shewhomust | First walk of the year

As walks go, we started the year with baby steps: a short walk and not straying off streets. But it was good to be out, and walking, in the sunshine. We parked at the Fish Quay, and walked along the Tyne by the Black Middens (a particularly treacherous area of low rocks) round the little headland to Tynemouth.

There was the usual cluster of memorial benches at the top, where the Coast to Coast cycle way begins: it's usual enough to see bunches of flowers on such seats, but these had something I hadn't seen before, little holders with straps provided, clearly designed to be fastened to informal memorials. Sometimes I feel uncomfortable about this, reluctant to sit down on a seat once its function as a memorial has been made quite so prominent, but on this occasion (perhaps because I wasn't actually wanting to sit down) I didn't mind the assumption that I would have to share my seat with the memory of those who had enjoyed sitting there in the past. I particularly liked one well-sited seat which bore two brass plaques, presumably commemmorating two brothers. For Henry Allen Raine it was "the best place in the world to ponder", while for Edward Hutchinson Raine it was "the best place in the world to eat fish and chips."

This was hard to argue with , and once we had walked the half mile out along the North Pier to the light, we went to the Gibraltar Rock and ate fish and chips.

We continued on the beach the length of the Long Sands, which were busy with surfers and dog-walkers. We kept hoping that a surfer would do something spectacular, but whether the waves were wrong (they certainly weren't very big) or the surfers unskilled, they were quite boring. The main excitment came from trying to walk along the edge of the water without being caught by the incoming tide; I didn't quite manage it, and ended up with a boot full of water. Right at the end of the beach I also saw a lady walking a ferret (I think) on a lead, white and yellow like dirty snow, small and slinky but headstrong enough to keep pulling her off her course.

Time to turn back, and cutting inland through the streets of Tynemouth back to the river brought us back to the car just after lighting up time.