The Way of the Gull - Day 1 - Douglas to Castletown - 15.75 miles

Word of the day  ( verb ) - to "Goo-Gull" - to wade through lots of brown stuff in order to find what you're looking for.


Bright sunny day, full English to start, then a drive to Douglas dropping a car at Castletown, and we were off:

Our start point was the gateway to the Marine Drive - in the guidebook ... " the impressive facade is merely a hollow memorial to man's grand intentions to run a tramway" - hope our walk has a better outcome.

Wonderful coastal views, remote bays and coves, wheeling gulls, and down into Port Soderick with its cave of rare spiders ( featured on Channel 4 apparently)

Geoff emerging from said cave - hopefully spiders still intact.
Beautiful Port Soderick Glen, with its stream and picnic places, country lanes, bridle paths, narrow coastal paths - today had it all, travelling through magnificent scenery, skylarks, birdsong, Santon Head clifftops 

- then we hit the mud and the day started to go downhill. A combination of last week's heavy rain and a farmer probably dischuffed with a footpath on his land didn't turn out to be a good combination .....

and where cows had gone to lead the way - we had to try and follow - up over our boot-tops.

The day further spiralled as our path suddenly finished in a large fence surrounding the now enlarged Ronaldsway airport. This came as a salutary lesson to always read the whole day's route through first, rather than on a need to know basis, as there was a note at the end saying this part of the footpath was now closed due to extremely, extremely low flying aircraft. The mile and a half detour on the main road at the end of a hot tiring day seemed a little harsh.