Tag: walking

How to explore the newest part of the King Charles III England Coast Path near Liverpool

While the focus was on Eurovision this week, a little bit of history was made on another part of Merseyside.

The opening of the Merseyside section of the King Charles III England Coast Path follows the recent renaming of the path for the Coronation.

It leads from Southport [Southport prom pictured above via i Newspaper] via Crosby and Formby to the Liverpool waterfront.

It also adds to plans throughout the year to celebrate the Year of the Coast as designated by the National Coastal Tourism Academy.

The highlight of the new section follows the lesser-known coast to the north of Liverpool, an undiscovered landscape of beaches, dunes and heathland supporting many wildlife habitats.

Several sections are designated as Sites of Special Scientific Interest with rare examples of flora and fauna.

John Corbett, a Liverpool Blue Badge Tourist Guide, based in Crosby, said:

“This is an area of big sky and statement sunsets.”

“I regularly walk this section of coast and love the long-distance views, looking as far as the Lake District and back towards Snowdonia on clear days, plus watching the ships coming in.”

Read the full story via the i Newspaper: Merseyside’s new King Charles III England Coast Path opens up.

How to celebrate St Dwynwen’s Day in Anglesey, North Wales

Today marks St Dwynwen’s Day, the Welsh equivalent of Valentine’s Day.

The love action is focused on Llanddwyn Island [pictured above], a remote headland off the tip of Anglesey, where Dwynwen founded her spiritual Shangri-La in the 5th century.

It’s a place to celebrate new-found love and soothe the soul after heartbreak.

I’ve done the walk to Llanddwyn Island several times, braving the elements and soaking up the ancient spirituality of the location.

I’ve trudged its Blue Flag beach for both contexts.

Llanddwyn is off limits to most this year under ongoing lockdown restrictions.

But my feature in the travel section of The Independent today celebrates its unique sense of spiritual calm at a time when, loved up or alone, we all need some saintly solace.

Here’s a flavour of my story:

Today that church may be ruined but it still swirls with the spirituality of the Wales’ age of the saints and has a presence that compels visitors to run their fingers along the ancient stone altar.

As the weather closes in, I find wave-smoothed pebbles [pictured below] tucked amongst the stones, messages of love lost and won scrawled upon them.

Read the full feature, A walk with ancient Celtic lovers for the Welsh Valentine’s Day via Independent Travel.

Lockdown loafing: the truth about Chester’s favourite ghost story

It’s one of the Chester’s favourite ghost stories.

The tale of a mystery figure, dressed as a monk and spotted on a winter evening, walking along the spooky passage by St John’s Church — the one with the coffin in the east walls [pictured above].

The figure has been seen many times over the years, patrolling the passageway beyond the westerner facade, which leads towards The Groves, the riverside walkway.

His presence is linked not with the church, however.

The Hermitage, the hidden building on a sandstone outcrop between the city walls and the river, is alleged to be his home.

The mysterious building, now privately owned and a reputed hotbed of poltergeist activity over the years, is also known by the name on its tucked-away entrance gate, The Anchorite Cell.

The story suggests the mystery man could be King Harold Godwinson, the vanquished Saxon king who got something in his eye at the Battle of Hastings in 1066.

It’s a story we all know from school history classes and one made famous by the Bayeux Tapestry.

Waltham Abbey in Essex claims the last resting place of King Harold. There’s even a stone marked with the words:

“This stone marks the position of the high altar behind which King Harold is said to have been buried in 1066.”

But Chester offers a different version of the story.

Local historians suggest that Harold’s mistress, Edith Swan Neck, rescued her lover from the battlefield and brought him to Chester to live out days in The Hermitage.

Disguised as a monk, he blended into the local community of holy men, who made their home at St John’s since the 7th century.

Edith cared for him during his final days, bringing supplies to his secret Chester hideaway.

It’s easy to dismiss the story as ghost-tale tosh but the sightings over the year offer first-hand accounts.

And excavations of the collapsed western facade years later unearthed two human skeletons entwined together in an eternal repose.

It’s a story I look forward to retelling when Chester Ghost Tours return after lockdown, especially if I’m leading a tour around King Harold’s Day, the nearest Saturday each year to October 14th.

Could the mystery monk behind Chester’s favourite ghost story be a long-lost King?

That would be one in the eye for Essex.

Lockdown loafing: the hidden story behind the Roman Gardens

It’s a place I used to take my children to play when they were little. They jumped on the ancient stones in a game of stepping stones.

It’s also the place I watched the Grand Budapest Hotel under a picnic blanket as part of the Moonlight Flicks series of outdoor films screenings.

It may now be eerily quiet under lockdown but I can still learn something new about familiar places on my daily walks around my home city.

The blossom-showered mosaic [pictured above] marks the entrance to the Roman Gardens, which are not, strictly speaking, gardens, nor Roman.

But, according to Chester Tour, we learn the design of the gardens is deliberate to create a winding path towards the river in the shape of a serpent coiled around a staff.

The design is a tribute to Asclepius, the Roman god of medicine.

The gardens were laid out in 1949 to display fragments of the ancient Roman buildings found around the city — the stoneworks there today were originally eslwhere.

Many of the fragments come from the original site of the Roman bathhouse on the east side of Bridge Street.

Others were uncovered during renovations of the city walls in 1887. They had been taken from various buildings across the Roman citadel, established from 74AD, to repair the walls in the late Roman period.

The site never served as a garden. It was originally part of a Roman quarry, later partly home to a 18th-century clay tobacco pipe factory in the and, finally, a cockpit for cock fighting — until it was banned in 1849.

One day we’ll be back at the Roman Gardens, watching a film as part of Moonlight Flicks, or eating ice creams bought nearby at the riverside kiosks.

But, for now, I’m soaking up the silence and seeing familiar places in a new light.