Christopher Somerville

Southstoke and Cam Valley, Somerset

Jan 022010

The houses of Southstoke, built of the same pale silver and cream oolitic limestone as their Big Brother city of Bath just over the hill, were lightly dusted with powder snow on this cold winter’s morning.
First published in: The Times Click here to view a map for this walk in a new window

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Over the porch of the Church of St James the Great, a Millennium carving of the much-travelled Apostle showed him staring with seer’s eyes from the shelter of a pilgrim’s scallop shell. With one shoulder bare and a crust of last night’s snow for a collar, the hero of Santiago looked a little under-dressed for the weather. Not so the two young girls busy making snow pancakes outside the Packhorse Inn – they were kitted out like crimson-cheeked polar explorers.

From the ridge beyond Southstoke a wonderful vista opened out southwards over deeply cut valleys frosted to lemon yellow and ice green. A smoky grey sky hung low, telling of more snow on the way. I pushed my hands deeper into my pockets and went crunching down the slopes of Horsecombe Vale. The cattle in the fields moved gingerly, sensing the ankle-breaking hollows concealed below the ice lids over their own hoofpocks. Warmed by their sweet, cloudy breath, I skittered down through the woods to Tucking Mill.

The tree-knotted trackbed of the former Somerset & Dorset Railway led south to Midford. The clanking steam engines of the S&D had carried me to school in the long ago, and I used to look out as we passed over Midford Viaduct to see the abandoned tracks of the Somerset Coal Canal and the Cam Valley Railway snaking away below. Although the canal was killed off when the railway opened before the First World War, it is the graceful structures of the old waterway that claim attention as one walks the Cam Valley today – a packhorse bridge isolated in a field, and three long, narrow lock basins of beautiful silvery Bath stone, empty and ivy-strangled along a hedge. The bigger, blunter instrument of the abandoned railway eventually came striding in on a tall embankment, shouldering the canal aside into the woods and hurrying me on to Combe Hay.

A proper old lane, stony and tree-lined, led up behind the Wheatsheaf Inn to the crest of the ridge and the field path back to Southstoke. I looked out over whitened fields and blackened woods, a Breughelian scene already half obscured by newly falling snow.

Start & finish: Pack Horse Inn, Southstoke, Bath BA2 7DU (OS ref ST 747612). NB Very limited parking at Pack Horse Inn; please park considerately, elsewhere.

Getting there: Southstoke is signed from B3110 between Combe Down and Midford

Walk (5 ½ miles, moderate grade, OS Explorer 155): From Pack Horse, uphill for 50 yards; right along road. Just past Southstoke House, left through kissing gate (fingerpost) across field. Cross B3110. Descend fields of Horsecombe Vale (yellow arrows/YA); cross brook; follow path to Wessex Water plant. Right; just beyond Tucking Mill viaduct, right up steps (fingerpost); follow old railway to Midford station. Right to road; left through viaduct; cross B3110 (take care!); descend steps opposite Hope & Anchor PH (fingerpost); right along Cam Valley old railway and canal path for 2 miles to Wheatsheaf Inn, Combe Hay. Right beside inn, up lane for 3/4 of a mile to road; right on path (fingerpost) to Southstoke.

Online map, more walks: www.christophersomerville.co.uk

Lunch: Pack Horse Inn, Southstoke (832060; www.packhorseinn.com) – sheer rural delight.

More info: Bath TIC (0906-711-2000 – 50p./min);

www.visitbath.co.uk; www.ramblers.org.uk

Christopher Somerville will be talking about his latest book, Somerville’s Travels, at Topping’s Bookshop, The Paragon, Bath (01225-428111), on Thursday 7 January at 7.45 p.m.

Hope Dale, Shropshire

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Dec 262009

First published in: The Times Click here to view a map for this walk in a new window

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Wilderhope Manor, tucked into the flank of Hope Dale below the rim of Wenlock Edge, is a fine Tudor mansion, a youth hostel these days. It is also a house of many ghosts. One notable shade occasionally seen is that of a cavalier in plumed hat and riding boots. Could this be bold Major Thomas Sammwood? The Royalist owner of Wilderhope, pursued by Roundheads during the Civil War as he carried dispatches to the King, jumped his horse off Wenlock Edge not far away. The horse was killed; but Sammwood, having landed in a tree, coolly climbed down and accomplished his mission on foot.

Jane and I looked up at the windows of Wilderhope before we set off, but there was no glimpse of the gallant gentleman. Under a cloudy sky we passed a hollow horse sculpted from horseshoes, and followed the Shropshire Way along the crest of Wenlock Edge. The trees of Coats Wood were bright with fruit: sloes with pale blue blooms, scarlet hips, bryony strings like red and yellow peppers hung up on a market stall; crimson haws, deep pink spindle berries, wild raspberries now black and shrivelled, and the upstanding black and scarlet fruits of Rose of Sharon.

Fields of dull gold stubble fell away southwards into the silent, roadless cleft of Hope Dale. At the crest of Roman Bank we left the wood and followed a lane down to the dale floor, then up to the opposite ridge by way of a rutted old cart track – an unsurfaced roadway, dusty and stony, that can have changed hardly at all since Major Sammwood rode out from Wilderhope. A rustling on the far side of the hedge betrayed a clutch of pheasant poults creeping along an old sunken lane. A fox had been busy along here; we found a starburst of rabbit fur on the track, the bloody skull stripped to the bone, and the white scut nearby.

Down in Corve Dale beyond the ridge we stopped on the bench outside Broadstone chapel under a hawthorn spray to eat our cheese-and-pickle doorstops, then went on through the valley fields to cross the infant River Corve. Was it all right to walk through the grounds of Broadstone Mill, as the map suggested? ‘Certainly, that’s the footpath,’ confirmed the owner at his back door.

Reunited with the Shropshire Way, the path rose through Hope Dale. A stream lined with alders, a baled and stubbled cornfield, and we were looking up at ghostly grey Wilderhope Manor once more.

Start & finish: Wilderhope Manor, Longville, Shropshire TF13 6EG (OS ref SO 545929)

Getting there: Train (www.thetrainline.com; www.railcard.co.uk) to Church Stretton (6 miles). Bus: service 712 to Longville (1½ miles). Road: Wilderhope Manor signed from Longville-in-the-Dale, on B4371 between Much Wenlock and Church Stretton.

Walk (6 miles, easy grade, OS Explorer 217): From Wilderhope Manor car park, up drive, cross road, follow Shropshire Way/SW for 1⅔ miles through Coats Wood to Roman Bank (521908). Left along road to Topley (528905); Jack Mytton Way past Whitbach to cross B4368 (542897). Footpath past Broadstone Chapel (544897), on for ½ mile. At 549899, left across footbridge (548901), through grounds of Broadstone Mill (looks private, but it’s a public right of way!), up drive to Seven Stars PH (546903). Right along B4368 (take care!) for ¼ mile; left at Hopescross (‘Longville’); in 150 yards, right over stile (548905); follow SW for 1⅔ miles to Wilderhope Manor.

NB – Online map, more walks: www.christophersomerville.co.uk

Lunch: Seven Stars PH, Hopescross (01584-841212)

Accommodation: Wenlock Edge Inn, TF13 6DJ (01746-785678; www.wenlockedgeinn.co.uk)

Wilderhope Manor (NT youth hostel): www.nationaltrust.org.uk/main/w-wilderhopemanor

More info: Church Stretton TIC (01694-723133); www.enjoyengland.com; www.shropshiretourism.co.uk; www.ramblers.org.uk

Shere and North Downs Way, Surrey

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Dec 122009

First published in: The Times Click here to view a map for this walk in a new window
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It was a golden day on the North Downs, the kind you dream of in the murks of miserable winter, with a bright sun whirling in a silver sky and a light dusting of frost across the Surrey hills. Why kick against such delightful pricks? I downed tools and got the boots on.

The air stung and snapped at my nose as I stepped off the train at Gomshall station – a familiar place to me, hub of many a fabulous North Downs ramble. Today’s was going to be an old favourite, up the escarpment for a treading of the oldest road in Britain, then a return along the hollow way beaten out though the centuries by pilgrims travelling to and from the shrine of St Thomas à Becket at Canterbury. Medieval religiosity often tipped into outlandishness. In the stop-and-gawp-gorgeous village of Shere I found the little quatrefoil window in St James’s Church through which the 14^th-century anchoress Christine Carpenter, incarcerated of her own will, viewed the Mass from her tiny cramped cell. Christine let herself out on one occasion and ‘ran about, being torn to pieces by attacks of the Tempter’, before being shut up again to continue her purgatorial imprisonment.

Up above Shere I was grateful to breathe the free air of the Downs. Under the bushy dark yews and leafless beeches the light fell cold and shadowed. The rutted track of the North Downs Way led west, a deep scar in the woods where men and beasts have been travelling, keeping high and safe from the dangers of the valley mires, since time out of mind – perhaps as long as eight thousand years. At the open gap of Newlands Corner I stopped to take in the prospect over carefully managed woodlands and a broad patchwork of hedged fields. What would the ancients have made of such neatness, such order and discipline, imposed on a landscape they negotiated as wild, tangled and full of hidden hazards?

At the chalky funnel of White Lane I went down the slope and into old coppice woods to meet the Pilgrim’s Way, broad and purposeful under the hazels. I followed it up a knoll to the dark ironstone church dedicated to St Martha – or perhaps originally to the ‘sainted Martyr’ St Thomas – and then let the old pilgrim path carry me back east. Before reaching Shere and the crackling fire in the White Horse, I turned aside to Silent Pool among its trees, to stand and dream of Emma, the woodcutter’s beautiful daughter, who bathed here and drowned while being spied upon by wicked Prince John. Just one of a million tales spun and woven along our ancient ways.

Start & finish: Gomshall station (OS ref TQ 089478)

Getting there: Train (www.thetrainline.com; www.railcard.co.uk) to Gomshall. Road: M25 (Jct 10); A3; A247, A25

Walk (10 ½ miles, moderate, OS Explorer 145): From Gomshall Station cross A25; under railway; right down Wonham Way. In 250 yards (250 m), right (087475) at bend. Under railway; left along lane to crossroads (082476); down Gravelpits Lane. In 100 yards (100 m), right by Gravelpits Farmhouse; follow lane across fields. In ⅓ mile (0.6 km), left through gate (076477) to St James’s Church, Shere (074478).

From church, forward; right opposite White Horse PH. Left at T-junction (073479); in 20 yards (20 m) right up recreation ground. Under A25; immediately left up zigzag path, then right up left side of Netley Plantation for ½ mile (0.75 km) to Hollister Farm (073490). Ahead here to road (072494). Right for 10 yards (10 m); left along North Downs Way/NDW (fingerpost) for 1 ¾ miles (2.75 km) to Newlands Corner (044492).

Continue along NDW for ¾ mile (1.2 km) to cross White Lane (033490). Left downhill on path alongside lane. Ahead by Keeper’s Cottage (034486) through wood (NDW); right at NDW junction with Pilgrim’s Way/PW (032484; ‘chapel’ waymarks) to St Martha’s Chapel on hilltop (028483).

Return to NDW/PW junction; ahead along PW for ¼ mile to cross Guildford Lane, ⅔ mile to cross Water Lane (047484), almost a mile to reach A248 (060482).

Left up A248 (footpath on right of hedge) to A25; left for 100 yards (100 m); cross A25 (take great care!) into car park. Follow path to Sherbourne Pond and Silent Pool (061486).

Return to PW. Cross A248; continue across field, through Silver Wood; on across field to cross lane (069478). Follow path for ⅓ mile (0.5 km) to White Horse in Shere; on to Gomshall Station.

Lunch: White Horse, Shere (01483-202518) – log fires; characterful and popular, especially at weekends

More info: Sittingbourne TIC (01483-444333); www.visitsurrey.com; www.ramblers.org.uk

NB – Detailed directions, online map, more walks: www.christophersomerville.co.uk

Seamus Heaney Country

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Dec 072009

Passing Laurel Villa, you’d never suspect it was a Tardis. One has to enter this modestly proportioned house on the outskirts of the County Derry town of Magherafelt to taste its magic. Your first impression is of a beautifully kept bed-and-breakfast house. Then you notice the photographs and paintings lining the walls: James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, Seamus Heaney. There are poems printed on linen, first editions in glass cases. Upstairs you pass the bedroom doors: the Kavanagh Room, the MacNeice Room, the Heaney Room. Laurel Villa is a shrine (though a very unstuffy one) – a genuine House of Poetry. Gerardine Kielt keeps things immaculate, and cooks the best breakfasts in Ireland; Eugene, her husband, organises poetry readings at Laurel Villa, and maintains contact with poets far and wide – including Seamus Heaney himself, the most celebrated and best-read living poet in these islands today.

Heaney, a local boy born on a farm a few miles from Magherafelt, has a great admiration for the Kielts’ love and respect for poetry. So much so that this Nobel Laureate, hugely in demand and fêted all over the world in this year of his 70^th birthday, found the time to come to the unassuming Magherafelt house in June and give a reading in front of an audience of fifty. My wife Jane and I were there; so were Heaney’s brothers, his relations, his local acquaintances. Watching him chat and sign books, joke and clink wine glasses after the reading, you got the measure of a very genuine and grounded man, very pleased to be back on the soil that sprouted all those famous poems.

Joining Eugene Kielt on one of the guided tours he conducts round Seamus Heaney Country, we found the building blocks of Heaney’s young life and his life-long art coming at us round every corner, shining a light on poems that we seemed to have known and loved for ever. At the Hillhead near Magherafelt, Barney Devlin’s forge stood beside the roaring Toome road, the low ‘door into the dark’ exactly as Heaney described it in one of his best-known poems, ‘The Forge’. And there was the 89-year-old Barney himself, ‘90 next Boxing Day!’ An ageless man, full of life and fun (personal motto: ‘You must get up!’), delighted to be so much visited. We leaned against the door jamb and listen to the smith yarn and ring the anvil with his great hammer, as he did at the Millennium hour. He pointed out hearth and bellows, long-redundant tools, a stuffed rooster in the rafters. ‘Dick the fighting cock, champion of Meath!’ Pouring out a none-too-mean measure of whiskey, Barney gave a wicked chuckle and slapped me on the back. ‘I’ve never touched it in my life, but I like a man who takes his drop!’

In the townland of Broagh below the forge, a long-abandoned railway line curved across the lanes. Heaney wrote in ‘The Railway Children’ of climbing its grassy cutting, level with the telegraph poles where ‘words travelled the wires/In the shiny pouches of raindrops’.

How many people wish that Mossbawn, the original thatched house where the poet was born to Patrick and Margaret Heaney in 1939, had not been demolished! But it was, some years ago, and in its place another long, low, modest farmhouse stands beside the Toome road. The McLaughlin family live here now, farming the same fields and milking cows in the same yard as Patrick Heaney did seventy years ago. We looked around the place – the byre, the sheds, the waterlogged field at the back of the house where the Heaney boys put down ‘four jackets for four goalposts’ and played football until the light died:

‘And the actual kicked ball came to them

Like a dream heaviness, and their own hard

Breathing in the dark and skids on grass

Sounded like effort in another world …’

Of all the places we visited, I found Church Island on the shores of Lough Beg the most resonant. The spire stuck up skywards from the massed trees of the island, unapproachable beyond a rain-sodden wetland. Leaning against the ivy-grown road wall, Eugene quietly read us ‘The Strand at Lough Beg’, Heaney’s eulogy for his second cousin Colm McCartney, murdered by sectarian killers in 1975. The backdrop of the poem and the present setting were one and the same: cows in a mist, clays and waters, a soft treeline.

‘ … I dab you clean with moss

Fine as the drizzle out of a low cloud.

I lift you under the arms and lay you flat.

With rushes that shoot green again, I plait

Green scapulars to wear over your shroud.’

The late afternoon light began to fade. The unvisited locations of Heaney Country would have to wait for another day – Anahorish (‘We were killing pigs the day the Americans arrived’), Bellaghy Bawn, the graveyard where Seamus’s brother Christopher Heaney lies buried near Colm McCartney. ‘I like to think that I belong to these places,’ said Eugene Kielt, steering us back towards Magherafelt, ‘and they belong to me. What Seamus Heaney’s magic is, for me – he can attach a total stranger to these places, and leave that stranger attached to them as strongly as I am myself – these ordinary places that I’ve known all my life.’

Laurel Villa Townhouse

60 Church Street, Magherafelt, Co. Derry BT45 6AW (02879-301459; www.laurel-villa.com) – From £70 dble B&B.

Guided tours of Seamus Heaney Country

Variable length, depending on people’s interest. From £60 pp, transport and copies of poems included; group rates negotiable

Reading (all titles published by Faber & Faber):

Seamus Heaney’s poems:

Opened Ground: Poems 1966-1996; The Spirit Level (1996); Electric Light (2001); District and Circle (2006)

Prose:

Preoccupations: Selected Prose 1968-1978 (1980); The Government of the Tongue (1988); The Redress of Poetry: Oxford Lectures (1995); Finders Keepers: Selected Prose 1971-2001 (2002)

Interviews: Stepping Stones: Interviews with Seamus Heaney by Dennis O’Driscoll (2008)

Listening

‘The Poet and The Piper’ (Claddagh Records 2003): Heaney reads many of his best-loved poems; master musician Liam O’Flynn plays uilleann pipes and whistle

‘Collected Poems’ (RTE Lannan 2009, 15-CD box set): Heaney reads his 11 collections in their entirety

Plynlimon, West Wales

Walks No Responses »

Dec 052009

First published in: The Times Click here to view a map for this walk in a new window

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When the supreme egotist and ferocious walker George Borrow ascended Plynlimon in 1854, he called at the Castell Dyffryn Inn to engage a guide, ‘a tall athletic fellow, dressed in a brown coat, round bluff hat, corduroy trowsers, linen leggings and highlows.’ This splendid chap proved reluctant to take the East Anglian writer to the source of the River Rheidol – ‘the path, sir, as you see, is rather steep and dangerous’. But Borrow, collecting material for his classic travelogue Wild Wales, was in no mood to be gainsaid. ‘It is not only necessary for me to see the sources of the rivers,’ he informed his guide, ‘but to drink from them, that in after times I may be able to harangue about them with a tone of confidence and authority.’

Three rivers have their source close together on Plynlimon’s rough summit – Rheidol, Wye and Severn. Jane and I, having no need to harangue about them, were aiming simply to get to the top of the mountain. Our walking companion, Liz Fleming-Williams, surveys the region’s peat bogs for the Countryside Commission for Wales, a calling that has led her to the kind of revelation on the hilltops that Burrow would have empathised with, a sense of how closely Welsh poetry, music, art and language are bound up with this beautiful and sombre landscape.

We strode up the old miners’ track towards a long-abandoned lead mine in the southern flank of the mountain; then on up a faint track through heather and bilberry, reindeer moss, black peat hags and bent grass. ‘Listen!’ said Liz, holding up a finger. Not a sound, bar the complaints of sheep and the hiss of wind.

Up in the summit shelter, two Cornish surfies had arrived from their camp on the shores of Nant-y-Moch reservoir below. Hospitably they poured us tea, and we took in the hundred-mile view: Preseli Hills in far off Pembrokeshire, a huge arc of Cardigan Bay, the Llŷn Peninsula misty on the horizon; Cader Idris, the Brecon Beacons, the mountains of Snowdonia. Only the semaphore arms of a windfarm, sited smack in the middle of an ecologically sensitive peat bog nearer at hand, told of the greedy crassness of man. George Borrow would have had a crisp harangue suitable for the subject at his fingertips. But for now we had to make do with the cheep of pipits and the sigh of the cold mountain wind.

Start & finish: Eisteddfa-Gurig car park (OS ref SN 799841) – £3 charge

Getting there: 4½ miles east of Ponterwyd on A44, Aberystwyth-Llangurig

Walk (5 miles, moderate, OS Explorer 213): From car park, up farm drive past ‘Caution, children playing’ notice. Right through yard past dog kennels. In 30 yards, bridleway sign points left; bear right through gate (797841) along stony track. Ignore first right turn; follow track as it curves right over stream and climbs for 1 mile to old mine. Just before it swings right to cross Afon Tarennig (795897), white arrow/green background on post points left up faint track. Follow this for ¾ mile to summit of Plynlimon (789869).

Descending: turn back with fence on your right, and keep near it. Cross stile at 787857. Left at forestry (784851): follow fence with trees on your right. Cross stile at 786849; continue along fence, to meet rough road back to car park.

NB: Family-friendly. Hill-walking gear. Track from mine to summit hard to find in mist.

Lunch: Picnic

Accommodation: Ffynnon Cadno B&B, Ponterwyd (01970-890224; www.ffynnoncadno.co.uk)

Dinner: George Borrow Hotel, Ponterwyd (01970-890230; www.thegeorgeborrowhotel.co.uk)

Information: Aberystwyth TIC (01970-612125); www.visitwales.co.uk

Wild Wales by George Borrow (Bridge Books)

Inverness, Scotland

Walks No Responses »

Nov 282009

First published in: The Times Click here to view a map for this walk in a new window

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You can’t spend long in Inverness without realising that the heart of this fine city at the mouth of the River Ness is an island – heart-shaped too, formed by the river snaking seaward to the east, and the equal and opposite windings of the Caledonian Canal on the west. It offers a superb waterside walk by river, canal and sea.

I set off upstream along the River Ness on a blowy afternoon, walking south from Ness Bridge under tossing lime trees. Behind me the drum towers and battlements of the castle stood in rose-coloured sandstone on their bank above the river. ‘Hi, how are ye?’ boomed a kilted gentleman, as cheery as hell. ‘Good, thanks,’ I nodded back, and I meant it. The Ness sparkled under a succession of pretty lattice footbridges, which swooped me across the river with tree-hung islands as stepping stones, until I landed on the banks of the Caledonian Canal and turned my steps seaward.

This was no thin thread of water, but a proper commercial waterway fifty feet wide. Walking its towpath was like strolling a country lane thick with broom, still a-bloom in startling yellow. In contrast to the living, oxygenated rush of the Ness, the Canal lay flat, calm and mirror-still until flecks of rain began to pock it. I strode on through the shower, past the crane and flight of locks at Muirtown, out to where the tip of the canal thrust into the broad tidal shore at Clachnaharry Sea Lock. Tumbled hills across the firth lay half obliterated under shining rainbursts, and the air was thick with iodine smells and the piping of oystercatchers.

Estuarine paths led me on to the old ferry slip at South Kessock, sadly abandoned and forlorn since its rival for trade, the mighty Kessock road bridge, was built across the narrows where the Firth of Beauly melts into the greater Moray Firth. Out at Carnac Point I sat by the old green-painted light, watching a tug making slowly seaward beneath the immense span of the Kessock Bridge where cars hurried north, half way up a slate-black sky. I gazed until the rain had hidden both tug and bridge, then turned inland with a cup of tea on my mind, and made for the cosy old city along the sea-going Ness.

Start & finish: Inverness railway station (OS ref NH668455)

Getting there: Rail (www.thetrainline.com) or coach (www.nationalexpress.co.uk); A9 to Inverness and city centre car parks.

Walk (8 miles, easy; OS Explorer 416, or city centre map from Inverness TIC): From railway station cross Academy Street, down Union Street, left up Church Street to Bridge Street and TIC. At bottom of Bridge Street, right along east bank of River Ness for 1¼ miles, following Great Glen Way/GGW signs across footbridges and islands. At ‘Whin Park’ sign (660435) turn left away from GGW, through Whin Island. At foot of island, left across wooden bridge (654433); right along edge of playing field to steps (652433), right along Caledonian Canal.

In ⅓ mile cross Tomnahurich Bridge (655438); right along west bank for 2 miles to Clachnaharry Sea Lock (645467). Return across railway, in 200 yards, left to South Kessock Pier (655472). Right along road; in ¼ mile, left to Carnac Point (660472). Return to road; follow west bank of River Ness for a mile. Left across lattice footbridge (664454); up Church Lane, cross Church Street, up School Lane, right along Academy Street to station.

NB: Online map, more walks: www.christophersomerville.co.uk

Accommodation: An Grianan, 11 Crown Drive, Inverness IV2 3NN (01463-250530; www.angrianan.co.uk): welcoming, comfortable B&B close to city centre.

More info: Inverness TIC, Castle Wynd (01463-234353; www.visithighlands.com; www.visitscotland.com).

Tarr Steps, Exmoor

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Nov 212009

First published in: The Times Click here to view a map for this walk in a new window

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A dawn start on West Anstey Common, watching a magnificent red deer stag roaring rivals away from his harem of hinds. How to follow that? A pint and a sandwich at Tarr Farm Inn didn’t hurt at all, and we strode out across Tarr Steps among the gold and green oaks of the Barle Valley just as if the western sky were not heaping with ominously slaty clouds.

No-one really knows how long the ancient clapper bridge of Tarr Steps has spanned the nut-brown River Barle in its narrow combe. Saurian in shape, resistant to flood waters yet built to allow them free passage, this subtle old bridge might have been placed across the river by medieval monks, or it could have been carrying travellers dryshod over the Barle for as long as three thousand years. Its flagstone decking rang underfoot, and the swollen river rushed through the rough piers in curling trails of bubbles.

High above the valley an enthusiastic dog came to meet us at Parsonage Farm, drawing his black lip back from his teeth in an ingratiating grin. At Hill Farm it was the hens that greeted us with fat volleys of clucks; at Cloggs Farm, a sweet smell of hay from the barn. From farm to farm we pursued the path, dipping to cross Dane’s Brook among rushes and thorn hedges, climbing to Lyshwell Farm and sight of a scattered herd of hinds on the canter. Some Exmoor farmers detest the red deer for the damage they do; others, such as Raymond and Sarah Davey of Lyshwell, rejoice in the sight and sound of them.

On Anstey Rhiney Moor the weather caught us a smack. There were smells of wet bracken and turf, sodden grass and sedges. The rain-slick path fell away to a flooded ford over Dane’s Brook. Take the detour to Slade Bridge and forgo the pleasure of splashing across? Not on your nelly. The brook came up to our knees, and sent impertinent scouting parties higher still. On the far bank we tipped a good pint of peat-stained water out of each boot, and squelched on up past Zeals Farm, up the lane and field slopes to Hawkridge on its crest.

A mile or so along the heights, then a final plunge down through dripping trees to walk up to Tarr Steps against the brown tides of the Barle; a beauty of a walk, all in all.

Start & finish: Tarr Farm Inn, Tarr Steps, Dulverton TA22 9PY (OS ref SS 869322)

Getting there: Bus: service 401 (www.somerset.gov.uk/media), summer only

Road: M5 Jct 27, A361 to Tiverton; A396, B3222 to Dulverton; B3223 towards Exford; Tarr Steps signposted in 5 miles; minor road to car park (872323)

Walk (7½ miles, moderate, OS Explorer OL9): From car park, down path to cross Tarr Steps (868321); bear right off road up Two Moors Way/2MW (‘Withypool Hill, Hawkridge’). In 50 yards at private gateway, keep ahead uphill on stony lane which doglegs right. In field above, left along hedge, and on with hedges on your left. At end of 3^rd field, through gate; follow yellow squares through farmyard of Parsonage Farm (857320). On down lane (2MW) to sharp left bend; right (854318) across stile, diagonally left up slope, aiming for 3^rd telegraph pole to left. Follow hedge up to top corner of field; through gate; on to gate above. Don’t go through, but turn left with hedge on your right. Through left-hand of 2 gates close together; in 50 yards, right through gate; left along hedge; through next gate. Skirt below Hill Farm (847320); through another gate, and on to road. Left to Withypool Cross (845315); right (‘Molland’), then left (‘Bridleway, Shircombe Drive’) to Cloggs Farm (840310). By barn, left through gate (‘Anstey Gate’); down to cross stream (841311); through gate, right along fence above stream for a few yards, then left up bank (‘Anstey Gate’ fingerpost at top). Descend to cross Dane’s Brook footbridge (840308); right up stony track, then field slopes, aiming for line of trees on skyline. Through gate (fingerpost), on past Lyshwell Farm (837306); farm drive to road at Anstey Gate (835298). Left across cattle grid; then diagonally left across Anstey Rhiney Moor (left-hand of 2 diverging tracks) for 1 mile, descending to cross ford (850300; NB – Deep, maybe up to knees! Detour via Slade Bridge signposted!). Up track to pass below Zeals Farm house (853300); through white gate; right between barns, out of farmyard gate. Bear half left off drive (bridleway fingerpost) on grassy field track to gate; continue to Slade Lane (855303). Left to next corner; right (bridleway fingerpost) across field to road. Right through Hawkridge. At crossroads in village, left (‘Withypool’) for 100 yards; right to follow 2MW through fields for ¾ mile. Right (856317) through Row Down Wood, down to road at Penny Bridge (860316); left to Tarr Steps.

Lunch: Tarr Farm Inn (01643-851507; www.tarrfarm.co.uk)

Accommodation: The Bark House, Oakfordbridge, Devon EX16 9HZ (01398-351236; www.thebarkhouse.co.uk)

More info: Exmoor National Park Visitor Centre, Dulverton (01398-323841; www.exmoor-nationalpark.gov.uk; www.exmoor.com); www.ramblers.org.uk

Romaldkirk, Co. Durham

Walks No Responses »

Nov 142009

First published in: The Times Click here to view a map for this walk in a new window

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A beautiful blue sky over Upper Teesdale, and a darkly forested Pennine skyline heavy with bruised cloud. The two weathers were due to come to blows later in the day, with foul slated to triumph over fair. This early in the morning, though, autumn sunshine was spreading itself across the creamy grey stone houses of Romaldkirk and soaking the beeches about the village green with translucent splashes of lime and butterscotch.

In the chilly gloom of St Romald’s Church I found Sir Hugh Fitz Henry recumbent in the north chapel, his grey face smoothed and flattened by the patting hands of seven centuries. The Lord of Bedale, Ravensworth and Cotherstone had been felled by wounds inflicted by Scottish foes. Now he lay in chainmail and surcoat, right hand frozen in the act of drawing his long (and slightly bent) stone sword. No noble knight expected to die in his bed in these wild regions back at the turn of the 14^th century, especially not a participant in King Edward Longshanks’s vicious campaigns against the turbulent Scots.

The Teesdale Way footpath led from Romaldkirk over the fields towards the River Tees. Down near the river I skirted the handsome old Dales longhouse of Low Garth, half dwelling and half byre, deadly silent in an overgrown farmyard, windows blanked out and chimneys cold. In the woods the path ran carpeted with fallen oak leaves. I walked mesmerised by the sigh and rush of the bottle-brown Tees as it crashed down its flights of rapids, exuding that tingling, exhilarating smell of a river newly off the moors, stained with peat and rammed full of oxygen.

The Lord of Cotherstone, when he fancied a bit of something savoury after the roast heron and neat’s foot jelly, would have tucked into cheeses of ewe’s milk. But today there are milk cows in Teesdale, and beautiful crumbly Cotherstone cheese. At the post office in Cotherstone village I bought a fat truckle to take home, and an extra slice for pure greed’s sake. With a full mouth and an eye on the rainclouds, I turned home along the Tees Railway Walk, a footpath that threads the trackbed of the former Tees Valley Railway by way of the mighty Baldersdale Viaduct. How would Hugh Fitz Henry have reacted to a sight of the iron horse? It made a great one-reeler for the skull cinema as I walked – the warrior astride his caparisoned destrier, charging the smoke-belching monster at full and reckless tilt.

Start & finish: Rose & Crown, Romaldkirk, Co. Durham, DL12 9EB (OS ref NY995221)

Getting there: Bus (www.arrivabus.co.uk) service 95/96 from Barnard Castle. Road: A1 to Scotch Corner; A66 to Barnard Castle, B6277

Walk (5 miles, easy, OS Explorer OL31): From Rose & Crown cross road and grass; left along lane. Right by Rose Stile Cottage (‘Teesdale Way/TW’ fingerpost). In ¼ mile, go through left-hand of 2 gates (998216); path crosses 3 fields to Low Garth (003216). Cross stile (TW); left down bank, stile into wood. Follow TW beside Tees, then up to gate. Left end of barn; in front of Woden Croft houses (008208), then through gate. Left down fence, through gate (009207); cross field, down to Tees. In ¼ mile pass footbridge over Tees (013202); in 100 yards cross River Balder; right into Cotherstone.

Up lane by left side of Fox & Hounds (011198); cross stile and field; stile onto Tees Railway Walk (009194). Right for 2 miles to Romaldkirk.

NB – Online map, more walks: www.christophersomerville.co.uk

Lunch/Accommodation: Rose & Crown, Romaldkirk (01833-650213; www.rose-and-crown.co.uk); Fox & Hounds, Cotherstone (01833-650241; www.cotherstonefox.co.uk)

Info: Barnard Castle TIC (01833-690909); www.visitnortheastengland.com; www.visitcountydurham.com; www.ramblers.org.uk

Kilham & Burton Agnes, East Yorks

Walks No Responses »

Nov 072009

First published in: The Times Click here to view a map for this walk in a new window

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A streaky sky foreshadowed a morning of sun and breeze over the arable countryside of East Yorkshire. Jane and I were off early from our night stop at Kilham Hall, following paths south through pale fields of wheat and oilseed rape. Long whalebacks too low to be called hills gave the skyline a seductive dip and roll you’d never suspect from the main roads. The poplar groves along Lowthorpe Beck stirred and hissed like a dark green sea away to our left. By the brook on the outskirts of Harpham a sparrowhawk went pouncing down with a crackle and thump into a patch of willowherb, startling a brace of hares to lollop away into the safety of the hedge.

Harpham holds two ancient wells, both encased in steel cages and strong old stories. St John’s Well on the eastern edge of the village, very efficacious in curing headaches, deafness and dumbness, and in calming the fury of wild beasts, was brought into being during the Dark Ages by the holy healer St John of Beverley, a native of Harpham. On the west side, the Drummer’s Well has an altogether more ominous history. The story goes that during the Norman invasion, William the Conqueror promised the land around Harpham to whomever should arrive there first. The noble Sieur de St Quintin, infuriated when a humble drummer boy beat him to it, pushed the lad to his death down the well and claimed the title for himself. To this day, the death of each head of the St Quintin tribe is foretold by a drum-beat from the depths of the well.

Burton Agnes church tower beckoned us on over fields bright with scarlet pimpernel and speedwell. The handsome Tudor manor house of Burton Agnes Hall – in the hands of one family since Elizabethan times – hid its red brick face among its trees. We turned west again across the fields, finding a long green lane between high old hedges that brought us steadily back to Kilham and a welcome pie and pint by the Old Star’s nice bright fire.

Start & finish: Old Star Inn, Kilham, East Yorkshire, YO25 4RG (OS ref TA 064643)

Getting there: Train (www.thetrainline.com; www.railcard.co.uk) to Driffield (5 miles). Bus: 126 from Driffield. Road: Kilham signed off A614 Driffield-Bridlington

Walk (7½miles, easy, OS Explorer 295): Leaving Old Star Inn, right (‘Bracey Bridge’ fingerpost) through pub garden, past gardens; left at path junction (fingerpost, yellow arrows/YA) through kissing gate to bottom right corner of field. Bear right (066642); cross fields parallel to Lowthorpe Beck for 1½miles. Cross A614 at Bracey Bridge (076620). Cross parking place; across stile by gate; follow track. In 200 yards fork right (079618; fingerpost, YA); follow field edge for 2 fields; through kissing gate; left on track across Lowthorpe Beck (085614); on to road. Right into Harpham. Past St Quintin Arms inn, left ('Bridlington') for 30 yards; right over stile (YA); through fields for ¾mile, aiming for Burton Agnes church tower. At A614, right into Burton Agnes. 2^nd left to Church and Burton Agnes Hall. Return along A 614; first right (‘Rudston’); in 1/3mile pass village sign; in another 50 yards, left (fingerpost, YA). Follow YAs through fields for ¾mile; right along farm lane (087634) for 1 mile to road. Forward round right bend; in 50 yards, left (fingerpost) past battery sheds and sewage works; over stream (068641). Bear right to field corner; on into Kilham.

NB –Online map, more walks: www.christophersomerville.co.uk

Lunch: Old Star Inn (01262-420619)

Accommodation: Kilham Hall, Kilham YO25 4SP (01262-420466; www.kilhamhall.co.uk): upmarket, comfortable, welcoming

More info: Bridlington TIC (01262-673474); www.yorkshire.com; www.ramblers.org.uk

Red deer: Exmoor, Devon

Articles No Responses »

Nov 062009

Martin French deserves a medal. Not only did he get up in the cold and dark to see me off from his Bark House Hotel at Oakfordbridge, but he put porridge, bacon and eggs on the table at six in the morning. They make them tough down there on Exmoor. Ranger Richard Eales was nursing flu and the effects of a kick from an over-excited Exmoor pony, but he turned up for our dawn rendezvous at Exmoor National Park headquarters in Dulverton in his usual form – humorous, observant, and passionately knowledgeable about red deer.

From West Anstey Common Richard and I surveyed the ground around Lyshwell Farm. The farmer, Raymond Davey, enjoys seeing red deer, so Lyshwell is a likely spot to find a sample of Exmoor’s herd of some 4,000 of these beautiful and impressive creatures. Red deer have been native to Britain since shortly after the last Ice Age. Stags and hinds spend most of the year apart, but in autumn they come together briefly for the rut or mating season. That’s when the wooded combes and farm pastures of Exmoor echo to one of the most thrilling sounds in nature – the roaring of the stags.

As Richard and I watched from the high common, a deep dog-like bark rose from the oakwoods in the combe of Dane’s Brook far below. ‘A hind,’ said Richard. ‘She’s spotted us, and she’ll be warning the others.’ Then came the sound we had been waiting for – a grating, throaty roar from the direction of Lyshwell Farm. ‘Ah, he’s bolving,’ exclaimed Richard with satisfaction. ‘That’s the Exmoor word for the roaring. It’s a threat and a challenge to any other stag: “I’m here, and I’m in charge!” ’

Through binoculars I made out the stag as he stood by the hedge, head back and bolving, a large figure indistinct in the early morning light. In the field above him several hinds and two little calves came into focus. Beside them were a couple of prickets, two-year-old stags with two long dagger-blade horns where their antlers would eventually grow. ‘When a stag’s in his pomp,’ Richard expounded, ‘he’ll have his “rights” – his brow, bay and tray spikes at the base of the antler – and up to three “points” at the top of each antler. That stag we’re looking at, he’s a fine beast – he’s got all his rights and three points on one side, and all his rights and two on the other. Let’s have a closer look at him.’

Down in the Lyshwell fields we crept with bent backs along a hedge to a point where we could see through a screen of twigs. The stag was the size of a racehorse. He stood sideways on about 50 yards away, a magnificent spectacle against the rising sun, his dark form dazzlingly outlined in dewdrops, his heavily-antlered head thrown back as he bolved. The roar, a mixture of circular saw, Harley-Davidson and outraged lion, echoed out across Lyshwell Wood, projected forth on a puff of steamy breath.

‘See how dark his coat is?’ breathed Richard. ‘He’s been wallowing in his soiling pit, peeing in the mud and rolling in it to get a good stinking smell all over. A stag’s cologne, that is.’

Among his harem of a dozen hinds, most faces were turned towards us, but the stag seemed oblivious. He was sizing up one of the hinds, and had nudged her a little apart from the others, scenting her hindquarters and lifting his head between sniffs as if pondering a rare old vintage. Hinds are in season for a matter of hours only, so the stag relies on all sorts of clues to tell him the time is right. ‘He’ll lick up the hind’s urine,’ murmured Richard, ‘and run it along the Jacobson gland in his upper lip to see if she’s ready to be served.’

This hind was ready. It has to be admitted that the red stag is no languorous artiste du chambre. Ten seconds and the embrace was finished. The hind resumed her grazing, the stag his bolving and scenting of other posteriors. But the group of hinds remained uncomfortably aware of us. Soon enough they began to move off. Richard’s nudge was followed by his whisper, ‘We’ll go down in the wood and catch them there.’

Deep in Lyshwell Wood the stag’s soiling pit lay well-trodden, the wet mud exuding a powerful goaty smell. We crept along a sunken path. From the field above came the groans and roars of bolving in several separate voices – not just one stag, but three. Peeping over the top we saw ‘our’ stag trotting and roaring, and another animal making off in disappointment.

‘He’ll be back,’ said Richard as the herd disappeared into the wood and we straightened our stiff backs. ‘There’s a lot of hard work for the stags during the rut, keeping the hinds together, seeing off rivals, not to mention the mating. But they must think it’s worth it – they’ve been doing it for about ten thousand years.’

FACT FILE

Red Deer Watching: Ranger-led expeditions: contact Exmoor National Park Visitor Centre, Dulverton (01398-323841) or Exmoor National Park Authority, Exmoor House, Dulverton (01398-323665); www.exmoor-nationalpark.gov.uk. NB Lyshwell Farm is private property, but there are several footpaths across it.

Richard Eales’s deer-watching hints:

Go at dawn or dusk
Take good binoculars
Keep your eyes open, and give them time to adjust to spotting the deer
Be quiet, move slowly and keep downwind of the deer
Keep low to break up your outline
Stop still as soon as you spot a deer

World Bolving Championship: Held each October at Blaydon Rails above the Barle Valley, in aid of Devon Air ambulance. Details: Rock House Inn, Dulverton (01398-323131; www.rockhouseinndulverton.com)

Video:

http://www.thisiswesternmorningnews.co.uk/news/wild-beats-TV-talent-shows/article-1438375-detail/article.html

Accommodation: The Bark House, Oakfordbridge, Devon EX16 9HZ (01398-351236; www.thebarkhouse.co.uk) – really charming, welcoming small hotel, happy with very early starts!

Reading:

Kia – A Study of Red Deer by Ian Alcock (Swan Hill Press); Red Deer by Richard Jefferies (Halsgrove); Exmoor’s Wild Red Deer by N.V. Allen (Exmoor Press)

Information: www.exmoor.com

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