Cliff Walking With Robin Hobb

I came to know what it means to sleep on bed springs last night, I’ve never experienced a bed so uncomfortable. Fortunately we were staying in a 3 bedroomed caravan so I pinched 2 quilts and they managed to insulate me from the springs fairly well. 

Maybe it was the bed springs, but I woke up nice and early and after a huge salad for breakfast headed to the beach.  I’ve been looking forward to getting back to Filey beach since October, especially in the morning.  The crisp morning air, the soft lapping waves and the wide open beach stretching around the whole bay makes it one of my favourite places, I’ve yet to see a good sunrise, but I’ve got lots of opportunities for that in the next few months. 

It was quite misty so I decided to pop into Starbucks for an hour on my laptop, and made good use of the free 15 minutes of WIFI (stingy).  By the time I’d finished the sun was out and I walked up to north cliff country park where I made my next stop at the camp site cafe.  I’ve always liked this cafe, but today when I got there I was pleasantly surprised to see that it had been completely renovated and it’s really excellent now, with a great selection of home made food. I spent another hour there reading on my Kindle Paperwhite, and then headed out for another walk along the cliffs and then down to Filey Brigg (picture on the left) and then north along the cliffs for another hour before turning back for another cafe stop.

For all the walking time today I’ve been listening to Fools Errand by Robin Hobb and it’s such a joy.  Robin Hobb is a master story teller, her characters have come alive over thousands of pages.  It’s more than just storytelling though, it’s a rich work of philosophy too.  I’ve learnt as much from Robin as I have reading the New Testament.  Where Jesus provides the big ideas Robin provides such nuance by forcing the characters to make difficult decisions that challenge simple ideas of right and wrong.

I walked back to the Caravan via Tesco and after a shower went out for another short walk with Steph before hanging up my walking boots for the night.

I managed to burn two lots of vegetables trying to learn how to microwave veg, before giving up and boiling it.  I’m trying to eat 3 large fruit or veg meals a day, much more than I’m used to as part of my trial of the Wahls Protocol for auto-immune conditions and I’m lazy so it has to be easy.  I’ve been pleased with my progress so far, but everything’s easy when I’m on holiday.

Steph and I finished the day watching Super Skyscrapers in preparation for her trips to China and Japan.