The book

Walking to Hay Festival
Further adventures / The book

Walking to Hay Festival

We walked to Hay! Ursula Martin (One Woman Walks) and I assembled all the OS maps, taped them to the floor, made a plumb line from Aberystwyth to Hay, then drew a pink pen line along the nicest-looking footpaths that were closest to our string. The upshot was a fantastic […]

Triple-bill speaking tour next weekend! Plus, Hay Festival. Eep!
After the walk / Further adventures / Plans / The book

Triple-bill speaking tour next weekend! Plus, Hay Festival. Eep!

I have talking dates coming up! I’m beside myself with excitement at having been invited to Hay Festival, which is at the end of May, and I am going to escape the monkey on my back (see the pretty monkey below!) and walk across Wales to Hay with my co-speakee, […]

Last-minute Christmas-post post!
After the walk / The book / The film

Last-minute Christmas-post post!

This is the third year of my clever way of keeping Christmas consumerism in its place: I do all my shopping on Christmas Eve, and until then I firmly maintain the belief that Christmas doesn’t apply to me. This does mean that I forgot to mention my donkey wares – […]

Deliveries and deliveries
After the walk / The book / The film

Deliveries and deliveries

We bloody did it! In the days before Christmas we posted over 700 parcels, and now people all over the world are reading books and watching films, and I’m a bit taken aback, in a really good way. I realise that I thought everyone was buying them out of kindness […]

Books and DVDs are shipping now!
After the walk / The blog / The book / The film

Books and DVDs are shipping now!

Taste-tested by Wales’s favourite donkey, and out now with shipping in time for Christmas, it’s SEASIDE DONKEY!  Get the book and/or DVD, on sale at www.seasidedonkey.co.uk/shop and I’ll sign them for you. Also available via Amazon.co.uk  Donkeys! Long gruelling journeys! Hard-won friendship! All good festive stuff. Please like and share on Facebook and […]

Behind the scenes… is a secret quagmire
After the walk / The blog / The book / The film

Behind the scenes… is a secret quagmire

It’s been grim few months. Four, five, six months. Maybe a year really, since I passed the self-imposed deadline for finishing this project. I set it arbitrarily during the Kickstarter campaign, thinking I’ve never had six months to do one project before – what luxury! – there’s surely nothing I […]

Competitive book writing
The book

Competitive book writing

Exciting news – I am reading a book. It was a Christmas present, and it’s taken this long to get around to it, because it was just too distracting while my own book was embryonic. Hemingway warned against reading anything in the morning: “Hemingway … resisted reading anything before he […]

Lettering for the cover
After the walk / The book / Where are we now?

How to write a book

They say starting is half the battle, but finishing is way more than half so I’m not sure how the old grindstone arithmetic is working there. Here’s my analogy: the house is now built, watertight, functional, ready to move in, but I just seem to be spending months scurrying breathlessly […]

I confess - we did go to the beach once or twice
After the walk / The book / The film

Nothing but fingertips and eyeballs

Oh! Hello 2015! Somehow or other you are here. Let Flo and me see your new year in with a little gentle music… This time last year I wrote about all I learned in 2013 – all the ways that the unusual lifestyle had served to make the year feel very […]

The book’s growing: just add water
After the walk / The book

The book’s growing: just add water

I went for a walk with Ursula, AKA One Woman Walks Wales. She’s just under halfway along her chosen 3300-mile route, walking every established long distance path in Wales, some not-at-all established ones, all of the major rivers and anything else that lodged in her mind on the fateful day […]