🥾 Walking with Paul Beal

⛪️ EASBY ABBEY

🗺 Easby, Richmondshire, Northern England

The tranquil ruins of the 12th-century Easby Abbey are only a mile away from Richmond town centre, and can be reached by scenic paths on both sides of the River Swale.

👉 https://www.paulbeal.com/routes-and-photos/northern-england/richmond-applegarth/

Halloween Costume Contest Days 24 & 25: Caveman and Ghostbsuter!

I went for another 5am walk in pitch darkness this morning. It wasn't as cold as yesterday but fuck, was it ever terrifying. I can't recall a time I've ever experienced fog as thick as that in my life, and if I did I certainly didn't experience it in terrifying near-darkness.

A darkness filled with nothing but impossible-to-see birds chirping wildly is creepy enough, not being able to see more than five feet in circumference around myself because of the mist is another proposition altogether. Although I did start to think about how much fun it would be to wear a full length overcoat, carry a baseball bat and go stand in the foggy distance and watch the nervous trepidation of unfortunate early morning joggers as the begin to make out my murky silhouette.

Then again, walking past Dickensian-esque cobbled side streets and grim back alleys with visions of Jack the Ripper racing through my head, I've already decided to take pity on any potential victims by not doing that at all. Because I'm not a freak.

So I did something today that I haven't done in a decade and a half - I walked the route to my old junior school, which was torn down a couple of years ago. Imagine my surprise then to find it standing exactly as it had when I last walked through it's fenced gate back in the summer of 1995. Turns out what people meant when they said "Northgate school is being knocked down" was Northgate grammar school (I think that was the name), an old, hospital-like building that had been long since abandoned before I ever came on the scene.

It was kind of weird walking a path which used to be a twice-a-day, 5-days-a-week routine for four years in the early 90's for the first time in over 15 years, but even weirder was the opportunity to turn right.

Previously, the only thing adjacent to Northgate junior school were empty fields, but in the years since I last made the trek, a housing estate appears to have sprung up.

Actually, I've known about the housing estate for a few years, although it did appear in a period where I had no idea it was being built. It's not like I've had any reason to head in that direction in years and I don't know anyone who lives there, so I'd never been before. But it still caught me off guard when I first saw it. A holy fuck moment when you expect nothing but barren wasteland and suddenly there's an entire settlement before your very eyes.

When you've lived in a town for 27 years, particularly one that seems smaller by the day when you start to to-and-fro on the possibilities of city life should you ever summon up the guts to make the leap, it seems strange that there'd be a part of it you'd never been through before. And yet, here I was.

Walking around a new part of town is kind of strange. Walking around a familiar town that you can barely see is also pretty strange. Walking around an unfamiliar, new part of town that you can barely see is completely fucking terrifying. Not knowing the ins and outs, it was total guesswork as to which way I should go.

The houses were quite small-town Americana with their two-cars-on-every-driveway, neatly lawned, red-brick construction, but there was still something uniquely crappily British about them. Maybe the lack of small picket fences and clear blue sky under a blazing sun. Or perhaps it was seeing horrendous, dickhead boy racer shitcars complete with go faster stripes sitting side-by-side next to four door family saloons. Seems like a toffy, middle-class wank stain of an estate if you ask me.