Welcome to our blog!

At Buttermere in the Lake District, 2017           (photo: Grace Pearson)

Hello! Ever since we were married in 1998, Sara and I have had a shared love of British culture (Sara's deriving from her fascination with 19th-century literature; mine deriving from my love of history and a memorable work exchange experience in the Lake District in 1992). After honeymooning in the U.K. in 1998 and especially after a month-long holiday in 2004, we've tried to get across the pond as much as budgets and work schedules have allowed. 

And it was in 2004 that we discovered the enjoyable pastime of doing walking holidays in England given the generous rights-of-way laws there, where as long as you are responsible, you can walk on established rights-of-way over private land. For all the splendour and adventure to be found hiking the wilds of Canada and the U.S., other than a very few select trails such as the Appalachian Trail or the Pacific Crest Trail—much too adventurous for us!—walking on private land here in North America is next to impossible. By contrast, in the U.K. and especially in England, there is a thriving walking culture, which means that there are nearly endless walking routes available to be followed (or self-constructed) using long-established rights-of-way over private land, country lanes, railway paths, and other tracks through the beautiful countryside. And depending on your route, there's nearly always a pub in the village at the end of the day—and no grizzly bears!

On that holiday in 2004 we did several multi-day stretches of point to point walking carrying small backpacks and staying in bed and breakfasts—and loved it! In 2008 we were much more adventurous and followed a week's warmup in the Cotswolds with a 20-day, 200-mile (320 km) walk across northern England generally following Alfred Wainwright's "Coast to Coast" walk (or "C2C"). It was a terrific walk and we'd highly recommend it.

As the years passed and we became (slightly) more technologically advanced, Sara had the idea of blogging our walks, beginning with our "Pilgrimage of Thanksgiving" in 2013 to celebrate a successful kidney transplant given to me by my sister Susan in 2011. We walked around 450 miles (725 km) in 40 days across the south of England from Devon to Dover (hence the "D2D")—with Susan walking for a week with us in the middle—taking rest days in cathedral cities and literally singing our way across the land in village churches and, most memorably, Canterbury Cathedral, where we were welcomed as pilgrims: something we'll never forget! You can find Sara's blog of that 2013 walk (with comments from me in blue) by using the navigation on the right-hand side of the screen to get to her very first post in May, 2013.

After taking shorter holidays to England with Sara's dad in 2015, with my mom in 2017, and then enjoying a lovely 20th anniversary holiday in East Anglia and the Peak District in 2018, more recently we have planned a new, meandering and, because of its length, multi-part walk from Barnstaple in Devon to Robin Hood's Bay in North Yorkshire (the "B2B"; and yes, we have a thing about alphabetic acronyms!).

The B2B Part One was in 2019 (a walk of around 200 miles in 26 days from Barnstaple to Stroud, Gloucester), and it will take us at least three or four more legs to get to Robin Hood's Bay. You can read Sara's account of our 2019 walk—which had a few small challenges including a first for us on all our trips: many days of rain!—by using the right-hand navigation to go to her first post in May, 2019. 

We were to do the second, 36-day leg from Stroud to Church Stretton, Shropshire in May-June 2020, but that was postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic. The forced years off have made us very much look forward to hitting the trail again in 2023, which we have now done! See Sara's blog of our B2B Part Two just a ways below this post (though you'll have to skip down to her initial post on May 5th, 2023 and then read "backwards," i.e., upwards, of course).

The seals at St Margaret's Bay, Kent, in 2013

Oh, and our blog title "Walking with Seals"? It's all the fault of our friend Jennifer, who in 1999 told us of friends of hers who took their stuffed "Piglet" on vacations and had photos taken with him in famous locations. Since then, we haven't traveled without Lucille and Anastasia, our North-Pacific Otter-Seals! Over these many years they have gotten more and more "real" in the Velveteen Rabbit sense, but they are always excited to ride in our rucksacks as we walk!  

Once again, welcome to our blog and read on for our adventures walking with seals in England's "green and pleasant land"...