Christopher Somerville

Screeching of seagulls over the fishermen’s sheds, faint hiss and suck of the North Sea at the pebbly Suffolk shore, church bells pealing out, and the chirrup of well-bred voices talking over last night’s music at Snape Maltings – where else but Aldeburgh’s seafront on Sunday morning?
First published in: The Times Click here to view a map for this walk in a new window

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We’d been to that concert – Benjamin Britten’s ‘Canticles’ – and had been spellbound. So although you couldn’t really say it was whistleable music, we too had Britten on the tip of our tongues as we passed the modest, sea-facing Crag House where the locally-born composer lived with the tenor Peter Pears from 1947-57, and the churchyard hung with cherry blossom where the two musicians and life-long partners now lie side by side.

Out on the old railway line running parallel with the sea up to Thorpeness, an Irish wolfhound the size of a small pony went loping by on springs. The path snaked along the ruler-straight trackbed between banks of stitchwort, yellow archangel and sky-blue flowers of green alkanet. Skylarks sang over the freshwater meadows beside the line. We pulled up at the big reedy inlet of The Fens, struck still by the spectacle of two marsh harriers quartering the reed beds, gliding, swooping and pouncing, their big pale dark-tipped wings manipulating the air with economical power.

Thorpeness is a curiosity. When Stuart Ogilvie determined in 1910 to create a holiday haven on the Suffolk coast in memory of his mother, he didn’t do things by halves. Stuart and his son Sholto magicked the vernacular dream of Thorpeness around a lake they dug and christened The Meare. Half timbered mini-manors and clapboard cottages form the backdrop to The House In The Clouds, a fabulous water tower disguised as a fairy-tale chalet perched atop a 5-storey house.

We sat over a drink beside The Meare, people-watching, and then took the sandy byway across gorse-strewn Thorpeness Common, where the delicate flowers so aptly named ‘spring beauty’ formed china-white drops on round, saucer-like leaves. Down on the crumbly flint-and-clay cliffs of the coast we turned south for Aldeburgh. The town’s church bells were still ringing out over red roofs, lapwing-haunted marshes, and the long grey strand where a million million pebbles made the endless sea music that Benjamin Britten took for his own.

Start: Moot Hall, Aldeburgh, Suffolk, IP15 5DS (OS ref TM 466569).

Getting there: Bus (firstgroup.com/ukbus/suffolk_norfolk) – 64 or 165 (Aldeburgh-Ipswich), 521 (Aldeburgh-Halesworth Station)
Road: A1094 from A12 between Saxmundham and Wickham Market.

Walk (8 miles, easy, OS Explorer 212. NB: online maps, more walks at christophersomerville.co.uk): From Moot Hall, up Victoria Road and across High Street. In 150m, right through graveyard (464568, fingerpost). Through gate; on up path. In ¼ mile cross roadway (463573); half left through caravan site (yellow arrow) to old railway path (460575, ‘Permissive Path’). Right along railway path for 1½ miles. At Ward Hill, opposite North Warren nature reserve sign, right (462598, fingerpost) past golf course to road in Thorpeness (471598). Right to The Meare (shop, café). Opposite The Meare, left up The Sanctuary (472596) past gatehouse tower to cross road (473599). Half left along gravel road; follow ‘Byway’ and ‘Suffolk Coast Path’ for 1½ miles to coast near the Dower House (476617). Right for 3½ miles to Aldeburgh.

Lunch: The Meare Shop and Tearoom, Thorpeness (01728-452156); The Regatta, Aldeburgh (01728-452011; regattaaldeburgh.com)

Accommodation: Cross Keys Inn, Crabbe Street, Aldeburgh (01728-452637; aldeburgh-crosskeys.co.uk) – pub with rooms

Aldeburgh Festival: 7-23 June (aldeburgh.co.uk)
Britten Centenary: Until November 2013 (brittenaldeburgh.co.uk)
Snape Maltings: snapemaltings.co.uk
Benjamin Britten Trail around Aldeburgh: brittentrail.org
www.ramblers.org.uk www.satmap.com www.LogMyTrip.co.uk

A sunny day, clear and cold, had settled over Teesdale.
First published in: The Times Click here to view a map for this walk in a new window

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The leaves of the beech trees along the River Greta shone a sharp acid green as they filtered the morning sunshine. We followed a field path up the noisy Greta from Greta Bridge, walking against the flow of the river that sparkled over its bed of rocky slabs in the narrow west-east dale it has carved for itself.

A brief climb to the lip of the dale – seas of yellow rape rolling away to pale purple moors on the northern skyline – and then we were dipping down into the wooded cleft where the ruin of St Mary’s Church lay in its walled graveyard. A wonderful peaceful spot to idle and wander among the old slanting gravestones, unsteadily lettered by local masons – ‘Christopher Thwaites Postmaster of Greata Bridge 1693’, ‘Julian & Jane Sutton Bless ye The Lord Praise Him & Magnifie Him’, and a low stone for a child, simply inscribed ‘EH 1699’.

The path wound on, increasingly narrow and crumbly, through Tebb Wood, a world of white, blue and green with bluebells and wild garlic, bugle and wood anemones. Neither of us could remember any riverside walk so bright with wild flowers – the dusky purple nodding bells of water avens, false oxlips with multiple primrose heads on cowslip-like stalks, bold pink campion, white stars of stitchwort, early purple orchids. Blackcaps burbled musically in the scrub hawthorns, and wrens chattered. The sun poured over everything like a warm bath for the senses, just edged enough with cold fingers of breeze to remind us that we were in the Durham dales in springtime.

Down by stone-built Brignall Mill we crossed the Greta, splodged through the muddy caterpillar tracks of a logging operation, and turned back along the south bank of the river. What a contrast! These north-facing slopes of the gorge were at least a month behind those facing south only just across the river, with bluebells not yet bloomed and celandines and delicate white wood sorrel still out in glory.

The path climbed to a precipitous ledge above the Greta, then turned south through the woods high over Gill Beck. At Gillbeck Bridge we took to a silent country lane and field paths through open uplands where young calves kicked and capered in the meadows. A stretch of road with far moorland views and then the homeward path through Mill Woods and by the water-sculpted churn holes of the Greta’s gorge.
Start & finish: Morritt Hotel, Greta Bridge, Co. Durham, DL12 9SE (OS ref NZ 085133)

Getting there: Greta Bridge is signposted off A66 between Scotch Corner (A1) and Bowes. Park near Morritt Hotel – please ask permission, and give hotel your custom!

Walk (9½ miles, moderate, OS Explorer OL30): Leaving Morritt Hotel, turn right along road. Just before bridge, right over wall (fingerpost) follow riverside path towards Brignall Mill. In 2 miles you pass opposite the confluence of Gill Beck (062113). In another ⅔ mile path rises to go through gate (051112; yellow arrow/YA); in 150m fork right over cattle grid and down to Brignall Mill (047112).

Follow YAs around mill and across footbridge; dogleg right and left along higher track; in 100m bear left down to path downstream beside River Greta. In ⅓ mile cross footbridge at Hening Scar (051111) and continue beside Greta. In another ⅓ mile on Bleak Scar, path climbs high above river. Near top it forks (057112); don’t go right uphill to gate, but keep ahead along fence and above river. In ¼ mile, at post with 2 YAs (061112), keep ahead (not left), to bend sharply right along gorge of Gill Beck. Continue for ½ mile, crossing 3 footbridges, to reach Gillbeck Bridge (062105).

Left up Cowclose Lane. In ¾ mile, at end of Primrose Gill Plantation, left (072101; ‘Byway’ fingerpost) along stony lane. Pass limekiln (073104); in 300m, left through gate (075106, blue arrow) up fields to Crook’s House (075115). Ahead down left side of barn; right across farmyard; along drive to Wilson House farm (083118). Ahead along road; in ½ mile, left (085125, fingerpost) over stile; right through Mill Wood. Over meadow to Greta Bridge; through gate and farmyard (087131) to road; left to Morritt Hotel.

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Conditions: For surefooted walkers – riverside paths are narrow, slippery and eroded in places

Lunch: Picnic

Accommodation: Morritt Hotel, Greta Bridge (01833-627232; themorritt.co.uk) – family-run, very friendly, helpful and well-kept

More Info: Durham walks/accommodation – thisisdurham.com
www.ramblers.org.uk www.satmap.com www.LogMyTrip.co.uk

Before I ever set foot on Canvey Island I’d thoroughly explored this dead flat offshoot of the Thames Estuary’s Essex shore in my imagination – washed up there on the tides of Wilko Johnson’s gritty lyrics and Lee Brilleaux’s gravelly bark.
First published in: The Times Click here to view a map for this walk in a new window

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If the tough-looking, fist-punching Brilleaux was the voice and face of Dr Feelgood, Canvey Island’s crunchy home-grown R&B band, guitarist Johnson was its heart and soul, with a unique song-writing talent for depicting the mean streets and hard men and women of a place he called ‘Oil City’. It wasn’t the real Canvey Island, but it was a real enough place to me and thousands more fans of the ‘greatest local band in the world’.

Setting out across Benfleet Creek to walk a circuit of the Canvey seawalls, I found myself immediately in acres of green marshes where piebald horses grazed and skylarks sang overhead. This western sector of the island houses one of the most diverse bird reserves in Britain – marsh harriers over the reedbeds, lapwings in the fields, curlews on the muddy foreshore – more RSPB than R&B.

Where was the Feelgoods’ Oil City? I looked ahead and saw the burning flare stacks and mad scientist’s geometry set of Shell Haven oil refinery across the creek. Further round the island a giant black jetty, remnant of a never-built refinery on Canvey itself, rose out of the fields and hurdled the mud flats of Hole Haven to curve into the River Thames. ‘I’ve been searching, all thru’ the city,’ growled Brilleaux on Dr Feelgood’s debut album, ‘see you in the morning, down by the jetty.’ Here it was, as skeletal and ominous as I’d always imagined.

Now the Thames lay in full view, nearly two miles wide, the green and yellow escarpment of the North Kent shore rising on the southern skyline. A great concrete sea wall fifteen feet high keeps the tides out of Canvey these days – it was built after the East Coast flood disaster of 1953 when the island, lying below sea level, was inundated and 58 people lost their lives.

I followed the sea wall under the jetty and on above the white weatherboarded Lobster Smack pub, a notorious haunt of smugglers back in the day, where Charles Dickens had Pip and Magwitch hiding out in Great Expectations. On along the Thames shore among sunbathing Canveyites; past the Art Deco cylinder of the Labworth Café; round the eastern point of the island, a maze of ramshackle wooden jetties with a glimpse of Southend Pier far ahead.

The northern side of Canvey is all saltmarshes and creeks. I strolled the seawall path and hummed the tunes that brought the ‘Canvey Delta’ to life in my imagination, back when the Feelgoods ruled the world.

NB Please retain all this information!

START: Benfleet station, South Benfleet, Essex (OS ref TQ 778859).

GETTING THERE:
Train (www.thetrainline.com) to Benfleet
Road: M25 Jct 29; A127, A130 to Waterside Farm roundabout on Canvey Island; left on B1014 to Benfleet.

WALK (14 miles, easy, OS Explorer 175):
From Benfleet station turn left along B1014 onto Canvey Island; turn right (west) along the sea wall and follow it, and the outer edge of the island, anti-clockwise all the way round.

LUNCH: Lobster Smack PH, Haven Road (01268-514297; thelobstersmackcanveyisland.co.uk)

ACCOMMODATION: Oysterfleet Hotel, Knightswick Road, Canvey Island (01268-510111; oysterfleethotel.com) – friendly, welcoming and very helpful.

Dr Feelgood Exhibition: 10-29 May; Canvey Club, 162 High Street; free entry. Free guided walks: 10, 17, 24 May; 10.30, Lobster Smack Inn, Haven Road

Visitor Information: Southend-on-Sea TIC (01702-215620); www.visitessex.com.
www.ramblers.org.uk www.satmap.com www.LogMyTrip.co.uk

A fresh cold day with a dilute blue sky over the mid-Devon woods and fields. First published in: The Times Click here to view a map for this walk in a new window

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The little Tarka Line train rattled away north from Morchard Road station into Henry Williamson country. I was glad to swap the rush of lorries on the Barnstaple road for the call and response of ewes and their new-born lambs in the steep green fields. The farmer had been deep ploughing around Oakview; I stumbled among the ruts, and came down to Middle Yeo Farm with boots as heavy as the Emperor of China’s famed iron shoes.
Beyond Old Mill I threaded a resinous pine plantation and took the stony lane up to Zeal Monachorum, where a feeble spring sun was shining on the thatched roofs and thick cob walls. The village lay tightly stretched along its ridge-top, the sloping lanes full of sparrow twitter and the cooing of ring doves. In the rough lane down to Tucking Mill Bridge, a robin gripped a hawthorn twig six feet away in the hedge and sang quite unafraid into my face. The old tucking or cloth-fulling mill lay among daffodils. and periwinkles just above the two-arched bridge, its tin roof and timbers sliding into a green ruin, the double hoop of the mill wheel still attached to the outside wall.
In the fields at Oak Tree Farm two black-faced lambs bounded for safety in the hedge, their mother’s cracked bellow of a call as throaty and querulous as a gin-soaked duchess. ‘Come hyyyaaaah!’ The farmer at Lower Thorne found me fumbling with a tricky horse-proof gate. ‘Pull it up! If you were a proper walker,’ he teased in a gentle Devon burr, ‘you’d have known that!’ How long had he lived here? ‘Oh, about seventy years. See that old house?’ He pointed at a beautiful thatched cottage across the fields. ‘Lammacott – I was born in that house, so I haven’t travelled far.’
Up at Down St Mary, another ridge-top village, I admired the tympanum carved over the south door of St Mary’s Church, a calmly smiling figure assailed by demonic beasts with palm-frond tails. Seven hundred years old? Eight hundred? The drama, the vigour and humour of the work shine through, now as then – a contact with the medieval stonemason as warm and direct as a handshake across the centuries.

Start: Morchard Road station, EX17 5LR (OS ref SS 750051)
Getting there: Rail (thetrainline.com; railcard.co.uk) to Morchard Road.
Road: Morchard Road station is between Copplestone and Lapford on A377 Crediton-Barnstaple road.
Walk: (6½ miles, moderate, OS Explorer 113): From station cross A377; take B3220 (‘Winkleigh’). In 300m, left through gate (747051, yellow arrow/YA) up Ellicombe Farm drive. Don’t fork left to Ellicombe House. By entrance pillars to red brick house, left through gate (745050, YA); follow fence round to right. Pass house; continue along hedge; through kissing gate to right of tin shed (744050). Right through metal gate (YA); immediately left through another metal gate (YA). Pass a tree (ignore gate on skyline to right here); keep ahead up bottom of shallow valley, rising to go through gate at far end (741049). Left (YA); over stile into lane.
Left for 200m; right up steps, over stile (742047). Down left-hand hedge; cross stile and turn left (741047, YA) along hedge. At end of field through gate (741045); right (YA) along irregular edge of field for 400m, with Oakview house on your left. At end of field, right over stile (737045, YA) over stream and stile beyond. Half left across field to cross 2 stiles in far top left corner (737046, YAs). In 30m, left over stile (YA); follow hedge to Middle Yeo Farm lane (733046). Left to road (733045). Right downhill. Just before bridge at The Old Mill, left through gate (732044, fingerpost), and follow YAs and stiles with river on right for ½ mile. At end of plantation, turn right across river by tall footbridge (726039); follow stony lane opposite uphill to road in Zeal Monachorum (721041).
Left; at phone box by church, left downhill (720040, ‘Bow’). At foot of slope left along ‘No Through Road’ (720038; ‘The Waie Inn’) past Waie Inn and on downhill to cross Tucking Mill Bridge (724035). Right (‘Bridleway’). At cottage, left (YA); in 20m, left up track. In 100m at field entrance, bear left and follow inside edge of wood to cross stile (725034, YA). Cross field; through gates; follow hedge on your right. In 200m, at bottom of dip, right over stile and through gate (729034, YAs); left along hedge, cross stream and go through gate (731033, fingerpost). Cross field, aiming for left-hand of 2 trees ahead. Through gate into lane (733033).
Ignore footpath fingerpost pointing right along lane; go through gate to right of Merrifield drive; diagonally right across field; through gate on far side (735031, YA). Left with hedge on left; at far end of field, descend to go through kissing gate (YA) and cross stream in dell (738032). Keep hedge on right to reach gate into lane at Lower Thorne (741032). Left; in 20m, sharp right (fingerpost) through several gates and farmyard. Continue on path across fields (YAs). In dip, through wood (744032), crossing stream and bearing left downhill to stile. Cross field to bridleway by cottage (736033). Left for ½ mile to road (741040); right uphill through Down St Mary.
Pass church (743045) and on (‘Morchard Road’). In 150m, left over stile (744046, YA, fingerpost). Follow right-hand hedge, then centre of long field downhill to two neighbouring metal and wooden gates. Turn right through wooden gate (744050); retrace steps to Morchard Road station.
Lunch/accommodation: Waie Inn, Zeal Monachorum (01363-82348; waieinn.co.uk); Devonshire Dumpling, Morchard Road (01363-85102; devonshiredumpling.com)
‘Tarka Line Walks’ by Peter Craske (Crimson Publishing) – 60 walks in the locality.
Exmoor Walking Festival: 27 April-6 May (exmoorwalkingfestival.co.uk)
Info: Exeter TIC (01392-665700)
visitdevon.co.uk vistengland.com www.ramblers.org.uk www.satmap.com www.LogMyTrip.co.uk
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