Growing up in a hurry is the second book of the Meccano Apprentice trilogy and the next stage in the adolescent race to reach adulthood - that glorious, magical world of love, fun, freedom and ... responsibility and National Service.

William Skinner is Town Clerk to Greenhills, a market town on the English I Welsh border. William is an excellent Clerk to the Council and keeps the town’s affairs running smoothly; he is also devious and unscrupulous, and due to certain information he has about certain members, he runs the Council with an iron hand and the council meetings have become a mere formality to rubber-stamp the Clerk’s wishes. William has three loves in his life: money, power and his voluptuous secretary Nancy. Aided and abetted by Harold Prendergast, the incumbent Mayor, who runs a high class Gentleman’s Outfitters in the town, the Clerk and his friend are able to freely indulge their liking for the finer things in life, in particular expensive cars and vintage malt whisky. Due to the border line, which follows the winding course of the River Drenwy, most of the town lies in England, a situation which has long been a source of argument between the English and Welsh Nationalist residents, occasionally fuelled to violent levels by over consumption of strong Borderer beer, but for most of the time the Border issue remains dormant and Greenhills residents go about their daily lives in the peace and tranquillity of the sleepy market town. But the peaceful days are to abruptly end at nine o’clock on a warm July morning in an ancient public house, the Welsh Dragon, when a part-time builder and handyman, Dai Jones, accidentally discovers a centuries old charter when, in mid swing, the head flies off his old sledge hammer and a Welsh Dragon is roused and begins to flex its mighty muscles…

Although this book describes three backpacking journeys undertaken by my wife, Vivien, and myself, it is not simply an account of those walks. Essentially it is about people. The people we met as we went along our way and ourselves. About our experience, frequently hilarious, sometimes frightening but always unique. About our feelings, which see-sawed as wildly as the amazing paths we walked along. From the dizzy heights of hope, to the black depths of despair and what we discovered about our fellow human beings and this wonderful, ever changing world in which we live. All the events and situations depicted in each journey are true although obviously not exactly as they have been written down. The three areas depicted in this book are: Mid Lancashire near the Forest of Bowland The South West Peninsular Coast Path, from Minehead to Heddons Mouth. The Pembrokeshire Coast Path.