Christopher Somerville

Harrietsham and the North Downs, Kent

Oct 312009

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

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The three brick oast houses beside the A20 at Harrietsham looked like a trio of square-built Kentish women going a-marketing in russet coloured cloaks. Each was capped by a hood like a nun’s coif, a slender white cone upheld against the windy autumn sky.

It was a leafy path from the railway station up towards the North Downs, an avenue of golden field maple and thorn trees heavy with crimson haws. Winter wheat was beginning to spring in the pale grey clay fields that lay knobby with greeny-white chalk lumps. The breast of the downs billowed like sheets on a washing line, a succession of curved slopes of beet where every individual leaf was pearled with last night’s raindrops. I didn’t turn round until I was properly up there, 200 feet above the plain, lord of a prospect of fine houses peeping among red and gold trees, and long misty miles towards the Kentish Weald.

Near Ringlestone I passed through a field of ewes, perhaps 150 of them. Every woolly rump had been smeared with colour. The three rams responsible – Mr Blue, Mr Green and Mr Red – limped after the flock wearing chest holsters of raddle, wearied beyond measure by their tupping duties. The passage of a hot air balloon over the field caused the ewes to flee in a panicking crowd, but the three Reservoir Rams couldn’t even raise a shamble.

Little Ringlestone Cottage stood under crooked chimneys and a camel-backed roof. Its owner leaned contentedly on the pond fence. A fine afternoon for walking! Nice quiet spot, this. How old’s the house? Oh, about five hundred. A little creaky, but a wonderful place to live. Beyond the cottage, spiky sweet chestnut pods had fallen from their parent trees to lie across the footpath. I crushed one underfoot and popped the triangular glossy nut into my mouth. Kritziturken! Like munching blotting paper steeped in sal volatile. I spat it out in fragments – lesson learned.

There were deneholes in the flanks of the dry valleys – pits dug in medieval times to win the alkaline chalk that sweetened the acid clay. I walked south again by timeless trackways with thick hedges and wide verges, under the yews, hornbeams and oaks of High Wood. The ancient Pilgrim’s Way carried me for a stretch; then it handed me on to paths through huge open fields swirled by plough and harrow into milky whorls, down past Goddington Oast and into Harrietsham, with the low autumn sun lighting the pale Kentish fields and the long roll of the Downs above them.

Start & finish: Harrietsham station, Harrietsham, Kent ME17 (OS ref TQ 866529).

Travel: Rail (www.thetrainline.com; www.railcard.co.uk) to Harrietsham. Road: M20 to Jct 8, A20 to Harrietsham.

Walk Directions (8 miles, easy grade, OS Explorer 148): At Harrietsham station, Platform 2 (866529), pass footbridge and take path beside railway. It swings north to cross a road (OS ref TQ 870532) and continues. At gate (873535), bear left (footpath marker) to cross North Downs Way/Pilgrim’s Way (NDW/PW). Climb path, following footpath signs, to road at Lower Deans farm (872546). Right for 10 yards; left over stile (fingerpost). Diagonally across field to yellow arrow (YA); left along field edges to cross road near Merlewood Farm (874552). Follow left-hand field edge for half a mile to road and Ringlestone Inn (879558).

Right for 30 yards; left up track. Pass Little Ringlestone cottage; cross stile. Follow fence on left; in 30 yards cross stile (880560;YA). Aim across field, left of pylon; follow YAs for ⅓ mile to cross lane by Park Farm (880565). Diagonally left; follow hedge to road at Yew Tree farm, Wormshill (878569). Right for 150 yards (Blacksmiths Arms is 100 yards further along road); then left over stile. Aim diagonally right down slope to valley bottom; uphill through gap (874569); across field and through shank of wood (871569). Climb slope to left of old quarry; over stile; turn left (869569) across field to join clear trackway of Drake Lane on edge of wood (866568). Follow it for ¾ mile to Ringlestone Road (865558).

Left for 40 yards; right past barrier; on along lane for ¾ mile, descending through High Wood to edge of trees (856549). Ahead downhill; left along Pilgrim’s Way (854546) for ⅔ mile. Turn right down third hedgerow on right (863542 – at top of slight rise) for ¼ mile to meet track by waymark post (861538). Left for 300 yards; right where track doglegs (red ‘Byway’ arrow) for ¼ mile to tarmac road at Goddington. Forward under railway; immediately left (860532; fingerpost) on path beside railway. In 350 yards, cross stile, diverge from railway over ridge to meet gravel path (864529). Left with fence on right, through kissing gate to reach station.

Lunch: Roebuck, Harrietsham (01622-858951/858388); Ringlestone Inn (01622-859900, www.theringlestoneinn.co.uk); Blacksmith’s Arms, Wormshill (01622-884386)

Accommodation: Black Horse Inn, Thurnham, Kent ME14 3LD (01622-737185; www.wellieboot.net) – characterful and welcoming

More Information: Maidstone TIC (01622-602169); www.enjoyengland.com

Maulin Mountain, Co. Wicklow, Ireland

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Oct 242009

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 cold and cloudless day in the Wicklow Hills. Lordy-Lord, what a beautiful morning it was. The blue sky stretched wall to wall, the wind hissed and roared sleepily in the treetops, and the conical top of Great Sugar Loaf stood like a dove-grey cut-out along the ridge from the cheeky tilted quiff of its little brother. The trees of Crone Woods pressed close around the zigzag path I was climbing with Dubliner Conny O’Connell – Sitka spruce, Douglas fir, skeletal larch and the occasional tattered but noble Scots pine.

We rounded a bend, the trees fell back, and a hidden valley opened at our feet. It was Lord Powerscourt who had the forest path cut out by hand during the 19^th century, so that his guests could enjoy the wonderful prospect from on high. Cradled in the green bowl tumbled the Powerscourt Waterfall – more of a waterslide, in fact – bouncing in long slippery steps down a glistening chute of rock. The 725 m peak of Djouce Mountain, an elegant pyramid of rose pink and smoky blue, filled the notch in the hills behind, the ridge wrapping the whole scene round.

We turned aside from the red route of the Looped Walk, and followed the Wicklow Way up and across a hillside of felled trees. Here the long distance path plunged downhill, and we made up along the spine of Maulin Mountain, the summit in our sights at the crest of a long rubbly trail of sparkling quartzite pebbles.

At the top of Maulin, sitting out of the wind in the lee of the summit cairn, Conny picked out the sights in a stunning 360^o panorama – Kippure hulking to the west, Mullaghcleevaun far down in the south-west, and off in the east the soft shimmer of the sea in St George’s Channel beyond the crumpled ridge of the Sugarloaves. In the haze Dublin itself still looked a city of human scale, with church spires and towers rather than skyscraper blocks to draw the eye.

It was a view that could have held a walker for any length of time. In the end it was the cold wind that blasted us off the peak, down the steep breast of Maulin, and on through the dark, silent ways of Crone Woods once more.

Start & finish: Coillte car park at Crone, Co. Wicklow (OS ref O (letter ‘O’!) 193142)

Getting there: From Dublin – M11, R117 to Enniskerry; minor road via Onagh Bridge to car park

Walk (4½ miles, moderate/hard, OS of Ireland 1:50,000 Discovery Map 56): Follow red arrow route (RA) and Wicklow Way ‘walking man’ (WW). In 1¼ miles, sharp right bend (Powerscourt Waterfall ahead). Pass bench on right. In 30m, RA forks right past map, but keep ahead along WW. At top of climb (WW), right across felled slope (WWs). Through gap by lone tree, where WW goes left, turn right (no waymark), following wall uphill to ‘Keep to Path’ sign. Left here to Maulin summit. Aim NW for distant, large white building; descend through stone wall; steeply downhill; cross stile by gate into forest. Right downhill on zigzag road (RA waymarks on trees – hard to spot!). Near bottom of slope, descend wooden steps to track. Ignore RA pointing right; cross and descend through trees to car park.

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

Lunch: Picnic

Accommodation: Glenview Hotel, Glen of the Downs, Wicklow (01-287-3399; www.glenviewhotel.com)

Footfalls Walking Holidays, Trooperstown, Co. Wicklow (0404-45152; www.walkinghikingireland.com)

More info: Bray Tourist Office (00-353-0)1-286-7128

www.discoverireland.i.e/walking and www.coillteoutdoors.ie

Sandstone Trail, Cheshire

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Oct 172009

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

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A fine morning of blue sky, a brisk north wind, and the vast open spaces of the Cheshire plain soaking up the early autumn sunshine. Warblers sang loudly in the woods above Higher Burwardsley as Jane and I set off from the very hospitable Pheasant Inn to explore the heights and the breathtaking views along the Sandstone Trail. This splendid three-day path hurdles the upthrust of Cheshire’s backbone, a sandstone ridge that runs from the River Mersey south to the Shropshire border.

In the oak and birch woods of Bulkeley Hill, sandstone steps gleaming with mica chips bought us quickly up to the ridge. Following its east-facing lip, we looked out between twisted old sweet chestnuts over the steep 300-ft plunge of the escarpment to chequered farmlands lying in the sun and the shadowy rise of the Pennine hills on the far horizon. A set of narrow gauge railway lines plummeted away down the incline; installed 60 years ago by water engineers, and long disused, they still cling precariously to the slope.

A succession of viewpoints claimed our tribute of gasps and whistles – Name Rock incised with names of walkers and lovers, overlooking Bulkeley village; Rawhead, the highest point on the Sandstone Trail at 746 ft, facing west towards the loom of the Welsh hills; the Iron Age hillfort of Maiden Castle, looking south to the rise of the Long Mynd in distant Shropshire. Below the heights, the soft sandstone ridge had been scooped by wind and weather into caves and hollows – the damp ferny hollow of Dropping Stone Well; a bulging cave under Rawhead where dusty green lichen harmonised to perfection with the dusky pink of the stone; Mad Allen’s Cave on Bickerton Hill, the home of an erstwhile hermit. And punctuating all, the view back northwards to the pale 13^th-century walls of Beeston Castle on its wooded knoll.

We gathered succulent bilberries on the lowland heath of Maiden Castle, and descended with reddened fingers and tingling mouths into the meadows on the west of the great ridge. The homeward path was spiced with individual pleasures – a Methodist church at Brown Knowl like a turreted mansion in a Gothic fable; Harthill’s little chapel, school and gabled estate cottages on the green; and a last swing back along the Sandstone Trail towards the Pheasant Inn, with a giant sunset spreading gloriously all over the western sky.

Start & finish: Pheasant Inn, Higher Burwardsley (OS ref SJ 523566)

Getting there: M6 to Jct 16; A500 to Nantwich, A534 towards Wrexham. At Fuller’s Moor, right (‘Harthill, Tattenhall’); past Harthill, right to Burwardsley; then follow ‘Pheasant Inn’. Park at inn (NB Please ask permission and give inn your custom!).

Walk (11 miles, easy/moderate grade, OS Explorer 257): From Pheasant Inn, left to crossroads; left up Fowlers Bench Lane, over crossroads (ignore ‘Sandstone Trail/ST’ to left). Follow lane to gatehouse at Peckforton Gap (526559). Right along ST (yellow arrows with footprint) for 4 miles to Maiden Castle (498529). At foot of descent beyond Maiden Castle, ST turns left (496528); bear right here (yellow arrow/YA) down shallow stone steps, following YA through scrub. Go through gate; in 150 yards, at National Trust ‘Bickerton Hill’ sign (493531), right for ¼ mile to T-junction in Brown Knowl (495535). Right; follow road past church, for ½ mile to A 534 (497542). Left for 150 yards; cross (take care!); through kissing gate (fingerpost); down field edge; cross brook. Uphill to skirt left of Park Wood; follow YAs to Harthill (501552). Right along road for 50 yards; left down Garden Lane (fingerpost) for 250 yards, then uphill on left of hedge. At top of slope (506553), left to 2 stiles. Cross right-hand one (YA); climb through Bodnook Wood. Cross paddock, then track (YA); climb slope to lane (509552); left (YA). Pass entrance to Droppingstone Farm (512553); continue below wood for ¼ mile to meet ST (515552). Follow it past Rawhead Farm drive; in 50 yards, left over stile (519552); follow field edge to cross stile at corner of wood (522553; YA). Left along track for ½ mile to Peckforton Gap gatehouse; follow ST for nearly ½ mile to road (527566); left (‘Pheasant Inn’) to car park.

NB Many steps, some unguarded cliff edges on Sandstone Trail! Extra care crossing A534!

Lunch: Picnic; or Coppermine Inn (01829-782293) on A534 at Fuller’s Moor.

Accommodation: Pheasant Inn, Higher Burwardsley (01829-770434; www.thepheasantinn.co.uk) – excellent country inn; good food and friendly welcome

More Information: Whitchurch TIC, 12 St Mary’s Street (01948-664577; www.visitcheshire.com); www.tastecheshire.com

Guidebook: Walking Cheshire’s Sandstone Trail by Tony Bowerman (Northern Eye Books) – www.northerneyebooks.com; www.sandstonetrail.com

Forsinard Flows, North Scotland

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Oct 102009

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

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The two-car train clacked and rattled its way up the Strath of Kildonan from the Sutherland coast, the landscape on either hand becoming increasingly high, wide and wild. Brown and grey bog-land swept away to hilly horizons on all sides. No green fields, no cosy farms, no settlements. Stepping down onto the platform at Forsinard Station, way out in the middle of these vast peatlands, I watched the train groan off towards Wick and felt a very long way from anywhere familiar.

The Flow Country occupies about a million acres of the northernmost Scottish mainland. This is the wettest and wildest landscape in Britain, lumpy with mountains and overspread with enormous swathes of sphagnum bog, apparently dead and bare, in fact seething with rare and extraordinary wildlife. The RSPB’s Forsinard Flows National Nature Reserve, based on its visitor centre in the former station buildings at Forsinard, preserves nearly 40,000 acres of this fragile and sombrely beautiful country from encroachments that threaten it in the shape of forests planted for investment purposes, agricultural ‘improvements’, wind-farms and other disturbances. It’s the pleasure of Colin Mair, the Forsinard reserve warden, to take visitors out walking across the reserve and give them a precious insight into an ecosystem whose treasures might escape the notice of uninstructed wanderers.

‘Greenshank, greylag goose, cuckoo …’ Colin recited the ‘recently spotted’ list as we tramped west across the squelchy sphagnum towards the dark peak of Ben Griam Beg, closely watched by three red deer hinds. ‘Golden plover, osprey, black-throated and red-throated diver – and golden eagle, though I haven’t seen that one myself.’ The divers are rarities nationally, but nothing unusual to birdwatchers in the Flows.

Meadow pipits flitted from sprig to sprig of the heather, common scoter (not so common, actually) and teal bobbed on the dark lakelets or ‘dubh lochans’ that formed a watery maze on the top of the rise. The dubh lochans get their name from their peat-shaded water, and peat is the keynote here – ten feet deep of unrotted vegetation that has been lying on the acid rock below ever since the last Ice Age. From the flat bog surface rose tuffets of emerald and ruby sphagnum. I bent to plunge my fingers deep into a pale grey velvet cushion of woolly fringe moss, and found myself looking at a tiny scarlet sundew, an insectivorous plant with a marbled fly trapped fast in its sticky hairs.

Up on the ridge we crept towards Gull Loch. There were no divers there today; just a solitary greenshank who got up and flew quickly away, his scarlet back a dazzling white spot against slate-grey clouds, his piercing ‘tew-tew-tew!’ coming back to us – a perfect expression of the wild spirit of this haunting and remarkable place.

Start & finish: Forsinard Flows National Nature Reserve Visitor Centre, Forsinard station, Sutherland KW13 6YT (OS ref NC 891425)

Getting there: Train (www.thetrainline.com) to Forsinard.

Road: A897 Helmsdale-Melvich road to Forsinard.

Walks:

Dubh Lochan Trail (1 mile, easy grade, leaflet guide): paved walkway to pools near Visitor Centre.
Forsinard Trail (4 miles, easy grade, leaflet guide): self-guided circular walk – fields, bog, pools, woods – riverbank, from car park on A897 (904485), 4 miles north of Forsinard.
Guided Walk (3–4 miles, moderate grade, Tuesdays and Thursdays, 1 May-31 August each year): walk with Reserve Warden to pools west of Visitor Centre. Wet and boggy – wear Wellingtons / waterproof shoes.

NB: online maps, more walks: www.christophersomerville.co.uk.

Lunch: Forsinard Hotel (01641-571221; www.theforsinard.co.uk)

Accommodation: Station Cottage, Forsinard (01641-571262;

http://www.scotland-index.co.uk/station_cottage/station_cottage.htm) – from &40 dble B&B

More information: Forsinard Flows NNR visitor centre (01641-571225; www.rspb.org.uk; www.nnr-scotland.org.uk); www.visitscotland.com/perfectwalks or ring 0845 22 55 121

Red squirrels: Mirk Pot, Snaizeholme, North Yorkshire

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Oct 052009

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

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As we came down Hugh Kemp’s drive early in the morning, a red squirrel scuttered across the drive just in front of us. It sat up, cleaning its nose with both front paws, its tail a puff of pale russet smoke, black eyes fixed on us, before diving out of sight between the bars of a cattle grid. ‘Come on in,’ said Hugh at the door of Mirk Pot House. ‘I’m sorry my Jane isn’t here to greet you. Coffee? You’ll have to excuse the clutter. Now, then, these red squirrels of ours …’

The tree planter and red squirrel conserver of Snaizeholme is a Yorkshireman by birth and a landscape artist by talent. He’s also been a practical conservationist throughout his eight decades of life. In 1966 he and his wife Jane found the ruinous farmhouse of Mirk Pot in the hidden dale of Snaizeholme, a cleft tucked into the rolling country to the south of Wensleydale. ‘Our battle plan,’ he says, ‘was to buy a derelict hill farm with some outhouses and a reasonable amount of land. We’d rebuilt the house by 1967, and we started planting trees commercially.’

Christmas trees, Sitka spruce, Japanese larch, sycamores – the Kemps planted the bare fellside enthusiastically, and soon began to notice an increase in bird life. When they fenced off the plantation against grazing sheep and deer, ‘mountain ash, hawthorn, bird cherry, the native trees – they all came back. We got expert advice from the British Trust for Ornithology on how to improve our plantations for wildlife; we clear-felled our Sitka; we created a wildlife corridor with native trees – hawthorn, silver and downy birch, willow, sessile and pedunculate oak, blackthorn. What we ended up with was a very young plantation of broadleaves, and a few big conifers. We were trying to encourage the black grouse to return, but inadvertently we were actually planting for red squirrels.’

It was a local woodsman who first spotted a red squirrel in Snaizeholme, but no-one quite believed him. Then in 1997 there were confirmed sightings, followed by a steady increase in red squirrel numbers. With support from DEFRA and the Forestry Commission, and some expert advice from the Farming and Wildlife Advisory Group, Mirk Pot has become a red squirrel refuge. Grey squirrels – introductions to the UK from North America, now crowding Britain’s native reds to extinction all over the country – are baffled by specially designed feeders which provide the red squirrels with their favourite mixture of peanuts, sunflower seeds and pine nuts. The sessile oaks are coppiced, to retain the trees themselves without allowing them to produce the acorns that grey squirrels love.

As we left the house in Hugh’s company, a red squirrel was swinging on the bird feeder in the garden. It jumped down to the wall, ran along the stones, stopped for a scratch, did a double take when it noticed us, and scampered out of sight up the nearest tree. ‘Stone walls,’ mused Hugh. ‘We’ve had half a mile rebuilt – cost us an arm and a leg, but it’s worth it. Red squirrels hate travelling through thick undergrowth, but they use that wall as a motorway.’

We boarded Hugh’s battered blue Land Rover and went bouncing along rough tracks to West Field, near the specially created viewing area. Hugh told us of the parapox disease, sometimes called squirrel pox. Greys are immune to parapox, but can transmit it to the reds, whom it condemns to a slow and horrible death. ‘Even more reason to keep out the greys,’ was Hugh’s crisp summing up.

At the viewing area there was just one red squirrel on show, a pretty little individual that was sitting up on the bench eating peanuts from the feeder. It soon took to the tree-tops, and its colleagues must have been keeping out of our way, because we saw no more. But red squirrels are generally far from shy, it seems, when food is on the agenda. ‘I found one actually in the food bin by our front door,’ recounted Hugh. ‘So I fixed the lid on properly. But when I took it off next morning, blow me if there wasn’t a squirrel sitting in there eating. Now I chain the lid down – but even so, I’ve seen them on their hind legs trying to prise it open with their front paws!’

I found the red squirrels of Mirk Pot wholly delightful. Whatever the cause – and I suspect it has a lot to do with childhood memories of Beatrix Potter’s cheeky, charming Squirrel Nutkin – their energy, inquisitiveness and delicate beauty are quite irresistible. They thrive in Snaizeholme, quite oblivious of what they owe to Hugh and Jane Kemp. But we, at least, can give thanks for this dedicated couple and the invaluable conservation work they are so effectively doing in the heart of the Yorkshire Dales.

FACT FILE

Red squirrels in Snaizeholme (OS Explorer OL2): Access: either on foot via Snaizeholme Red Squirrel Trail (10 miles return walk from Hawes)

(http://www.yorkshiredales.org.uk/index/learning_about/nature_in_the_dales/best_places_to_see/snaizeholme-red-squirrel-trail.htm); or B6255 from Hawes to Widdale Bridge, left up minor road to entrance to Red Squirrel Viewing Area (signed) via Mirk Pot or West Field.

Hugh Kemp leads red squirrel walks, by appointment only (01969-667510).

Further information: Hawes TIC (01969-666210)

Hints: Red squirrels are most active around dawn/dusk and in sunshine after bad weather; their hearing is acute; they’re most likely to be in the treetops. Take binoculars, keep quiet, and stop still if you spot one.

Help and advice

The Wildlife Trusts (01636-677711; www.wildlifetrusts.org) can advise on locating red squirrels across the UK; likewise Natural England (0845-600-3078; www.naturalengland.org.uk), Scottish Natural Heritage (01738-444177; www.snh.org.uk), Countryside Council for Wales (0845-130-6229; www.ccw.gov.uk) and Northern Ireland Environment Agency (www.ni-environment.gov.uk). The Forestry Commission (www.forestry.gov.uk) and the Forest Service of Northern Ireland (www.forestserviceni.gov.uk) are active in conserving red squirrels. The National Trust has developed 5 downloadable Red Squirrel Walks: see www.nationaltrust.org.uk

Red Squirrel Week: 3-11 October 2009. Details: contact The Wildlife Trusts

Reading: Trees and Wildlife in Wensleydale (Mason Bros, Newsagents, Main Street, Hawe, North Yorkshire DL8 3QN – £10 plus postage – tel 01696-667278) is Hugh Kemp’s autobiography.

Melynllyn and Dulyn Lakes, Snowdonia

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Oct 032009

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

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A cold autumn morning, with the Snowdonia mountains smoking with cloud. We were looking for a high and handsome walk, something tastily mountain-flavoured but without actually ascending too far. ‘Going in the Carneddau? Tops are all covered, rain’s on the way,’ predicted a tough-looking hero of the hills in the Betws-y-Coed sports shop. As so often in the mountains of Wales, however, he’d reckoned without the effects of local weather. We started under gloomy morning skies, and finished in glorious afternoon sunshine. In between, there were the two secret lakes of Melynllyn and Dulyn.

You can’t see either Melynllyn or Dulyn from the upland car park at Llyn Eigiau, high above the Conwy Valley and bang in the middle of the Carneddau range. In fact they lay well hidden until we had climbed the old quarry track round the shoulder of the tongue-tinglingly named Clogwynyreryr, and were deep in the hidden valley behind. Dulyn was the first to slide into view across the cleft, a dark sliver of water in a bowl of rock-scabbed cliffs 500 feet high. But it was Melynllyn we came to first, skirting an old quarry building where a great cast-iron flywheel stood buried up to its axle in rubble. The slate around Melynllyn is studded with tiny particles of abrasive quartz, and first-class hones or whetstones were quarried here to sharpen the scythes and sickles of Victorian Britain.

The clear water of Melynllyn lay hidden until the last moment. As we gazed, a fish jumped and disappeared with a little plosive plop and a ringburst of ripples. A steep track led down to Dulyn, black and still under its cliffs. The twisted fingers of an aeroplane propeller reached out of the water like a demon hand in a Tolkien setting. As many as 20 planes have crashed into the cliffs above Dulyn over the years, and their engines and wing parts still litter the rocks and waters. It was a solemn, hauntingly beautiful place to sit on a rock and eat our sandwiches before taking the long and squelchy homeward path.

Start & finish: Llyn Eigiau car park (OS ref SH 731662)

Getting there: Train (www.thetrainline.com; www.railcard.co.uk) to Dolgarrog Halt (4½ miles by footpath). Road: A5/A470 to Betws-y-Coed; B5106 to Tal-y-Bont; left at Talybont Farmhouse (just before bus shelter and Y Bedol/The Lamb PH); mountain road for 3 miles to car park.

Walk (6 miles, moderate/difficult, OS Explorer OL17): Cross stile at east end of parking place (732663); follow paved path. Cross stile (727666); follow track past sheepfold and up shoulder of Clogwynyreryr for 1¾ miles to ruin near Melynllyn Reservoir (706656). Ignore footpath on map; continue along track to SE corner of reservoir (703658). Follow track skirting to right of crags, steeply down to reach Dulyn Reservoir. Follow path above bothy (707664), along hillside above Afon Dulyn. Pass Scots pine clump; cross first stream (709669), then fence by ladder stile. Cross Ffrwd Cerriguniaun (713671), and another ladder stile (715673). Cross Afon Garreg-wen (718675); then head a little right, aiming downhill for white dam 1/3 mile away. Ford Afon Dulyn below dam (725675); follow track to Maeneira farm ruin (728673) and on to re-cross stile below sheepfold (727666) and return to car park.

Conditions: A mountain walk – hill-walking clothes, boots, gear. Homeward path could be tricky in mist.

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

Lunch: Picnic

Accommodation: Mairlys B&B, Betws-y-Coed (01690-710190; www.mairlys.co.uk; from £60 dble), or Acorns B&B, Betws-y-Coed (01690-710395; www.betws-y-coed-breaks.co.uk; from £60)

Snowdonia Walking Festival: 16-18 October 2009 (www.snowdoniawalkingfestival.co.uk)

More info: Betws-y-Coed TIC (01690-710426; www.visitwales.co.uk); www.ramblers.org.uk

Portesham and Hardy’s Monument, Dorset

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Sep 262009

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

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A blackbird was singing on the garden wall of Portesham House, where stone lions couchant guarded the porch. Thomas Masterman Hardy, who lived here in the Dorset downs as a young boy in 1778, was destined for fame as a much-loved sailor and man of action. Horatio Nelson’s close friend and trusted Flag Captain died loaded with honours in September 1839. In that month his namesake, the future novelist and poet Thomas Hardy, became the tiniest of twinkles in his mother’s eye at Higher Bockhampton, a few miles over the hills to the east. It’s not the great writer who is commemorated by the tall stone Hardy’s Monument on the downs, but the fighting admiral from little Portesham village.

Near the path to Hardy’s Monument crouches the Hell Stone, a neolithic tomb resembling a heavily armoured giant crab, whose nine massive stone legs support a huge capstone of flint-studded conglomerate. The Devil, playing a game of quoits, hurled the Hell Stone here from the Isle of Portland ten miles away, so local stories say.

Up in a cold wind by the monument, Jane and I savoured that fabulous tale along with an equally fabulous burger of local beef, cooked and served with a relish of friendly banter by the pony-tailed man in the Hobo Catering van. Hobo the Canadian Inuit dog (who has kindly lent her name to the admirable fast-food business run by her master) followed every mouthful with the soulful gaze of true cupboard love.

Truth to tell, Hardy’s Monument looks more like a factory chimney than a memorial to a national hero. But the views over Dorset are sensational. Even more stunning is the prospect from the steep ridge above Waddon House, where we paused on the way back to Portesham. Downs and farmlands, the shingle bar of Chesil Beach, St Catherine’s Chapel on its knoll of strip lynchets, the Devil’s quoits pitch of Portland lying like the Gibraltar of Wessex on a bay of molten silver – if any view could entice an adventurous lad to sea, it would be this.

Start & finish: King’s Arms, Portesham, Dorset DT3 4ET (OS ref SY 603857)

Getting there: Train (www.thetrainline.com; www.railcard.co.uk) to Upwey (6 miles); Bus service 61 from Dorchester (www.surelinebuses.co.uk); Road – Portesham signed off A35 Dorchester-Bridport at Winterbourne Abbas

Walk (7 ½ miles, moderate grade, OS Explorer OL15): From King’s Arms, cross street; up Church Lane; right up Back Street; left opposite Manor Close (602860). Follow ‘Portesham Withy Beds, White Hill, Abbotsbury Round Walk/ARW’ signs/waymark arrows. Pass withy beds; through gate at end of trees (592860). Sharp right up steep bank; follow fence (fingerpost, ARW) for 1/3 mile. Right over stile (592865) by ‘South Dorset Ridgeway, Hardy’s Monument/HM’ marker stone. Follow ‘Inland Coast Path/ICP’ for 2/3 mile to road (601869). Left (great care!) for 30 yd; right (HM fingerpost) down fence for 2 fields. Detour right (605869; ‘Hell Stone only’) over stone stile to Hell Stone (605867); return to path; follow ICP through wood to Hardy’s Monument (613876). Cross road; follow ICP to recross road (616877; ‘ICP, Jubilee Trail/JT’). In 1/3 mile (620874), right off ICP, following JT for 1 ¼ miles past Bench farm ruins (624864) to road (630857). Right; in 100 yd, right (’Portesham’); in 200 yd, right over stile (yellow arrow/YA). Diagonally right to ridge top; follow fence (stiles, YAs) for 1 mile. Through gate by Portesham Farm (612861); left down drive; right along lane into Portesham.

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

Lunch: Hobo catering van at Hardy’s Monument (presence likely, not guaranteed); King’s Arms, Portesham (01305-871342; www.kingsarmsportesham.com; B&B available)

More info: Dorchester TIC (01305-267992)

www.westdorset.com; www.ramblers.org.uk

Malvern Hills, Worcestershire

Walks No Responses »

Sep 192009

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

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Nine o’clock on a Sunday morning, with streamers of cloud hiding the top of Worcestershire Beacon and the whole Malvern range spread under a cool and cloudy sky. Dew soaked our trousers as we brushed through the pastures and corn stubbles, walking north in a patchwork countryside of green and gold with the Malverns bulking on our right hand.

In the straggly hamlet of Evendine, a screech among the masses petunias of a beautiful cottage garden made us jump. ‘Oh, that’s Harry our young bantam cockerel,’ chuckled the lady of the house, leaning out of her window. ‘That’s his little trick, startling people as they go by. A blonde with highlights, he is. We’re getting him a couple of lady friends to shut him up!’

We struck off down a farm lane towards the high wrinkled ramparts of the British Camp, one of several ancient forts and strongholds along the ridge of the Malverns. Long-tailed tits and blackbirds lifted their voices among the oaks and overshot coppiced hazels of Hatfield Coppice as we trod the broad track of the Worcestershire Way southwards along the foot of the hills. We fingered the green, apricot-like fruit of a bullace tree that leaned across the path, making one of those fantasy resolutions never actually to be fulfilled, to return and pick the ripened yield for a Christmas of bullace gin around the fire.

Following the medieval Shire Ditch up the spine of Broad Down, then on up the magnificent quadruple ramparts of the British Camp, I thought of proud Caractacus defying the Romans from these heights in 51AD. The last stand of the Catuvellaunian king probably didn’t happen here, in point of fact, despite what legends say. But watching children in bright football shirts swooping like buzzards down the slopes, and looking away into Wales and up over the Midland plains – a hundred-mile view – it seemed a place where old spirits might linger.

Looking down, we made out the churchyard of St Wulstan’s at Little Malvern, where Edward Elgar lies. ‘If ever you’re walking on the hills and hear this,’ said Elgar of the cello concerto he composed below the Malverns, ‘don’t be frightened – it’s only me.’

Start & finish: British Camp car park, on A449 opposite Malvern Hills Hotel, Wynds Point, Jubilee Drive, Malvern WR13 6DW (OS ref SO 763404)

Getting there: Train (www.thetrainline.com; www.railcard.co.uk) to Colwall (¾ mile from Evendine by footpath). Bus (www.herefordshire.gov.uk): 44B or Malvern Hills Hopper. Road: M5, M50 (Jct 1); A38, A4104 via Upton-on-Severn to Little Malvern; A449 towards Ledbury.

Walk (3½ miles, moderate grade, OS Explorer 190): Cross A449 (take care!); up B4232 (‘West Malvern’). In 10 yd, by public lavatories on left, are 2 fingerposts; follow right-hand one (past WCs). In 50 yd, cross stile; keep ahead downhill, across field and over stile with 2 yellow arrows/YA; keep ahead to cross stream and stile (760409); ahead (YAs) to road by Upper House in Evendine (759413). Left for ¼ mile; just past Lower House Farm, left (755412; fingerpost, YA) along lane. In ⅓ mile, left over stile by Oldcastle Farm gates (756406; YA), then 2 more stiles, before aiming diagonally left uphill (757405) to cross stile at corner of Hatfield Coppice (758404; YA). In 30 yd, right over stile (YA); follow Worcestershire Way/WW through trees to cross A449.

Continue south on WW. In ⅓ mile cross steep track (758396); in another ⅓ mile, cross stile with reservoir on right (761392). In 200 yd, left (YA) off WW up track for 100 yd to saddle of ground where 5 paths meet (762390). Sharp left uphill on broad gravelly track; in 30 yd, at ‘Hangman’s Hill, Broad Down’ marker stone, bear right uphill on track which swings left to follow Malvern ridge northwards. In ¼ mile descend left to toposcope on saddle (762395); follow ‘British Camp Earthworks’ sign to summit. Continue on track to second summit (760400), and down to car park.

NB – More walks: www.christophersomerville.co.uk

Lunch: Malvern Hills Hotel (01684-540690; www.malvernhillshotel.co.uk); café/kiosk at car park

More info: Malvern TIC, 21 Church Street, Great Malvern (01684-892289); www.malvernhills.org.uk; www.malvernhillsaonb.org.uk

Grey Seals: Donna Nook NNR, Lincolnshire

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Sep 142009

Wild and wintry weather was tearing across the flat North Lincolnshire landscape, showering the huge ploughed fields and ruler-straight roads with whirling leaves and bursts of rain. Lovely weather for ducks – and for grey seals, according to Claire Weaver, Natural England’s adviser on wildlife management for several of the Sites of Special Scientific Interest along the Lincolnshire coast. ‘The seals don’t care,’ she observed as we set off along the fenced path through the dunes of Donna Nook, heads down against wind and rain. ‘They’ve got just two things on their minds at this time of year – giving birth, and having sex.’

The UK is home to something approaching half the world population of grey seals, and the window of opportunity for them to pup and mate is a narrow one. They have to come ashore to do both, explained Claire. But on land they are slow, clumsy and vulnerable, particularly when all hyped up and distracted by birth and sex hormones. So nature squeezes both activities into a very tight time frame. The cows, having delayed implantation of last year’s fertilised egg for seven months, have been carrying developing pups since late spring. They give birth a couple of days after they reach land, wean their pup for three weeks, and then mate and get back to sea in as short order as possible. By that time they are literally starving; they don’t eat while on shore, and drop about 40% of their body weight.

The enormous flat expanse of salt marsh and mud flats at Donna Nook on the southernmost edge of the Humber Estuary, the Lincolnshire grey seals’ chosen pupping and mating ground, is not only an SSSI and a National Nature Reserve managed by Lincolnshire Wildlife Trust – it’s also an MoD bombing range. Juggling things so that aircraft can practice, seals can perform their functions undisturbed and the public can enjoy the spectacle safely is a complicated business, but NNR warden Rob Scott, his solo assistant and dozens of volunteers make a wonderful job of it. The fenced path conducts you along the edge of the saltmarsh, and there are the seals, hundreds of them, some close enough to touch – if you don’t value your fingers. ‘They’re wild animals,’ Claire reminded me as we stood looking down at a snow-white pup cuddled up to the fence, ‘and they can give a nasty bite.’

There is something very Walt Disney about grey seals – the adorable huge-eyed pups in white coats, the sleekly dappled mothers and big bruiser males with ripples of fat round their scarred necks. ‘Ooohs’ and ‘Aaahs’ were in the air. At first glance all the adults looked utterly docile, a collection of fat slippery slugs marooned in the mud. But nature is a ruthless driver of behaviour. The bulls went slithering and undulating forward to confront one another with open-mouthed roars, occasionally tumbling over in actual combat as they bit at one another’s necks. Young males not yet bulky enough to ring-fence a harem made nuisances of themselves, teasing the seniors by invading their personal space to provoke deep roars and impressive displays of sharp teeth.

A couple of bulls tried their luck with the cows, but were warned off with snarls. It was a little early in the season for mating; the first pups had only been born three weeks before. Now there were well over four hundred of them, ranging from the newly born (in coats still stained bright yellow by amniotic fluid) to three-week pups already losing their lanugo or baby coat of white.

The cow and pup pairs lay high up the salt marsh or in the dunes, well away from the roaring and splashing on the mud flats. I watched a well-grown pup nuzzling for its mother’s tiny teat while she guided it with flaps of her flipper. Seal milk is fabulously rich in fat, so while the cows and bulls starve and diminish, the pups put on weight like super-sizers, nearly four pounds a day. ‘They need to,’ said Claire. ‘When that cow goes to mate and then back to sea, the pup’ll be fending for itself for the next fortnight, living on its blubber until it gets into the sea and starts fishing for itself.’

It was a mesmerising sight – the rain-freckled marsh and mud flats covered in grey seals, apparently inert, in reality working overtime to respond to the timeless imperative of reproduction of the species. As I watched, I became aware of the extraordinary noise the seals were making, swelling like a chorus behind the show – a mooing, roaring, groaning and banshee wailing that our seafaring ancestors told each other was the song of the mermaids. Eerie, ghostly and spine-tingling, it haunted my inner ear for the rest of the day.

FACT FILE

Seal-watching at Donna Nook NNR: A1031 (Cleethorpes-Mablethorpe) to North Somercotes; brown signs to Donna Nook. Open to public (free) all year. Best time is pupping season, mid October – late December. Observe MoD range warnings. Try to visit on weekdays; weekends get very crowded, lanes are narrow and car parking limited).

Claire Weaver’s seal-watching hints

Don’t get too close – you will disturb the seals, cows might desert pups, and you could get badly bitten.
At Donna Nook, keep out of the sanctuary area.
They’re wild animals – don’t feed or pet them.
Leave the dog at home.
Bring your binoculars, and don’t forget the camera

Help and advice

The Wildlife Trusts (01636-677711; www.wildlifetrusts.org) co-ordinate 47 local Wildlife Trusts across the UK, Isle of Man and Alderney, and should be able to help you locate and watch grey seals. Other helpful agencies are Natural England (0845-600-3078; www.naturalengland.org.uk), Scottish Natural Heritage (01738-444177; www.snh.org.uk), Countryside Council for Wales (0845-130-6229; www.ccw.gov.uk) and Northern Ireland Environment Agency (www.ni-environment.gov.uk).

Grey Seal information: http://www.pinnipeds.org/species/grey.htm;

http://www.arkive.org/grey-seal-(eastern-atlantic-population)/halichoerus-grypus/

Grey seals in Wales: http://www.welshwildlife.org/Greyseals_en.link

Accommodation: West View B&B, South View Lane, South Cockerington, Louth, Lincs (01507-327209; www.west-view.co.uk). Very helpful and friendly.

Reading: Seals by Sheila Anderson (Whittet Books)

Information: Donna Nook NNR (01507-526667; www.lincstrust.org.uk)

Louth TIC: Cornmarket, Louth (01507-609289; www.visitlincolnshire.com)

Muker and Keld, Swaledale, North Yorkshire

Walks No Responses »

Sep 122009

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

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A brisk west wind, a chink of sun in the Swaledale clouds after days of rain over North Yorkshire, and the clatter of walking sticks on the road outside Muker Teashop where Jane and I were finishing our Yorkshire rarebits. Out in the village street a hairy-kneed rambler of the old school frowned at Jane’s Satmap device. ‘Get you lost, will that,’ was his pithy judgement.

A walled lane led up the sloping fellsides behind the village, the grazing fields dotted with the square-built farmhouses and small stone barns so characteristic of the Yorkshire Dales. Sun splashes and cloud shadows chased across them. It was a joy to be alive and walking up there in the face of the wind, climbing the old stony road to the crest of Kisdon Hill and following it down to Skeb Skeugh ford and the huddle of grey stone houses at Keld, the Norsemen’s well-named ‘place by the river’. I remembered the enormous kindness (and huge teapot) of Lizzie Calvert at her Thorns B&B house when I arrived here with my father more than 30 years ago, soaked and bespattered from a storm-bound Pennine Way.

On the outskirts of Keld, Jane and I joined that glorious and notorious long-distance treadmill, but only to cross the rain-engorged Swale. East Gill Force jetted down its black rock staircase and into the river with a muted rumble and hiss, and here we swung away from the Pennine Way and made for Crackpot Hall’s dolorous ruins. ‘Don’t miss Swinner Gill,’ we’d been advised by Nick and Alison Turner, owners of Muker Teashop. ‘It’s really something special.’

It was lead-mining subsidence that put an end to Crackpot Hall, and the ruins and spoil heaps of the Dales’ great lost industry lie all around – stone-arched mine levels, a tumbledown smelt mill deep in the cleft of Swinner Gill, and the precarious trods or tracks of the lead miners. All lay silent this afternoon, with the dale sides rising sharply to the sky, the beck sluicing below, and a breathtakingly beautiful prospect opening southward towards Muker down the sunlit floor of Swaledale.

Start & finish: Muker Teashop, Muker, Richmond, N Yorks DL11 6QG (OS ref SO 910979)

Getting there: Bus (http://getdown.org.uk/bus/search/muker.shtml): service 30 (Richmond-Muker-Keld, Mon-Sat) or 831 (Leyburn-Muker-Keld-Hawes, Sun & BH)

Road: A1; A 6108 or A6136 to Richmond; A6108, B6270 to Muker.

Walk (6½ miles, moderate/hard grade, OS Explorer OL30): Leaving Muker Teashop, left; left again up lane by Literary Institute. Forward; right by Grange Farm, left up its side (‘footpath to Keld’). Follow lane; then ‘Bridleway Keld’ (909982)up walled lane for ½ mile. Pennine Way/PW forks right, but continue for 30 yards, then bear right uphill by wall (903986; ‘Keld 2 miles’). At top of slope follow wall to left; continue climbing to open hilltop. Follow green road (fingerposts) over hill, down to ford beck, right along road. On left bend, right (893009; ‘Keld only’) into Keld.

Right down gravelled lane (893012; ‘footpath to Muker’). In 300 yards, left downhill (‘PW’). To return direct to Muker, turn right and follow PW. To continue walk, cross River Swale footbridge; left to reach top of waterfall. Where PW forks left, turn right along track (896011; ‘bridleway’ fingerpost). In ½ mile pass stone barn; in another 100 yards pass engine and steering wheel sunk in ground (!). In 50 yards fork left (904009) on stony track to Crackpot Hall. Aim for house above; then follow path (progressively narrower) into Swinner Gill. Where path forks opposite ruined lead mine buildings, take lower fork to fingerpost; turn back sharp right (911012; ‘Muker’) down narrow path to ford beck (911008; NB – if beck too swollen to ford safely, retrace steps to Crackpot Hall and follow main track south towards Muker).

Continue along path for ¼ mile to join main track; continue down Swaledale on right bank of river for 1 mile. Cross Swale by footbridge (910986); right (yellow arrow) for 50 yards, then left along meadow path for ½ mile back to Muker.

Conditions: Narrow, slippery paths in Swinner Gill

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

Lunch: Farmer’s Arms, Muker (01748-886297) – a proper pub, and very welcoming

Tea and Accommodation: Muker Teashop (01748-886409; www.mukervillage.co.uk) – really warm and welcoming. Try the Yorkshire Rarebit and the sinful cake-and-cheese combo! £65 dble B&B

More info: Richmond TIC (01748-828742); www.yorkshire.com; www.ramblers.org.uk

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