My 26 mile challenge walk has been and gone and with only minor muscle aches I feel a great sense of achievement. The weather was spectacular and nowhere on earth beats the view on a sunny day as you walk up the hill to Low Newton and see Embleton Bay stretched out in front of you and the haunting ruins of Dunstanburgh Castle in the distance. Northumberland is my home and I feel privileged to have been born here. Friends who visit the county always want to stay. It is an inspirational place with castles, deserted beaches, forests, market towns and hills where you can walk for hours and never see another soul.

In a real change of scenery I spent four days in Ibiza with my 18 year-old daughter. San Antonio Bay to be precise. I can hear the gasps and the images you must have of me in skimpy shorts clubbing on ‘the strip’. Well to my delight it was quite sedate as the real clubbing season hadn’t started. We did sip cocktails on the sunset strip with hundreds of others but it was more of a middle-aged clientele than the teens and twenty-somethings staggering along pavements having imbibed vast quantities of booze.

In my last blog I mentioned Jack London’s ‘The People of the Abyss’. At times I found the book frustrating and annoying with London’s ideological view of how the world of the East End should be. Many of the areas in the book are no more but throughout London,particularly in the East End, there is still a society where low paid workers are at the mercy of landlords charging high rents. Poverty is still prevalent and although living conditions have improved there are still overcrowded homes and poorly maintained houses. We talk about progress but has life really changed?

I loved Kate Atkinson’s ‘Life after Life’ and eagerly awaited its companion ‘A God in Ruins’. I wasn’t disappointed and although it did not give me the same breathtaking feeling as ‘Life after Life’ I found myself caught up in the story of Teddy and his wartime life. Atkinson writes emotive stories and the beauty of the prose engages the reader from the beginning. It is an amazing read.

Intrigued by the Twitter conversations I visited the Wellcome Collection for the ‘Forensics – Anatomy of Crime’ exhibition. For anyone interested in crime this is the exhibition to visit. Blowflies, blood spatters, DNA – it is all here. The history of forensics is shown in artifacts, interviews and real life cases. Accompanying the exhibition is the brilliant book by Val McDermid which shows how forensics has helped solve cases. I spent a very enjoyable (is that the right word?) journey home reading the book.

I seem to have turned into a Val McDermid groupie as I attended an event on Thursday 4 June at the Newcastle Centre for Literary Arts where Val and Jackie Kay discussed the short story. Reading a short story each we were entertained by Jackie’s Shetland wedding story ‘Grace and Rose’ followed by Val McDermid’s ‘The Road and the Miles to Dundee’. We were even treated to musical renditions of the song in Val’s story with her singing. She has a great voice as well as being a great writer. There followed a discussion on the short story form and how it is all about voice. Both writers agreed that it gave them an opportunity to step inside someone else’s shoes – someone you are not. The two writers had a really good rapport with each other and this made it feel like you were sitting in a small front room with them, listening to their stories and learning from their vast experience of writing. I came away enthused and inspired.

And now to my writing. For a couple of years I have been struggling with my novel which seems to be going nowhere. So much so that I have decided to put it away and write something totally different. Crime. Maybe all those images of maggots and flies have stirred up my creative juices.