Would you walk 195 miles with this man?
Graham Newson first started walking at nine months, and then – having mastered the skill – walked to school, the shops, the car and the pub and, in the case of the latter, sometimes managed to walk back. A keen walker, he managed to get soaked and buried in peat walking the 192 mile Coast to Coast path, got drenched walking the 70 mile Cumbria Way and got sunburnt walking the Ridgeway. Now retired after an award-free career in journalism working on newspapers and then 22 years with BBC TV1 News, retiring as a senior producer at 54 after no one asked him to stay, he combines his love of writing and walking by inflicting his tiresome journeys on the villagers of Bricket Wood in Hertfordshire where he edits and writes the village magazine. Sadly Bricket Wood, where he’s lived with his wife Tessa for 35 years, is 260 miles away from his great love the Lake District where he’s been very wet innumerable times. So smitten is he with the Cumbrian landscape that his daughter is named Tarn after the beauty spot Tarn Hows. His sons Adam and Mitch are grateful they aren’t. When not being covered in food or jumped on by his three grandchildren he can often be seen looking baffled, holding an upside down Ordnance Survey map and standing forlornly on a footpath in the middle of nowhere.
Joking aside, the only reason I have created this website is to share my love of the countryside with other like-minded walkers and those keen to explore what’s beyond the front doorstep. It wasn’t designed to be a commercial venture or a money-spinner – I can’t imagine interest will be anything other than minimal – but it has allowed me to continue to write material that could be considered to be worthwhile, as opposed to writing what TV presenters read! And, having been stricken with chronic gout and sudden onset arthritis in my left foot which put me out of action for nearly two years, finishing the walk and the website was the incentive I needed to eventually recover (insomuch as you can do with arthritis), get the maps out and seek out fresh Hertfordshire Way signs and roundels. If truth be told, it took me three times as long to complete the 195 mile circuit than I had originally planned, courtesy of illness, two back-to-back family weddings to plan and pay for, other domestic obligations and a selection of other feeble excuses. So when I have written “it’s not a race, take as long as you want” it comes from deep personal experience.
When I completed the 16th and final leg in September 2020 it was with a heavy heart. Not because the ‘adventure’ was over but because the one person vital to this website wasn’t around to share the moment with me. My dear brother-in-law Michael ‘Cass’ Castiello tragically died in April 2020 not long after being diagnosed with an aggressive and incurable cancer. His computer skills, his patience, his commitment and his ability to ‘reinterpret’ my computer illiteracy gave the website shape and life. As I said on the front page, without his care and diligence it could never have existed. It was brutally cruel that, having stayed the course for years, I/he/we had just the final leg to complete so the website could go ‘live’ when he died at the far too early age of 61. So I am dedicating it to his memory. I am sure he would have preferred something more fitting, a computer game named after him almost certainly, but it’s the one tribute I can pay. Thanks my dear friend. We finally finished it.