. One legend has it that they were built to make an invading army think the standards were the vanguard of a large army.

At the top, as we looked around I was in awe to discover that looking out in the distance in every direction but back toward Kirby Stephen were huge black stretches of peat bog sprawling across the landscape. I hoped we wouldn’t be walking through that. But of course, we would be. We took photos in a sharp wind, then found a sheltered place for tea before descending into the unknown of the bogs. Just as we were about to head off into the bogs, we met a walker doing the Coast to Coast in the opposite direction and ask him how it was. He gave us a rather glazed look and said, ‘boggy.’ He wasn’t joking.

Our first encounter with a peat hag was like the earth had split open and left in its joining place a thick black ooze of mud, too deep to wade through and too wide to jump. We were standing on the lower piece of grassy marsh looking up at the upper piece wondering how the hell we were going to get across. Fortunately we are fairly good with a compass, because in the end the only way to deal with a peat hag is to go around it. That made for a very wet, very slow descent. The scary thing was that we had several people tell us how much better the boggy bits were than they normally were. Urg!

We thought we’d actually made it through the boggy bits as we began our descent down Whitsundale Beck, but what awaited us before we managed contact with terra firma was the equivalent of a giant, wet sponge that went on for several kilometres. With the ground sinking beneath each step we took, we found out the best way to deal with it was just not to stand in one place too long.

After what seemed like ages, we finally made it to the lonely post of humanity called Raven Seat, which is a farm with lots of kids, lots of dogs and totally fabulous cream teas, which we were only happy to take advantage of.

Even from Raven Seat, it was quite a muddy schlog down to the miniscule village of Keld on the Swale River.

The walk over Nine Standards Rigg had been the part of the Coast to Coast I’d dreaded the most, and it was such a relief to finally have it behind us. As we enjoyed our dinner at the Keld Lodge, Raymond and I both agreed that though we enjoyed Nine Standards, our love of bogs had not increased in any way, and that it was not only the hardest bit of the walk so far, and though it was most definitely an adventure, it was the first bit of the walk so far we’d not want to do again. We were both looking forward to rocks and solid ground the next day, when we planned to walk the high level rout to Reeth through the old mining ruins.

 

Coast to Coast with Holly: Let the Walk Begin

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Hindsight

I had hoped to be able to send out very polished updates from our Coast to Coast walk every day, complete with photos  links, dancing girls and fire eaters, however there were two things I hadn’t taken into consideration. First, I hadn’t counted on how hard it would be to get a good signal on some bits of the walk, but that really was secondary to the fact that I hadn’t counted on how tired I would be at the end of each day. Those are my excuses for the first real update not coming until we are a full week onto the walk. Because of the latter, I apologize in advance if the next few blog posts are a little rough around the edges. My brain is nearly as tired as my feet. I’ll do my best to make sense. Finally, I’m having trouble downloading photos onto the website. But will get them added as soon as possible.

Day 1 St Bee’s Head to Ennerdale Bridge 14 1/2 Monday 8 August 2011

We left St Bee’s Head around 9:45 this morning, after we followed the time-honoured tradition of wetting the tips of our boots in the Irish Sea and collecting a pebble from the beach to leave on the beach at the North Sea in Robin Hood’s Bay when we get there 190 miles later. Holly got a pebble too, a rather small one, since I have to carry it.

This Coast to Coast walk, which is probably now considered by most folks THE Coast to Coast walk, was created by the late great Alfred Wainwright in the 1970s. It begins at St Bee’s Head on the Irish Sea, in Cumbria and crosses the Lake District, the Yorkshire Dales and the North York Moors before arriving at Robin Hood’s Bay on the North Sea 190 mile later. Today we walked from St. Bee’s Head to Ennerdale Bridge, and for the next five days, we’ll be walking across the Lake District National Park. As I said, we’re walking with friends those first five days, then the next nine we’ll be on our own. I’ll do my best to provide updates whenever the signal allows.

The first two hours of our walk were along the red sandstones cliffs overlooking the Irish Sea. St Bee’s Head is actually the furthest point west in England other than Cornwall, and when we reached the Lighthouse, we were farther from the East Coast of England than when we actually started but the spectacular cliff walk made it worth the bit of back tracking.

The weather threatened several times, but by the time we headed inland around ll:30 on the other side of Birkham’s Quarries, the skies were clearing and the weather was feeling steamy. We walked through farmland and the old slate mining village of Moor Row until we got beyond the village of Cleator, where we stopped in a grassy field for lunch. Then we made our first real ascent of the day, up the fell of Dent. It’s only a thousand feet, but it’s the first thousand feet and it worked us all. We don’t get many thousand foot ascents in the Surrey Hills.

We came down off Dent very steeply into the Nannycatch Valley at Nannycatch Gate. Nannycatch Gate is the entry point into The Lake District National Park, which is the first of the three national parks we’ll walk through while doing the Coast to Coast. We ended our day 14 ½ mile into the Coast To Coast at Ennerdale Bridge, with time for a pint of Ennerdale Dark at The Shepherd’s Arms pub. By the time we got back to our accommodations, showered and had dinner, most of us, including yours truly, had about enough energy to go over tomorrow’s rout together and fall into bed.

Day 2 Ennerdale Bridge to Rosthwaite  14 1/2 miles Tuesday August 9, 2011

Today was another 14 1/2 miler. We walk from Ennerdale Bridge along the whole length of Ennerdale Water, the only lake in the Lake District with no road around it. I don’t know why today seemed easier than yesterday. Technically it was a much tougher walk with some serious Lakeland ascents. We walked the first two hours along the gorgeous Ennerdale Water. The hillsides were just beginning to blush with the mauve bloom of the heather. Add to that ducks bobbing on the water and the occasional leap-frogging of other folks who started the C2C when we did, all happening to the soundtrack of water lapping the shore, and it was a fabulous start to the day.

At the end of Ennedale Water, we followed a logging road along the River Liza with the fells of Pillar and Steeple looming large beyond. We walked to Black Sail Youth Hostel, one of the most remote in England and had lunch there in the shadow of Great Gable and Green Gable with Scafell Pike peeking from in between the two. The hostel is an old shepherd’s bothy in the middle of nowhere on a crossroad of several major walking routs, and a totally lovely place to sit in front of and have lunch.

Once we were properly fed and watered, we started the long climb out of the Ennerdale Valley along Loft Beck. This is a place where Coast to Coasters often miss the trail and end up on Green Gable, way off course. Raymond and I were staying at Brian and Vron’s B and B several years ago when Brian was called out for Keswick Mountain Rescue on just such a case. It was easy to see why so many people go astray there, as the rout up Loft Beck is by far the least obvious until we’d crossed the beck and actually started the steep, stony ascent.

Once out of the valley, we continued our ascent to the high point of the walk along the rocky Moses Trod, affording us gorgeous views out over Buttermere and Crummock Water and all the fells surrounding. Moses Trod is an old packhorses trail used for taking slate from Honister Mine to Wasdale Head and on to the coast at Ravenglass. However, the namesake of the trail used it for another purpose – smuggling whiskey.

From Moses Trod, we began our descent along the track of a disused mining tramway toward the Honister Slate Mine. The scars of the slate mining industry were obvious on the fells in front of us and strangely fascinating in their regularity. In fact, the pyramidal Fleetwith Pike is actually hollow inside from all the mining. Brian informed us that the vast cavern beneath has been used in the past for Mountain Rescue training exercises. It’s easy to see why Wainwright was so fascinated with the industry that was the bread and butter of the Lake District for so long.

The Honister Mine is once more operating, but on a very small scale. It now operates a visitor’s centre and, is in many ways, a living museum to a way of life all but gone. There are regular tours and lots of displays of this area’s fascinating slate mining past. We lingered for tea and the use of proper toilet facilities before continuing the gradual descent into the Borrowdale Valley. The Borrowdale Valley is the lovely valley in which most of the action in Lakeland Heatwave takes place, so it and the fells around it are very dear to my heart. We ended our day at the village of Rosthwaite on the Derwent River just a few miles from Keswick.

Day 3 Grassmere to Patterdale (which should have been day 4) 8 1/2 miles  Wednesday 10 August 2011

The end to fabulous weather was inevitable, and I woke in the middle of the night to the sound of driving rain and wind. As we prepared to leave for the day’s walk, Brian informed us that would be doing the walk for day four instead of day three because of heavy rain and flooding of the streams that crossed the trail. It wasn’t hard to see the wisdom of his decision once we began our ascent in the driving rain and wind. Even then we ended up having to take an alternate route because of a bridge being out. We got rained on all day long and battered by a cold north wind. Breaks were taken hurriedly, hunched over our packs with our backs to the wind. In spite of the weather, we had a great walk all in all. Raymond and I have had several walks in this particular area of the Lake District before and were familiar with the surrounding fells. But until today we’d always seen them in sunshine and lovely weather. Though I don’t relish being wet and wind-battered, I have to admit the power of even what by Lakeland standards, must have surely been a mild storm in the fells was extremely impressive, and I liked the feeling even while it frightened me more than a little bit.

Though it was a shorter day, everyone was exhausted when we got back to our accommodation. The drying room was full of wet, steaming walking clothes and boots stuffed with newspaper. Traditionally day three of a cross-country walk is considered to be the most difficult, the end of the breaking in period, as it were. And what a breaking-in period it was.

In the evening,we  went to the the Theatre By the Lake in Keswick  to see Noel Coward’s Hay Fever. The play was great, but exhaustion was definitely setting in by the second half, and I found myself struggling to stay awake on the ride back from Keswick, wondering what the next day would bring.

More to come

I’m writing this from Kirby Stephen at the end of day seven, 83 miles into the walk, and I will do my best to get another update to you within the next couple of days.

Oh, and Holly, well she’s holding up very well indeed on her Coast to Coast journey. Don’t forget to send your pictures of where you read your Holly to the Where’s Holly contest going on throughout the month of August to win fabulous prizes. Here’s the link.

Holly Goes Coast To Coast

Blog, Inspiration, , , , , ,

Most of you know by now about the Where’s Holly contest running through the month of August. (check this link for details) I’ve asked you all to send me your photos of all the cool and interesting places you read your Holly, or even better yet, the ordinary places you read The Initiation of Ms Holly because anyone who has ever enjoyed reading a good book knows that the best thing about a good book is that it has the amazing ability to take us out of the ordinary and transport us into the extraordinary.

For writers, it’s no different. When we’re in the zone, when the Muse is with us, we are transported to extraordinary places in our imaginations, places we can’t wait to put down in words and share with other people.

My experience of writing The Initiation of Ms Holly was just such an experience, an experience that started in the dark in the Eurostar tunnel, and while I wasn’t going anywhere, my imagination was off and running, and a year later, Holly was born.

Starting the 8th of August, Raymond and I are setting out to walk the Wainwright Coast to Coast Path across England. This has been something we’ve dreamed about ever since we started walking seriously. So we’re very excited. It’s not just going to be the two of us though. That’s right. It’ll be a threesome, because Holly is going with us! I’ll be sending back reports as often as I have wi fi along with picture of just where Holly is as we walk the 190 miles across Cumbria and Yorkshire.

The first five days we’ll have lots of company, walking with a group of friends we often walk with in the Lake Disctrict, led by the amazing Brian Spencer and his equally amazing wife, Vron, who have been instrumental in my research for the Lakeland Heatwave Trilogy. But the last nine days it’ll be just Raymond and Holly and me hoofing it across England.

The First Update:


 Now that the itinerary is set for B&Bs and the Coast to Coast is really going to happen, I’ve spent evenings pouring over the maps and studying the rout, getting butterflies in my stomach at anyplace I’m not clear on. And with moors and fells and ruins of mines and bogs and villages and farms and long stretches of open space, there are lots of places to be unclear on. Fortunately the C2C is a well-travelled walking trail, so we won’t be running the risk of falling off the edge of the earth, though we might occasionally run off the edge of the map. It’s by far the longest walk we’ve ever attempted on our own.

I’m confident in our navigation skills, and we’ve both trained for it, but we have one 24-mile day that will definitely be pushing our limits. I’m nervous and I’m excited and I’m already there in my mind. I’ve dreamed about doing this for a long time.

And what does any of this have to do with writing? Well, everything actually. I have two novellas and the another novel I have to walk. I’m just hoping 190 miles will be enough. And Holly, well she’s already a world traveller, so I expect her to acquit herself very well.

Today we drive to Cumbria.

Tomorrow…WE WALK!