The Devil’s Compass

Seaside towns cropped up last night. Jean Sprackland mentioned places including Margate and Southport in her reading at Costa Coffee, and later I had a Portslade-vs-Southwick debate with Robert Sheppard in the Dispensary. I’m heading from one seaside town to another on this journey, so in a sense I’m in the business of shoreline resorts, [...]

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Wet Lanes: Broxton to Whitchurch

This has been the only leg so far that has felt like an endurance test. A persistent soaking rain has made it heavy going. I’m writing this at Whitchurch Station, amazed that it has only taken a morning to get there – it felt like a wet lifetime in wet lanes.
Breakfast at the Egerton Arms [...]

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Down to the Crossroads: Chester to Broxton

I left Chester along the Shropshire Union Canal, on a dry, grey and intermittently windy morning. Canals can be surprising varied, and this is an interesting one, where each bridge creates its own little environment, and strange junk punctuates the long miles.

A long stretch of barges made the canal into a kind of watery [...]

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Fossilised time: Breakfast at the Twirl of Hay

Awake early having slept since 8pm, having had strange dreams perhaps caused by reading Alan Garner’s Thursbitch, a powerful novel of overlapping time, set in Cheshire, deep in the language, mythology and geology of the place. Morning reading somewhat lighter – ‘At Your Leisure with Premier Inn’, a free magazine left in the room. Although [...]

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In My Blakean Day: Chester: Station to Premier Inn

Before setting out this morning, I watched a recording of the Red Dragon movie. As I like to follow trails of coincidence as well as physical routes, in Chester I looked for some William Blake in Waterstones, one of the shops in the medieval Rows, a sort of upper storey to the streets. (The title [...]

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