A rebel without a clue.

Slightly better night's sleep in 14 Chestnut Avenue, the curtains are too light and the room is south-ish facing so sleeping beyond 5 is not possible with sunlight pouring in? Ruby joined me for a little fun and cuddle, came downstairs, did a toilet visit, sat next to me a while and, when I went out to water all the many pots and hanging baskets, shifted back up the wooden hill to mummy's bed. Now I am making a cheese topped, baked brushetta type thing with some of Sundays bacon and broad bean casserole (it's pretty dry), Fontana cheese and using the left over bread. Monday was a meat free day. From 11:30 to 1:30 I was on the allotment putting down covers on two areas to get them ready for later in the year: autumn growing. And I cleaned up around the tomatoes and French beans. Uncovering the corn next to the gate and using the net on the raspberries which are showing... Cropped all the broad beans and have been eating them with every meal; Jason came up to the ...

A string of intense dreams kept me in sleep much longer. At 6:35 the noise of traffic drifts up from the heavy A1 to distract from the solace. It rained during the night, lightly yet persistent, and I believe it causes a sound inversion. Ruby barked at around 11:30 to go out for a toilet break, then she went to mummy's bed and she's been quiet there since, just boiling her a couple of eggs. Lola was a little lethargic yesterday (and her collar broke as we set off) so I didn't go as far as I'd hoped. There still is no water anywhere: no puddles and it's a fair walk from 14  Chestnut Avenue to Crimple Beck near to Gospel Hill. Lola has a slight health concern: she's got what looks like a hernia around her backside. At first I thought she'd been bitten or had a bit of loose skin, she's passed 7 and has a few blemishes. A little bit of inner tissue looks to have broken through her outer layer. I touched it once and I could see she was in pain. At first I was...

Light filtering through the curtains at around 4 and for the second morning I was struggling back into Lalaland. Tonight I must put back my bed time with an hour's book reading. I've brought a copy of Don Quixote to try the second part of that tome. But it's a more modern translation than the previous one I'd read so I started at the beginning again. Ruby has just returned to mummy's bed. She's no bother at all. Just now she came outside for a visit and we had a little moment together before she returns there for a couple more hours. On Saturday I cropped all the broad beans I had had growing since Autumn and spent yesterday blanching and podding their secondary shells for the stew I conjured last night. Part of me wants to take Ruby and Lola out this morning on the bus, but I would prefer to do that when Lola stays here at Chestnut Avenue. Collecting her from mother's adds another 30 minutes to Ruby's walk... *** Is it a good ide...

More blue sky. Off to the allotment prior to going up to Chestnut Avenue to dog/house sit until a week Sunday as Mo and Tony go on the COVID delayed cruise. Yesterday I had to call the DWP as I think they had got my CA payment wrong - I am not entitled to it. I am entitled to the Carer's Premium (£38.85pw) as my underlying entitlement has increased with my mother's health issues - she had a hand operation on Wednesday and hasn't left the house since. She's nearly 80. The contact centre have passed on the information to correct the CA issue and it should be resolved in 2 weeks... They will owe me back to 18th February minus the CA payments I've had erroneously. Another window of opportunity has opened. After I've dog sat  Ruby up until the twelfth of July I am free until Emma and Finley go to Ibiza on the 23rd. So I am going somewhere... From the 23rd until the 3rd of September I'll be in and around Wetherby. In some ways I am a little worried about being in ...

Groundhog Day. Dry retching from strong coffee. In Pret at the Train Station I decide not to take another coffee: I usually take a strong espresso. A ginger shot and a breakfast baguette: avocado and egg. A different approach to the same 24hrs. Usually I have a pain aux raisin and double espresso. Otherwise this day feels exactly the same as Saturday or Wednesday did. Some random guy asked if I was heading to the cricket... Must be my attire. It's how I dress - there is nothing fancy about a pair of sandals, a pair of shorts, a short sleeved shirt (guayabera) or a floppy hat: it is summer! If Australia were here I may be tempted to sit and watch that the Test Match all day.. but not against New Zealand. The rivalry isn't there and I have no connection to New Zealand at all. It is a real shame that it's so far away and that we never went there as a family, or I as a unit, when we could've done in the late 1980s. ***   And I am the first person onto the bus. On Wednesday ...

The 'working' week is nearly over: a whole 7 days since I got back to LBA and Leeds and I have very little to say to myself or anyone. I am uptight once more. Back to yo-yoing between Wetherby and Leeds which is an activity I would prefer not to be involved in... But it's a necessary evil? Luckily from Friday it stops for a while as I head back to Wetherby to dog sit Ruby on Chestnut Avenue for ten days after one more night with Mother at 42. Climbed off the bus at Oakwood Clock and there is a tedious man, but inside it's too warm. He's one dimensional. Not his fault: yesterday was one of them days. A bit depressive regardless of the weather and the good works I performed. Lola got an early hour and a half around 8, beating the heat. Walking up the right side of Deighton Road to Aire Road, onto the footpath which leads to Ashdale Lane and Kirk Deighton, up to the very top of Ashdale Lane where it reaches the bridge over the Old Railway and then back to mother's ...

It's Tuesday afternoon. Just caught the X98 from Wetherby town centre. Yesterday was a day of relentlessness from crawling out of bed with Lola at 6 until I crawled into bed in the room next to Ruby around 8. Between I walked a lot, worked on the allotment and had the first migraine of the year. Today is a day of relentlessness: walking, allotmenting and hay fever. The weather is touching the low twenties, but it feels a little higher... ... Will have a beer this afternoon. Am having a beer this afternoon. Calmness. It's Tuesday and it's dead everywhere. Perfect. The price is a sore point. ... A little hung over. Was sick early on this morning... First 'session' in ages. The Disrupter beer @ 7.4% in Belgrave is the culprit. I will never learn! But it's OK...now I wait for the X98 on Boar Lane. The 7:30am, which usually has the school children on it from Harehills/Easterly Road, Wetherby Road, etc. It is the 2nd day of rail strikes so the station was dead. Pret a...

Well apart from a very cold return to Wetherby: the temperature not the people (they're always frosty), it was a pleasant Saturday hereabouts. Lola and I had a lovely hour and a half clowning about and swimming down on the Ings and Scaur Bank. After a second walk, and before dinner, I popped to Wetherby Brew Co but it was so chilly that I had a glass of cider then returned for a quiet night in. Mum went to the Jazz night in Boston Spa and was gone around 7:30pm and, I guess, I was asleep by eight? I didn't hear anything until I awoke for a pee at dawn. Then I went back to sleep until 5am(6am Spanish time). Come the school holidays I've Archie to house and dog sit for 36 days (the confirmed the dates) as Iskara and David head off to Bulgaria for the entire school holidays... And I can't blame them as the are such busy people: flying all around non-stop with two young-uns and working working working. They're quite well of physically, but I couldn't manage even a f...

This morning, having read Down and Out in Paris and London (a slightly conceited memoir), I feel that Leeds in 2022 resounds to a similar beat. At 7am the only folks about are those who clean up from the night before and those who linger in doorways alive or dead: who knows. The litter of fast food containers, dropped food, paper cups: things blowing on the breeze down Eastgate. Wrappers dropped and forgotten as these bodies slumbers, post binge, in doorways half covered and beyond redemption. It's a town which only just hangs on. Without the universities making their six pence worth the town would be as dead as is possible: none of the structures surrounding the city would exist and those areas would appear as decrepit as I see walking through LS7 to venture over the Inner Ring Road flyover to Wade Lane: it wouldn't be dissimilar to Mansfield? On the verges nature keeps reclaiming as much as it is able. The rats and mice, pigeons and gulls do very well on our ledger of refuse...

Back through the baptismal font which is Leeds on a Friday evening. The pigs feasting on unreal truffles in the barren woods. A trial to get any positive response from people so deep in their trough. As I got back to the flat around 11, the bus at 9 didn't appear at the airport so I shared a taxi to Leeds Station with Victoria heading to York. Walking direct to Lovell Park, blinkers on, keeping out of the path of the brutish hordes swelling the greasy pavements where eyes glimmer malevolent. It's six am, I am back in West Yorkshire. It's time to prepare my face for the faces I meet.

Went to the promenade and I am left wondering how many ice cream, souvenir, discount shoe and restaurants (where someone stands forcing you in) there ever needs to be? Hundreds. In a universe as amazing and as complicated as this humanity really is so simple: give him a lolly and he'll be so so happy. Truthfully, I found myself walking at that promenading speed and shouted at myself. Leaving the pointlessness I crossed over the Ramblas and park which separates Cambrils from L'Horta de Santa Maria. Much like a warning of Dragons: there be Germans beyond the dross of commerciality. So I sat down for a beer - pitiful Estrella Damm (it's Alsatian you know) - and touched base with Nuremberger, Hamburger, and his hund(Nina), then working my way back towards this Fonda I crossed back into Nanaland, but where the locals hung out: Passeig de Francesc Marciá and ate a €5 artisanal pizza(minus the cheese) and a final beer. It's another day. I've located a café next to where I ...

Another half day waiting to sleep and then move along. The afternoons are killers. And I was almost exterminated by the gastrointestinal restaurant next door to the Fonda: €30 for an Entrecot. As I'd paid €14 a few days back for the same item I kept looking around Cambrils. A very nondescript establishment Bar Eixample for a grilled Sea Bass. Reminiscent of the one I grilled back at Pucelli's in Padstow: possibly the least Italian of all the various mock Italian restaurants in that mockery of a Cornish fishing village... The chef was Armenian and he advised me where to get good Lavash: if only there was Armenian food here? But Catalonia isn't England with it's unlimited culinary affair? The Sea Bass wasn't completely fresh. Do I walk because I am bored? The same question could be asked of every narcissistic act I am aware of or oblivious of... From awakening until returning to slumber there is a great nothing to be filled. Of course it is too warm this afternoon to ...

So I hitched, at the junction I was walking towards a few days ago from L'Ampolla (on the first scorching afternoon of this heatwave), to catch the train back to Cambrils to eat a hearty breakfast. Whenever I go in a car, after a long walk, the wonder of the distances we go in such short a time... We're in such a hurry. In the blink of an eye I am on the platform in L'Ampolla with a café Largo. *** Back where this chaotic few days began - breakfast of champions at Sol y Sombra . Traveling by train... In thirty minutes what took four days is over. On the platform I just met a wonderful woman from around Gdansk (Anya) who was graceful enough to spend that time with me and also in the carriage: the journey was over too quickly. For a few moments I was not so lonely as I was on the Camino del Ebro - as the sun was cutting me down. She was visiting a 'friend' (with benefits?) and was heading to Barcelona for a the day. Time for a second bite of the cherry here on the pla...

30 kilometres by 1300. That's too much without any shade, for the last 10, back alongside the Canal. There is no more tedious Camí...but I am back in the Mercat Municipal to compensate with Boquerones Fritas, vino and pan. Six hours of this life. There and back again... It's a wonderful wonderful life... This morning I thought of going to La Rapita on the morrow... But the best breakfast I had so far was in Cambrils... *** I am lonely. No amount of meaning hidden beneath words can cover up this truth. There is nothing and no one (but God, the universe and everything) that helps here. After another pointless walk on my own, sweating and swearing, starring at the horizon and wondering why this activity and what do I do this for all I want now is to touch down in a place I feel closer to: home... Back northwards in the morning... *** Glenn suggested that if nothing presents itself as a solution to sleep on it. I slept on it, but I still am not sure which direction to head. The fur...

Just met a guy who rescues dogs who are in need. His father was blown up by ETA when he was only 4 so he and his mother left the province never to return. The man was also afraid of explosions... The special dog was a 7 year old guardian livestock breed with six toes on its feet. Apparently it was rescued because it was beaten. The previous owner is hanging from a meat hook in his groin, in a long forgotten abattoir, somewhere north of Deltebre. He'd found a puppy girl abandoned and that was his other companion. Why do humans do it? I wish I could fathom our cruelty to nature, animals, those we've domesticated and ourselves... I couldn't kill a fish! I struggle when I see insects slowly running out of energy in a sweltering greenhouse. We're present and absent from the death of so many: like me and my reaction to bed bugs. There just trying to raise a family too... Came back, ate the left overs with bread and had a glass of vino accompanied by a couple of yogurt Madelei...

Home made vegetable paella. Finally went and bought the ingredients for self catering. I had to visit the Mecadona and not the Mercat Municipal, as I can't find a Caja Rural Bank ATM anywhere here, so am not being charged by the various other Spanish Banks. The gentleman from yesterday's botifarra vendor suggested there is one near the Iglesia. But I looked and found none...Sorely needed crusty bread and a dry white wine. I think I will go and locate them both for a continuation tonight. *** Dias visited and now have a rice pudding simmering away. Really I shouldn't have to buy anymore ingredients, and will need to leave some here when I vacant early on Thursday morning, and then head back up north towards Tarragona for one evening. The temperature is increasing again, but no suggestion of 38 as it was saying yesterday... But 33 is still a lot hotter than I expected at this stage in June. Reminds me of Broome back in 1999 and 2001. It was a wonderful town, but hot behind th...

It's quite odd to be sat on this balcony, with mosquitoes doing their work, and not to be rushing off anywhere! Last night, in the muggy room, I was awakened by the incessant explosions on the Delta: and now I know what the experience of shell shock could be: unable to sleep with these explosions going off every few moments. And a primary fear of loss of life with the incoming shrapnel. But here I am. No hangover. I put away quite a lot of wine with lunch: the fantastic bottifara and beans (which was too much for one person) and so much meat for me! The Italian Espresso stove top is ideal to re-tune to the explosions and wonder about the universe... An episode of In Our Time on BBC sounds is The Death of Stars . Now I must find a way of chilling out for 5ish days, until I go back to Reus for an afternoon flight on Friday, right here, alone with the comings and goings of life in a Catalan agricultural/tourist town. Last night I tried to step back from listening to music which was pl...

Truthfully this was a challenging six days. Walking in this heat, through the Costa and up the Ebro has made me wonder... Tomorrow morning I am walking to the end of the Delta: Ruimar, before the space and heat can undo me (and leave me starring into the corner of the apartment: like an imbecile)! And now I am discovering many many bites on my head. The kind of nibbles are some I have known before, but didn't associate with bedbugs! Perhaps I've had them with me more often than I care to recall? For instance in Villahermosa, and then on a long distance coach between Chiquimula and Flores and I am almost sure in Oaxaca... I blamed Mosquitoes, but they were innocent... *** What would I do if a woman gave me a gift I've not been presented with since 2012... I've no idea! Perhaps I'd run, speedily, to the hills from which I descended this morning? I went to Lidl to buy coffee for the Italian espresso stove top they've in the apartment and I...

Walking across town from the Hostal Virginia (€30), where I had shower and relaxed an hour under the welcome Aircon and it's all about different pharmacy led displays suggesting the temperature is climbing steadily towards the mid thirties. Imagine walking in the afternoon without any shade along the side of that canal - It'd kill me for sure. Is there somewhere in Spain where the thermometer is not gradually increasing so I can hide away? Staring at four walls isn't ideal, although there is some physical relief, but bordem levels increases and I get a little neurotic about tomorrow. Now I am lacking motivation to carry on on the Camino del Ebro. It's too hot to do much, but I can't control it. Imagine working in it? Perhaps I stop the Camino... There will be other times. Perhaps I head back to the coast and stay near the sea? I know there is a sea breeze and the sea to take the edge off. Tomorrow the suggestion is to  walk as far as Benifallet and make a decision a...

Day two over. No room in the Inn up ahead in Xerta and the Ayuntamiento isn't open to help. Better a Hostal here in Tortosa than miles from nowhere with 34 degrees adding to the mixer? After many a minute trying to find anywhere around here in the Office de Tourism I am sent back the way I was struggling: after the Antic Pont del Ferrocarril I thought 'can I continue on if necessary'? Central Mercat, huge, so now have Garantxa and a plate of chorizo, jamon and tripa. I almost missed out Tortosa because I didn't want to detour on such a warm day if I had to carry on to Xerta. But I don't. Tomorrow I pass through it as i hit the more demanding section if I didn't just go on the GR99 instead of the Camino? Two short morning etapes. It's better physically and mentally. Tomorrow? That is a question mark... ... Where someone is grossly overweight it is all over the body. Fat fingers: clogged arteries. As I finish a second Garantxa I consider that tomorrow must be ...

Woken with a start in the wee hours: some consistent explosion - at first I thought someone was trying to break into the Alberg, then I assumed it was an intermittent firework, but on leaving it became clear it was crow scarers on the Delta. The forecast for today is playing with my mind: 33°C, but I am in the usual position drinking a second coffee before I consider departing earlier than expected. I could hang on until 8... But I've got to cling to the edge of the hope I can manage the distance without heat stroke. Started my day packing away the stuff I'd washed, folding clothes and repacking the sleeping bag I slept on: it was too warm for being in it: sod the mosquito risk. Walking up to the bridge which crosses the Ebro, the original one from 1921. There is little that a coffee, a patisserie and a glass of orange juice can't fix. Now in the usual place to get ready to depart once more! I've discovered I am layered in bites. And I was clearly sat below ...

Just managed to zone out from 4 until 5. Then hand washed some items. I've a fresh t-shirt on but, like the foods trays on the Death Star, it's wet - nothing worked that well on that monstrosity, including security, so would you trust the dishwashers? Now it is dry. Took seconds as I walked up to where there seems to be a plethora ofcars (bar next to a Repsol), definitely put-putting mopeds and none locals: who sound Polish, Lithuanian, Ukrainian or Russian... How does one choose from their 'voices' as it sounds just like someone speaking backwards? I usually take it from their bodies: I would say Polish? But I dare not ask. There is a politely turned out olive tree on the rotonda. Amposta is a fairly multicultural town: well there is a large Arab contingent, and several slogans warning against Muslims (written by Nazi Christians I suppose with the accompanying anti-Nazi anthesis (anti-fascists are the same pigs))? Be liberal and stop all this bickering! ***...

End of day one! But it's only noon. I am in the Alberg de pelegrins d'Ampost a because at 11 I thought it's suddenly too hot for a long afternoon  towards Tortosa - 20 kilometres done since leaving els Muntells around 6:15am. The ex-president, wife and current president were very helpful, but the ex-president was giving me a headache: too much information for the future. I don't like to see too far ahead on the Camino. Each day should be as it comes - especially in this heat? I am here now. The bed is made. There isn't much to the kitchen (it's entire without condiments, coffee machine, etc) but I am the 7th Peregrino since they opened in October. They are trying to develop the way from here so I wish them success. There doesn't look like there is too much to concern myself with here in Amposta, but I couldn't walk any further. The ex-president tried to show me the way tomorrow but he led me into the sun! Minus the floppy hat I couldn't do it and I a...

What a beautiful vista? It might be flat as a skillet, without edges, and you could conceivably believe the world is flat here, but a sunrise and paddy field landscape to give me my first bite of el Camino. Arrived in Sant Jaume d'Enveja just around 7:30 after a hasty six kilometres from els Muntells. Time for esmorzar. Just on time for the children to go to school, being collected outside the iglesia and to count the mosquito bites I've just received in the swamp... These paddy fields are their evening and morning hunting grounds? I guess these are European/western mosquitoes because I was miles from people (and they looked differently attired). The hife bus arrives to take the chicos and chicas away, I take antihistamines and then head off for post coffee dispatch.

€18 to look a little better? A Barber's shop visit to kill a little time away from the onslaught of the sea breeze in the sunshine. It's difficult, but to see old gentlemen tending to their allotments in the mid afternoon sun I swoon! They simply feel it differently and respond due to their nature's - they were born on this flat baking delta. They'd be frozen solid in England and a bit mouldy too? And I always wanted to see a Delta, then I recalled I'd seen the Camargue which is the same. I am losing the plot a little. I can hardly communicate in Spanish, but Catalan has lost me absolutely: it is a completely new language for me to listen to, picking out words I understand in other people's conversations. Last year when coming off the Pyrenees, undone by the fall near Vinça, I struggled to make any sense of what was being said. Now I do understand that Catalonia isn't Spain. It's culturally, historically, socially different. It's time to ...

The ever present drone of the autovia following me breaking the illusion of being solitary, below the sky - along the edge of land and sea - crawling along the rolling coves, cliffs, inlets and beaches. *** Up and down. Down and then up! All the way along the GR92 it was testing my patience: and the sun was getting a little intense too. Finally stopped for the morning - it's one!  Will eat well before attempting the next leg of the journey: Deltebre... Give me Entrecot, extra rare, but first Croquetas Jamon.  It's extremely warm, already, for June and it's testing me absolutely. It's a coastal path, but it takes it to the extreme! I had to remove my boots with 7.5 kilometres left until L'Ampolla, as the strain was showing on the old war wounded foot, and on went the sandals which have given me blisters... I feel like a maniac as I down a Entrecot, fried egg, frites and a large salad. I was going to hang on, but someone lit up behind me so I am on my way ...

Damn you person on the floors above playing music at 4am until 5... Inconsiderate and garbage all the way - Would I Lie To You! They can't have been young or fashionable to listen to 1980s/90s crap. Struggling in and out of sleep until a Gull suggested its daylight. Now I await breakfast at 7:30, it's part of the price and yet I so feel like not having it here, but instead along the dockside... ... I couldn't wait for breakfast so I went up to the Mercat, which was closed, so I find myself on the same boulevard where there is Jacaranda blossoms falling. Just up from the Port... La Rambleta. And the flies are finding plenty of substances on me ... Subtly better than mosquitoes. It's going to be 31°C today... Camino del Ebro tomorrow? Ate Dorada last night in Oh! Mar with a couple of glasses of dry white wine it was lovely. The recommendation was worthy of €17 (I was truly swindled in Esmeralda...£29) I also had a better Gazpacho in Cala Cris. I was a bit desperate yester...

After a few indecisions, revisions and decisions I determined that I have walked enough today. The lunch just didn't inspire me and this town: L'Ametlla de Mar is large enough to shake down. One more day it seems - 'with the scores on the doors' - 35 kilometres to Amposta, where I am not going... It has got an official Alberg.... I am meant to be heading to Deltebre! Tomorrow is another day. Time for an Estrella Damm, olives and to person watch for a little time? The Hotel, where I got a double room, with a bath, for €49.01(Hotel l'Alguer) including breakfast at 7:30am(which is 6:30am UK time)! Nearly 27 kilometres since 8am until I sought the bath at half past three. Eating that huge hamburger last night really gave me a lot of energy, regardless of the beers and average night's sleep. The sun too... Not the nudists; I was more interested in the nuclear power plant! Tomorrow is a long way off, but I am so happy to have managed zero public transport ...

Missed my turn so now I am passing through nudist zone: why would anyone parade their charms like this? Good job his box of Special K was where I would've seen his non-special C! Is there any other way but The Way? Certainly if I hadn't not seen the turn off I certainly would have needed a microscope to spot what couldn't be seen? It was like a retreating slug! *** 5 hours which got very weary as I sought to stop for repase. I think I stumbled upon an average and expensive experience at Esmeralda in Sant Jordi d'Alfama, with it humps of ghost towns: a result of overextension in 2008. Nearly had another bump in the wallet but they didn't have Plato de Queso. After a Calzone, which seemed more like a crimped pastry than a bread offering... It was OK. It was enough for another couple of hours? *** I put back my arrival at Alberg Deltebre another night. Something says walk all the way; I absolutely detest masks on busy public transport so walking it is - but...

Looking along my route for this morning I follow a main road south some distance after going over the hill by the Mediterranean and I really don't like to do that... Stayed in Hotel Sancho ** (€45) and it was comfortable, but a bit muggy. The room was on the top floor. The Aircon was fine, but a little noisy and it came on by itself early in the wee hours. It's definitely too far for one day to walk all the way to Deltebre then again, after it, to the Alberg on the Delta where I decide to go west along the Camino del Ebro. Do I walk it... There is always Hitchhiking once I run out of steam? I was meant to be having breakfast at the Hotel, but I was ready to depart at 7 so came around the corner, opposite the very modern church, to Paimes which I had noticed last night, stumbling back from one too many Volt Damm... the voices are all Catalan. The room was €45 and breakfast was free, although he wanted to charge an extra €8. But I was a little unhappy about bed and no...

The trials were many yesterday to reach Tarragona, just as it was shutting up for that bank holiday - being the Monday after Pentecost, but now I am sat at the top of Tarraco next to the Cathedral waiting for a second Café Largo. Tarragona is fine. It's not as frenetic as I recall Barcelona being, it's not as beautiful as Girona (IMHO) but it is a little less rough around the edges as Lleida appeared to be. Lleida was very interesting, surrounded by those agricultural lands: an island above the plain, but the Mercado was no more. *** I wasn't planning on walking today, but once I'd caught the bus south, passing through god awful Salou - with its British seaside seediness - I got off at Cambrils. Being forced to wear a mask - which is still obligatory on public transport - I was getting a little anxious so I hurried off before the bus station. But here I am. On another adventure. L'Hospitalet de l'Infant for the evening then over the end of the range ...

There are reasons for everything, but knowing the depths of their mysterious truths is something I find blows my mind! Just now I looked out of the cabin window just as we were leaving Blighty a little west of Brighton so I saw the entirety of Michael's and my journey from Shoreham on Sea to Brighton, then to East Dean onwards to Birling Gap before we returned west to the Seven Sisters, Cuckmere Haven, Plough and Harrow, Alfriston and hitchhiking to Seaford when the bus failed to materialize... ... As I retook my seat after a short toilet visit there was the French Coast and Dieppe - another time and another Way/Weg/Camino/Chemin. It's all open to interpretation and, perhaps, only has the meaning I give it, but my time in this universe doesn't feel random. There is my other way: the Path being the destination. It sparkles. Mañana is definitely day one of a Camino - either  El Camino de Santiago desde Tarragona  or another way which I will connect with in the morning. *** Th...

Sunday morning. Took to bed rather early: around 7. And slept until around 6. It's a bit grey and sullen outside threatening rain I guess. Still the allotment needs me for one final visit prior to Spain (aka Catalonia) tomorrow. Was woken startled by the sounds of explosions. Then I recalled there was to be an end of the proms fireworks display on The Ings. Grumbling a bit from the inconvenience I rolled back into sleep. Getting ready for a visit to the allotment for the final time for a few days. Just to see if any strawberries are ready and to chop back some of the taller weeds along the edges: before they go to seed!  *** Nuff done. Loads of weed clearing, strawberry protection - grass cuttings. Nice 3 hours. Quick Old Peculier in Bar Three where there are two very annoying and arseholed regulars... It's 12:30. I bet they've been at it all evening and morning as those two can drink! I've heard said that Steve is a Mason, he's a very alcoholic one. I am meant to s...

Walked out of Leeds up Scott Hall Road, through Moortown Corner and Primley Park to Harewood via Eccup Reservoir but I didn't once feel in the zone mentally or physically. It's the first distance I had covered since I walked with Michael from East Dean to Birling Gap and along the Seven Sisters. Back then I wasn't feeling it either... On Thursday I ate healthy and didn't drink so I was fine on Friday morning for a meander... Once I reached the bridge over Eccup Beck in Harewood Park I knew I couldn't walk any further. As I left my flat in the morning I walked for roughly an hour to Chapel Allerton, but I was just too early for anywhere to stop for breakfast, except Caffé Nero - but a pain aux raisin isn't substantial enough - and it might've also been closed! The couple of places I might of stopped were ten minutes away from opening so I walked along Harrogate Road up to Moortown. The one place I found - Lan's - had some alarm going opposite so I stopped...

Man is not sedentary, laid down layer on layer and never moving. Transformed into a solid mess. Without moving I become a stone unworkable like granite without the correct metal to take it to another aspect. Yesterday was definitely a quiet day for me. Other than the three hours I put in at the allotment and the hour I took to return to the flat on the X99 I did nothing - except meditate ... My head wanted to leave the flat in the early evening, but my heart knew it was a bad idea. But I don't know which way I am going this morning. Somewhere north or somewhere north east? There is this new bridge at Redhall which seems to be accessable now - over the new North Leeds Orbital Road next to the Wellington Inn. First things first: ablutions and then the small recycling centre on Wintoun Street, opposite the Adult Social Care Hub.

A will, like wool, hits a wall Unfreed, bundled and fuzzy. Is it mine, thine or His? Breaking through; it's to shine. Fine and threaded, a multitude, Options? Choices; an inaptitude. Transmuted, silence! Goodly will Nothing is different, but ever is! Happenstance something be In importance, not impotence, Me transformed - beyond barren, Out of the wilderness, Into cottonseed bloomed True and potential The wall breaks down To step out from constriction. 

Caught the bus from Deerstone Ridge. X99 a Sunday service this bank holiday. Same all weekend I suppose. Saw Andy before I departed from the allotment and I probably will bump into him on Friday afternoon after I've walked back to Wetherby from Leeds on the morrow... Need one proper day walking distance without Lola, who can't do more that two hours really now she's seven, and I've not walked from my flat for ages. Usually I walk from Wetherby to Roundhay. Tomorrow I could do the Meanwood Valley Way and link it to Wyke Ridge in Harewood Park? *** Upstairs now as the back of downstairs smells badly of mould: it's an old bus. I recall the same smell on this bus. It's the purple and aquamarine awfulness from ten plus years ago. *** Got back to the flat, did two washes: one of walking stuff and one of bathroom stuff... Made a simple rice dish for lunch and I should finish it for supper. Made porridge for the morning. No alcohol today. Will have a proper walk tomorro...

Second day of June and it's wall to wall blue sky. After I've abluted this morning I am spending a considerable time on the allotment. I've got these blue corn kernels which I feel I need to plant now the weather is improving. I will have to protect them from pigeons, etc, but I've plenty of chicken wire which I can lay over or I can use the netting tunnel I didn't know I had. *** Yesterday Lola and I walked from Sicklinghall to Wetherby via Spofforth, Crimple Beck and Kirk Deighton. Afterwards she was exhausted, but she enjoyed running through the wheat and barley fields (and I felt better mentally for having had a long walk). Leaving her at 42 I went out for a couple of hours trying to finish the Graham Greene novel I've been reading End of the Affair . Mum didn't realise that I'd not fed her so Lola was going crazy at her around five! She normally has her second meal at 3! Poor girl must've thought she was being punished! If dogs even consider tho...

Twenty four hours without any beer. Yesterday I kind of struggled to get straight back from the allotment to my mum's, but I did. With a couple of strawberries (loads of white ones on the allotment) and a bunch of onions I returned. From the onions I made soup out of what I could salvaged from the bolted few I'd dug up - using a pressure cooker to speed up the process and break down the fibres.  What's left in the kitchen are the equivalent of large spring onions, but they aren't bolted! I've been reading into why the onions on the allotment are 'bolting', which is when they send out a flower stalk and don't produce the layers of a conventional onion, and apparently onion 'sets' are more likely to do so over onion grown from seed as they are less tolerant of variations in weather. Since winter sprung into spring the temperature has been very variable - the last week temperature at night has struggled to get over 8°C all week and day time temperat...

Walking along Wade Lane I finally made it to Lovell Park without being worse for the intake of alcohol... But I feel in the pits again. Going to try to make a nice mushroom sauce to go with pasta, but I think the ones I bought, reduced, are at the end of their life? They smell too much of mushroom! *** With perseverance I turned those "passed their sell by date" fungi into a wonderful sauce. It was a creation. It took patience! I forced myself to slow down from the anxiety which has been rushing around inside my head all day... *** Where are you going and how do you know already? Birds... across the valley from my window a gull flies north above Aldi and Porcelanosa towards a destination it already knows. Birds have an incredible sense of smell or sight or they communicate on a level we are unaware of. They are busy busy all the morning and into the evening, if we provide a street lamp... They are heading for breakfast. They don't really stop looking for food, between squ...