Christopher Somerville

Stoughton and Kingley Vale, West Sussex

Sep 052009

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

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A still, sunny day lay over West Sussex. Pigeons were loud and throaty in the beeches around Stoughton. The rumble of harrow and roller sounded faint and far off from the stubble fields around Old Bartons farmhouse, where a crowd of wailing seagulls were following the gleaming disks as they turned grubs and worms into the sunlight. A Hereford bull stood dazed with sleepiness against the fence and permitted me to scratch his woolly poll and stroke his warm, dusty coat.

Up on the crest of Stoughton Down the woods hung dense and silent, darkened with summer heat. I threaded the pine plantations and oak groves on Bow Hill, with sensational views opening to the south over the sinuous tidal channels of Chichester Harbour, as blue and rippled as silk. Tree-lined tracks led on to the brow of Kingley Vale National Nature Reserve and the rounded green Bronze Age burial mounds of the Devil’s Humps.

Here I was lucky enough to bump into Richard Williamson, for 30 years the manager of Kingley Vale, now its dedicated archivist and guardian angel. ‘The Chalkhill Blues are out,’ Richard confided. Following his directions, I found the brilliant silver-blue butterflies on the tiny patch they favoured at the edge of the reserve, and spent half an hour watching them feed, sunbathe and mate – heaven for butterflies, and pretty close to it for humans, too.

At last I got up from the sward of marjoram and harebells, shook out the cramps and went off to see the venerable yews of Kingley Vale. Visiting these bulbous trees with their arthritic limbs, all but naked of bark and extremely aged – some were old when the Romans arrived in Sussex – is like paying a call on a roomful of dignified, rather aloof Chelsea Pensioners in their birthday suits. One walks among them delicately and with a sense of awe. When eventually I tore myself away from their spell, it was to follow the path dreamily up through the flower-rich meadows of Kingley Vale, before resuming the downland ridge and the flinty trackway back to Stoughton in its sun-soaked hollow.

Start & finish: Hare & Hounds, Stoughton PO18 9JQ (OS ref SU 803115)

Getting there: Train (http://www.thetrainline.com/; http://www.railcard.co.uk/) to Chichester (8.3 miles). Road: A27 to Chichester; B2178 to Funtington; right by Fox & Hounds to Walderton; right to Stoughton.

Walk (6 miles, moderate grade, OS Explorer 120): Leaving Hare & Hounds, left up road. In 200 yd, right at Old Barton (fingerpost, yellow arrow/YA); then fork left on gravelled track (‘Monarch’s Way’ arrow). Pass barns (809115); on for 1 mile to 3-way bridleway fingerpost (824121). Right; in 200 yards, fork left (blue arrow/BA) on narrower path through fir grove. In 600 yd pass BA on right; in 350 yd, reach track crossing by Kingley Vale NNR notice (825113; 4-way fingerpost). Right along track for ½ a mile. Just past Devil’s Humps barrows, left by ‘Nature Trail’ post (819109), through gate. Follow numbered posts anticlockwise round Nature Trail, passing information shelter at 824100, for 2 miles to return to Devil’s Humps. Resume walk along track. In 300 yd, keep ahead by Kingley Vale NNR notice (817107; bridleway fingerpost, BA). In ¼ of a mile, reach edge of wood (813105); right on track for 1 mile to road in Stoughton; right to Hare & Hounds.

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

Lunch: Hare & Hounds, Stoughton (02392-631433; http://www.hareandhoundspub.co.uk/); a pub that knows it’s a pub … with excellent food, too.

More info: Tourist Information Centre, 29a South Street, Chichester (01243-775888, www.visitchichester.org); ; http://www.ramblers.org.uk/

Carntogher Mountain, Co. Derry, Northern Ireland

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Aug 292009

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

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It can be a wet old place, County Derry, after a month of good solid rain. Down in the glen of the Altkeeran River below Carntogher mountain, all was sedgy. But the old coach road along the glen gave firm footing through the turf. Streams ran orange from the iron minerals of the mountain, up whose green flank Jane and I went climbing.

Pink conquistador helmets of lousewort clashed with virulent red sphagnum in the banks of the tumbled wall we were following. It lifted us to the shoulder of the mountain, and a track where we met two walkers from a local townland. They pointed out Slieve Gallion ten miles to the south (‘a Derry mountain, despite what you might hear’) with great precision and pride. ‘I’ve walked this path since I was a boy,’ said one, ‘and by God I will do it till the day that I die!’

Up at the Snout of the Cairn, Shane’s Leaps lay just off the path – three innocuous-looking rocks. Did Shane ‘Crossagh’ O’Mullan, the light-footed outlaw with the scarred face whom all the ladies sighed for, once escape the lumbering English soldiery up here? So old tales say. At the Emigrants’ Cairn just beyond the Leaps we found a heart-stopping view to the hills of Donegal, the last prospect of their native land that those walking over the mountains to the ships in Lough Foyle would carry with them to ‘far Amerikay’.

Back across the slopes of Carntogher we went, following the boggiest of upland tracks, half peat and half puddle, past black heaps of iron-mining spoil to the top of the ridge and another most tremendous westward view, across the silver fishtail of Lough Foyle, on beyond the pale humps of Barnesmore and the Blue Stacks to the jagged spine of Errigal out at the edge of sight in western Donegal. Between Errigal and Mourne there cannot be fewer than a hundred miles. All Northern Ireland lay spread out for us, and we lingered long over this extraordinary feast.

On the way down we passed a Bronze Age cist grave. There was something about the little dark hole in the bank, slab-lined and secretive, that simply invited a tall and wild tale. But no-one was there to tell it to us today.

Start & finish: Tullykeeran Bridge, near Maghera (OSNI ref C 819045).

Getting there: Ulsterb us (www.nirailways.co.uk) to Maghera (3 miles) or Swatragh (3½ miles). Road: A29 (Coleraine-Maghera); minor roads to parking place by ruined cottage at Tullykeeran Bridge

Walk 5½ miles, moderate grade, OS of Northern Ireland 1:50,000 Discoverer 8): (red trail): Follow road. 100 m beyond 3^rd bridge, left over stile by gatepost (red/blue arrows); follow track for ½ a mile into Altkeeran Glen (805407 approx). Right up path by tumbledown wall (red/blue arrows). In 3/4 of a mile, stony track crosses path (800058 approx); left (red arrow) to Emigrants’ Cairn and Shane’s Leaps (796058).

Return for 50 yards; left at post (red arrow) along grassy track to marker post on saddle of ground; walk 400 yards left here to ridge viewpoint over Lough Foyle and Donegal hills; return to marker post. Continue downhill along track for 2 miles, past cist grave (824061), through gates, down to road (823055). Right (red arrow) for 2 miles to car park.

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

Downloadable map/instructions at

http://www.walkni.com/d/walks/319/Carntogher_History_Trail.pdf. Trail map at car park.

Lunch: Rafters Bar and Restaurant, Swatragh (028-7940-1206); food all day, open fire, warm welcome.

Accommodation: Laurel Villa Townhouse, Magherafelt (02879-301459; www.laurel-villa.com) – friendly, well-run ‘house of poets’. From £70 dble B&B.

More info: Magherafelt TIC (02879-631510)

Orford and River Ore, Suffolk

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Aug 222009

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

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A breezy, sunny day, and the East Anglian coast lay under a proper Constable sky. I hadn’t been to Orford for some time, and was looking forward to diving in again among the mellow brick houses and curly Dutch gables of the old Suffolk port, silted away from direct contact with the sea for the past 400 years. In the car park of the Jolly Sailor near Orford Quay I found the odorous booth of the Sole Bay Cheese Company open for business. Well, you have to, don’t you? Munching a granary bun slathered with Norfolk White Lady – a creamy, tangy, stinking sheep’s cheese you’d give your fleece for – I set out along the seawall path into the bright afternoon, content to the gunwales.

Halyards clinked in the stiff south-east breeze, and the chuckle of waves on the pebbly shore of the River Ore underlay the harsh screeching of black-headed gulls. The tide was setting up the narrow river which runs separated from the sea by the ten-mile-long shingle spit of Orford Ness. The isolated spit, out here on the remote Suffolk coast, was perfectly placed for experiments with Armageddon weapons. Pagoda-roofed laboratories where nuclear bombs were subject to fierce stress tests still stand on the low horizon of the Ness, sinister in silhouette against this afternoon’s pale North Sea sky. Beyond them lay the blank-faced grey block of the building that once housed the top secret site code-named ‘Cobra Mist’. What a splendid wheeze, bending radio waves round the curvature of the earth to monitor Soviet rocket launches behind the Iron Curtain. And how illustrative of Sod’s Law that a mystery hum should have condemned the whole huge and costly scheme to a fruitless abandonment.

Shelves of saltmarsh fringed the Ore, their pools and creeks glinting red and green with mineral salts. Along the river scudded sailing boats, heeling extravagantly in the blasting wind. Lapwings tumbled over the cornfields and river with wheezing cries, and oystercatchers skimmed away on black and white scimitar wings with a ‘pic! pic!’ of alarm. Soon the tan-coloured cylinder of the Martello Tower on Slaughden Beach – still defying the ever-encroaching sea – hove up on my starboard bow, and beyond it the red roofs and white houses of Aldeburgh on their slight rise of ground.

It was hard to tear myself away from the splashing yachts, the courting birds and the breezy exhilaration of the coast. But there were compensations on the homeward hike through a rolling hinterland rich in corn and potatoes: partridges whirring low over the fields, bright flowers in the green lanes, sandy tracks through the conifer forests, and the pure pleasure of walking country roads with never a car in sight or sound.

Start & finish: Jolly Sailor, Orford, Suffolk IP12 2NL (OS ref: IM 424497)

Getting there: A12 to Woodbridge, then follow ‘Orford’ signs.

Walk (10 ½ miles, easy grade, OS Explorer 212): Jolly Sailor – Orford Quay – sea wall path to Slaughden Point (461553) – inland for 2/3 mile to 450551 – green lane to road (439546). Left along road; right by Ferry Farm; follow road for 1&freac12; miles to pass Depewall Cottage; right (426527) into Tunstall Forest to 421526; left on bridleway for 1¼ miles, passing All Saint’s Church (420520) to cross B1084 (417508). Left at 417506 to road (420502). Right fork to T-junction by Crown & Castle (421499). Continue to sea wall (424493); left to Orford Quay.

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

Lunch: Take picnic

Accommodation and food: Jolly Sailor PH (01394-450243; www.jollysailor.net) – refurbished, characterful, very friendly. Fabulous homemade pâte and other food.

More info: Aldeburgh TIC (01728-453637; www.suffolkcoastal.gov.uk/tourism); www.ramblers.org.uk

Orford Ness: www.nationaltrust.co.uk.

Berwick St John, Wiltshire

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Aug 152009

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

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Squirrels had been harvesting the green hazelnuts along Woodlands Lane; the split shells went crunching under our boots as we set out from Berwick St John on a cloudy morning. Beyond the gabled old house of Woodlands there was a bit of a pull up the breast of the hill, and then the exhilaration of a good old step-out along one of the ancient ridgeways that ride the nape of these south Wiltshire downs. Jane, a South Downs girl born and bred, strode out with a big smile on her face, delighting in the poppies along the cornfield headlands, the nodding harebells and powder-blue buttons of scabious in the trackway verges, and the sense of being high up among the swooping hills of proper chalk-and-flint country.

Steep hill slopes whose sheep-nibbled turf had never been disturbed by any plough plunged away to flat and sinuous valley bottoms, where the pale coffee colour of the newly harrowed earth lay streaked with darker chocolate, sign of watercourses still active under the soil. It was like walking on a relief map, a fabulous one. Full of exultation, we came down through Norrington Farm to reach Alvediston’s little Church of St Mary, where a group of recondite ramblers on a church crawl were discoursing in the churchyard.

Blink and you’ll miss Alvediston. The thatched Crown Inn stood locked up tight, in a state of suspended animation between owners. Walking on, we found sparrowhawks clattering from the ash trees in Elcombe Hollow, fat sheep cropping the vale under Pincombe Down, and wonderful views along the sweep of the north-facing hills.

The Ox Drove is another ancient trackway of the Wiltshire Downs, broad and tree-lined between wide grazing verges, a drove road and pedlar’s highway since time out of mind. We followed it along the crest of the downs as cloud thickened in the north, looking out to the mounded ramparts of Winkelbury hillfort. The golden coffin buried at the summit, the lucky thorn tree that grows there, the devil who grants wishes to those who march round the hill while cursing and swearing … All yarns the drovers swapped and the pedlars spun to drive away the demons of the old hard roads across the downs.

Start & finish: Talbot Inn, Berwick St John, Wiltshire SP7 0HA (OS ref ST 947223)

Getting there: Berwick St John is signed off A30, 3½ miles east of Shaftesbury

Walk (8 miles, moderate grade, OS Explorer 118): Leaving Talbot Inn, round right bend; up Church Street. Round left bend by Old Rectory; in 20 yd, right (946224) along Woodlands Lane. Just past Woodlands House (951232), track splits 3 ways. Ignore yellow arrow; take middle way, diagonally left uphill for 600 yd. Through gate in fence (948237; blue arrow/BA); aim half left across down to gate in far left corner (BA). On through next wooden gate; follow path to turn right along stony trackway (948245). In 1 mile, right (961248) down green path to Norrington Farm. Ahead through farmyard; past last barn, left (967238) over stiles through 4 fields to road (976238 – St Mary’s Church opposite). Right to T-junction in Alvediston (976234 – Crown Inn opposite). Right; in 50 yd, left (‘Elcombe Farm’). Follow road, then track up Elcombe Hollow for 1¼ miles to Bigley Barn (977216). Right along Ox Drove trackway for 1½ miles. 250 yd before road, right (954208) along path for 1¼ miles below Winkelbury hillfort to road (953223); left to Berwick St John,

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

Lunch: Talbot Inn, Berwick St John (01747-828222); Crown Inn, Alvediston (NB closed at time of writing).

More info: Salisbury TIC (01722-334956; www.visitwiltshire.co.uk); www.ramblers.org.uk

Thixendale, Yorkshire Wolds

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Aug 082009

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

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'What’s a Painslackfull?' echoed the landlord of the Cross Keys, with the air of one who’d heard it a thousand times before. ‘Listen, if I have to tell you, I’ve got to kill you to keep the secret.’ I ordered one sight unseen, and went out into the garden of Thixendale’s little pub to wait for it and to savour the cold, bright, windy day that had descended over the wolds of East Yorkshire.

That evocative name of ‘wolds’ brings to mind the gentle felicities of the Cotswolds, near where I grew up in Gloucestershire. The Yorkshire Wolds are a different kind of countryside; steeper, deeper, more remote, wilder in feeling and aspect. The village of Thixendale lies down at the junction of a dozen of the small, snaking, flat-bottomed valleys, called ‘dales’ hereabouts, that hide so effectively in these chalky uplands. Driving from York to Bridlington through the modestly rolling cornfields of the East Riding, you’d never guess village or dales were there at all.

My Painslackfull turned out to consist of … well, I couldn’t possible reveal that. But it was fantastically delicious. Wiping my mouth and burping pleasurably, I made my way up the adjoining valleys of Thixen Dale and Milham Dale. Sheep had grazed the steep dales sides into a beautiful sward bright with pale blue scabious, wild thyme and delicately trembling harebells. The view west from the Roman road on the ridge above was sensational, and quite unexpected in these apparently flat lands: forty or fifty miles across the Vale of York towards the hazy outlines of the Pennine Hills.

I walked down into the silent, sleepy and perfectly ordered village of Kirby Underdale, whose Norman church held a strange surprise: a blurred sandstone carving of Mercury, god of good luck and swift action. Setting back by way of Painsthorpe Dale and Worm Dale, I pictured the sculptor at work with careful devotion, long before Christianity first blew like a breeze across these secret dales.

Down in the green cleft of Thixendale I came across fifty heavy-coated sheep barging frantically round a pen, watched with fixed intensity by a brace of collies. The farmer and his boy were opening their Thermos on the dale side above. ‘Rained off from shearing ‘em yesterday,’ observed the farmer phlegmatically, ‘but we’ll get ‘em done tonight,’ and he sipped his tea with quiet relish.

Start & finish: Cross Keys Inn, Thixendale, N. Yorks YO17 9TG (OS ref SE 845610)

Getting there: Thixendale is signed off A166 York-Driffield road. Entering village, turn left (‘Birdsall, Malton’) to find Cross Keys on right.

Walk(8 ½ miles, moderate, OS Explorers 300, 294): From Cross Keys Inn, through village past church. 50 yd beyond village sign, left through gateway; up Thixen Dale, then Milham Dale to Roman road. Left for 1/3 mile; then right down 4 fields (gates, stiles) to pass Woodley Farm. At bottom of field, left through gate (yellow arrow) across field to join track to road (808590). Right past Waterloo Cottage, then through Kirby Underdale.

Beyond church, road bends left; right here over stile. Cross paddock; left through gate past Beech Farm; right up Painsthorpe Lane to Roman road. Left (‘Malton’) for 150 yd; right along farm track. In ½ mile, track doglegs. On right bend, keep forward (blue arrow) for 30 yd, then right along hedge. Through gate; down Wormdale to Thixen Dale; left . Left along Thixen Dale bottom to road; right to Thixendale.

NB – Detailed directions (recommended), map, more walks: http://www.christophersomerville.co.uk/

Lunch and Accommodation: Cross Keys Inn, Thixendale (01377-288272) – £54 dble B&B)

More info: http://www.yorkshire.com/

Polkerris and Gribbin Head, Cornwall

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Aug 012009

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

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God, what a miserable summer! Rain, rain and … yes, more rain, drenching the Cornish beaches, making rivers of the Cornish lanes. Today, for a miracle, it wasn’t forecast to rain till, ooh, ten a.m. at least. So I was up with the lark (there were no larks to be heard; they were probably cowering in the nest), quit the underfloor heating and woodburning stove of the Cow Barn holiday cottage with a sigh, and was down on Polkerris beach by six o’clock.

‘Mackerel sky, mackerel sky, neither wet, neither dry,’ we said as kids, and here was a sky as blue and silver as a mackerel’s belly, together with a soft mist rolling in with the south-west wind. I climbed the old cliff road to Tregaminion Farm with ferns and wet grasses pearling my rain trousers. Three calves stood in the farmyard with their muzzles in a manger; none looked up as I went by. All else was still and silent at Tregaminion, and at Trenant and Lankelly beyond. Never a dog barked as I crossed the fat neck of the Gribbin Head peninsula, a ghost slipping through a rain-soaked landscape now glinting brilliantly in early sunshine.

In the hamlet of Lankelly the herringbone walls were smothered in foxgloves and wall pennywort. I found the flowery, high-banked hollow of Love Lane, and followed it down through Covington Woods to the shattered old stub of St Catherine’s Castle high on a cliff knoll on the south flank of Fowey. The little town slumbered opposite its counterpart village of Polruan, the sister settlements held apart by the jaws of the River Fowey through which a yacht was sneaking out towards the open sea.

It was a beautiful hike back along the cliffs, across the lake outfall at impossibly picturesque Polridmouth, up on the nape of Gribbin Head under the soaring, candy-striped lookout tower. As always in such places, I longed for a six-year-old companion to play at Rapunzel. Rain began to freckle in from the sea as I skirted the sea buckthorn thickets beyond Gribbin Tower, but I beat the serious stuff into Polkerris by a short head. Now for a bacon sandwich and a good solid cup of bo’sun’s tea. Proper job, that’d be.

Start & finish: Polkerris car park, PL23 1ET (OS ref SX 094523)

Getting there: Polkerris is signposted off A3082, 1½ miles west of Fowey

Walk (6 miles, moderate grade, OS Explorer 107): From Polkerris car park (pay), walk down lane, past Rashleigh Inn, down ramp to beach. Left up ramp past Polkadot Café/Polkerris Beach Watersport shop. At ‘Toilets’ sign, right up path (‘South West Coast Path/CP’). In 20 yards, CP goes right up steps, but you keep ahead up sunken lane to road (096522). Right for 250 yards; left (‘Saints Way/SW’). Skirt right round Tregaminion Farm (yellow arrows/y.a.), and on along field paths for 1/3 of a mile to Trenant Cottage. Cross driveway; on along hedged path, then through fields, across stream valley, up to Lankelly Farm. Right along Coombe Lane; in 300 yards, left (SW); in another 300 yards, right (115515; SW) along Love Lane, descending towards sea for 1/3 of a mile. Just before houses, leave SW (117511) and follow CP past NT Covington woods sign (acorn waymark, y.a.). Follow CP for 3¾ miles, via Coombe Haven, Polridmouth and Gribbin Tower, back to Polkerris.

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

Lunch: Rashleigh Inn (01726-813991; http://www.therashleighinnpolkerris.co.uk/) or Sam’s on the Beach (01726-812255; http://www.samsfowey.co.uk/index.php/onthebeach)

Accommodation: The Mill or The Cow Barn near Lostwithiel (http://www.cottages4you.co.uk/) – very stylish conversion; lots more available locally

More info: Fowey TIC (01726-833616; http://www.fowey.co.uk/); http://www.ramblers.org.uk/

Bats: Petworth Park, West Sussex

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Aug 012009

Bats get a bad press. People find them ugly, creepy, scary. They suck your blood and give you rabies and tangle themselves in your hair, right? Well, no, actually. Bats, seen in the calm light of reason and common sense, are rather beautiful, highly specialised and delightful creatures – and extremely useful at hoovering up midges and other thundering nuisances. Sussex is a county rich in bats – in fact all seventeen of the UK’s native species are resident, and 14 of these have been found on the Petworth Estate in the western region of the county. That was where Jane and I headed, one drizzly evening towards the end of summer.

A damp, cloudy evening, steamy with moisture and the threat of rain, is just the kind of evening not to be bat-watching. But our evening rendezvous at the gates of Petworth Park had been fixed many moons ago. Crispin Scott, the National Trust’s Regional Nature Conservation Adviser, was waiting with his young son Alf to take us for a walk on the wild side of the park, superbly landscaped in the mid-18^th century by Capability Brown. ‘Bat detector,’ Crispin said, handing over a stout black box knobbly with buttons. ‘I’ll show you how it works when we’re out in the park. But let’s have a look at the tunnels first.’

In the brick-lined tunnels that connect Petworth House with its servants’ quarters, thousands of bats of seven different species hibernate the winter months away – Brandt’s bats, grey and brown long-eared bats with huge ears, Daubenton’s bats that hunt insects over water, common pipistrelles, whiskered bats and rare Bechstein’s bats. But on this late summer evening the eerie tunnels lay empty of bats.

Out in the park the light was beginning to fade. The great house stood, shadowed by rain, in a man-made landscape of subtle curves and hollows. In front of us a spinney of oak and sweet chestnut perched artfully on a scenic knoll. ‘Clumps on lumps,’ said Crispin, ‘very good for bats – the air’s still, there are plenty of insects, and it’s sheltered.’

Waiting among the trees for whatever the dusk might bring, Crispin brought us up to speed on the Petworth bats. No artificial fertilizers are used on the Estate; that encourages insects, which in turn attract the bats. Each bat species has its own preferred habitats: barbastelles, for example, like lightly wooded places, Bechstein’s prefer heavy tree cover, while Daubenton’s need water over which to hunt insects. A common pipistrelle is only as long as one’s thumb, but can easily pack away 3,000 midges in one night. Noctules are bigger than the other bats – they can tackle a cockchafer or maybug.

Bats hunt and find their way by echo-location, emitting a stream of sounds too high-pitched for human ears and measuring the returning echoes as they bounce back off objects. The echo-location is so precise that the bat can identify an insect even if it’s sitting motionless on a leaf, and pick it neatly off as it zooms by. Each species transmits at a different frequency – soprano pipistrelles at around 55kHz, common pipistrelles at 45kHz, Daubenton’s generally at 45-50kHz, noctules down at 25kHz. The bat detector reduces the transmission to a sound we can pick up – a crackle or quick vibration, which accelerates sharply to the ‘feeding buzz’, a wet squelch exactly like blowing a raspberry, when the bat closes in on an insect.

We were scarcely expecting much action on this damp evening, but as we waited in the ‘clump on the lump’, little black bullets suddenly started zipping round the glade. ‘Soprano pipistrelles,’ whispered Crispin, ‘tune your detectors to 55kHz.’ The pipistrelles streaked by in pairs, with the juveniles, learning to hunt, following their mothers in close formation like tiny fighter planes. Three or four bats soon became twenty or more, some of them flying within touching distance of us, crepitating and buzzing.

‘I’ve never seen such a good display,’ exclaimed Crispin, ‘and these are the worst conditions of any bat expedition I’ve done!’

Down by the lake there were noctules flying overhead, their echo-location translated by the bat detectors into a chop-chop-chop as of miniature helicopter blades. Daubenton’s bats hunted insects over the water, crackling like burning stubble as they darted with a flash of pale belly through the beam of Crispin’s torch. Natterers, on the wing after small moths, made bristly noises. There were quiet ploppings and quackings from out on the dark water to remind us that other denizens of the lake were about their nightly occasions.

Walking back through the park we saw the great house lost in the night. Of its scores of windows, two solitary squares shone as beacons of light and human presence. All around us the feeding frenzy of the pipistrelles continued unabated. Then Jane gave a sudden exclamation. A bat had flown so close, it had actually knocked her glasses off.

FACT FILE

Bats at Petworth: Contact Petworth House (see below) for details of guided Bat Walks.

Petworth House and Park, West Sussex (NT): tel 01798-342207 (info-line 343929); www.nationaltrust.org.uk

Further information: Petworth TIC (01798-343523; www.visitsussex.org)

Hints: Bats are most active for an hour or so around dawn/dusk. From late November to early March they hibernate. To watch bats, look for a place with still air, plenty of insects and shelter close by – on the edge of tree clumps and beside water are two good spots. Get in position by dusk, and keep quiet and still. A good bat detector (£60 upwards) is essential (see www.bats.org.uk).

Help and advice

The Wildlife Trusts (01636-677711; www.wildlifetrusts.org) can advise on locating bats 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). Several National Trust properties are havens for bats, and offer guided bat walks and talks: see www.nationaltrust.org.uk

County Bat Groups: Many counties have their own Bat Groups – see http://www.uksafari.co.uk/batgroups.htm

European Bat Weekend every August: contact Bat Conservation Trust

Bat Conservation Trust (www.bats.org.uk) – all things bat-related

Bat Helpline (0845-1300-228) – information, help, practical advice

Reading: Bats by Phil Richardson (Whittet Books)

Creswell Crags and Welbeck Abbey, Nottinghamshire

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Jul 252009

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

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In the caverns of Creswell Crags they left the bones of arctic hare and reindeer, along with the tools that cut-marked the bones – black and white flint, delicately slivered and still razor sharp. What they felt and dreamed, these ancient ancestors of ours, hides in the shapes of antlered stags, bears, bison and long-billed birds that they incised some 13,000 years ago into the cave roof that sheltered them from Ice Age winds and snows.

As Jane and I walked down the leafy tunnel of the Robin Hood Way on a sunny evening, our heads were full of bears and bones. As we strolled the green acres of the Welbeck Estate, though, other wild imaginings took over. The splendidly eccentric 5th Duke of Portland – a kindly man, known as the ‘workman’s friend’ – created employment far and wide in this district by having an extraordinary series of tunnels constructed in the mid 19th century. Two led to a vast equestrian school built by the Duke; another, wide enough for two carriages to pass, ran for well over a mile to the South Lodge.

The Robin Hood Way wound through the cornfields and grasslands of the Welbeck Estate. A few feet below our boots ran the South Lodge tunnel, hidden in the ground. ‘Tunnel Skylights’ said the Explorer map, teasingly. It proved impossible to find them in the grass; but there was a wonderful view of the pepperpot turrets and fantasy towers of Welbeck Abbey, peeping over the trees beyond a lawn where archers were busy at target practice. Give or take a Chelsea Tractor or two, it could have been a scene from the life of the celebrated greenwood hoodie of nearby Sherwood Forest.

At the gates of Welbeck were the coal mines that made the Dukes of Portland rich and provided the 5^th Duke with his expert tunnelers. Now the mines lie abandoned, with their spoil heaps as memorials. Towards sunset Jane and I threaded a tiny sunken lane to the hamlet of Penny Green, then crossed the vast tip of Belph Colliery, orange and black and streaked with fleets of water. Cavemen incising by firelight, the Duke of Portland in his echoing chambers, the miners of Belph: our evening walk had turned out to be all about the underground.

Start & finish: Creswell Crags Visitor Centre, Creswell S80 3LH (OS ref SK 538744)

Getting there: Train (www.thetrainline.com; www.railcard.co.uk) or bus (Stagecoach service 77 or First service 150) to Creswell (1 mile from Centre). … Road: M1 (Jct 30); A616 to Creswell; follow ‘Creswell Crags’ signs

Walk (7½ miles, easy grade, OS Explorer 270): From Creswell Crags Visitor Centre turn right along green lane (Robin Hood Way/RHW) to cross A60 (546744 – please take care!). Along drive opposite (bridleway fingerpost). At Oaksetts Lodge (552745) bear left up track for 150 yd, then follow signposted bridleway (RHW). In 300 yd, left (557744 – bridleway fingerpost) on grassy track for &frac13; of a mile to gravel drive (560748). Right to gate; left across lake and on for ½ mile to South Lodge (568754). Cross Broad Lane; continue for 1 mile through woods (‘Worksop’ fingerpost), then over fields.

At path crossing just past Oak Wood, with 2 yellow arrows (y.a.) on right, turn left (571770) down green lane. At end, left over stile (y.a.); ahead along field edge. In 300 yd, right over brook at yellow post (567767). Aim across field for another; through successive kissing gates; on to recross Broad Lane (564763). Keep ahead (‘Belph’ fingerpost), following yellow-topped posts, to cross Walling Brook (555760). Follow waymark arrows towards chimney, passing Belph Grange to reach stile onto A60 (548757). Left along verge for 100 yards; then cross road (please take great care!); follow path diagonally across field to lane. Right for 50 yd; left (545756 – fingerpost) down field edge. Left across stream; right along path by weirs to road at Penny Green Cottages (543756).

Left for 100 yd; left over stile (fingerpost). Keep ahead on path, up and over old tip. This section is a work in progress; path route may have altered, but aim due south to reach gate onto Hennymoor Lane (542750). Cross lane; down green lane opposite (black/yellow arrows) for &frac13; of a mile to A60 (546745). Right along pavement for 100 yards; right up RHW to Creswell Crags Visitor Centre.

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

Pack of 8 circular Notts walks: order from Nottingham TIC on 08444-77-5678.

Lunch: Creswell Crags coffee shop

Creswell Crags Museum, Tours etc: 01909-720378; www.creswell-crags.org.uk

More info: Worksop TIC (01909-501148); www.visitnotts.com

Hermaness, Isle of Unst, Shetland

Walks No Responses »

Jul 182009

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

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The bonxie surveyed me coldly, raising dark wings and issuing a harsh double croak from its hooked, half-open beak. These fierce inhabitants of the Shetland Isles (‘great skuas’ to the outside world) are not at their sweetest during the chick-rearing season. Instead of launching itself at me and skimming the top of my head with outstretched feet, however, the bonxie contented itself with a good hard stare until I’d walked on out of its personal space. The chicks must still be in the egg, I realised. Last time I had climbed the Hill of Hermaness – the northernmost point of Unst, the northernmost island in the entire British archipelago – a bonxie had swooped so close it had actually parted my hair. I’d smelt the fishy reek of its breath as it screamed in my face, and instantly conceived a deep respect for the fearless great skua.

Dodging the bonxies is just one of the many thrills of Hermaness. As you climb the path past the peat-brown lochans there’s the chance of spotting snipe and golden plover, and perhaps a rare red-throated diver sailing the water. On your right the craggy cliffs of Burra Firth dissolve in and out of the mist. And as you crest the hill and start down the last slope in Britain, up ahead sail the skerries that close off these islands. A line of canted, gleaming rock stacks with cumbersome, enchanting names: Vesta Skerry and Rumblings, white with nesting gannets; Tipta Skerry; Muckle Flugga with its high perched lighthouse. A little further off rises the round blob of Out Stack, prosaically named, romantically situated: the end of the end.

Down there in the thrashing water, some time around 1850, Lady Jane Franklin scrambled from a tiny boat up the slippery flanks of Out Stack and cried a prayer for her missing husband into the wind. The Arctic winter of 1845 had swallowed Sir John Franklin and his 142 companions as they searched in vain for the North West Passage, and Lady Jane was left to weep and mourn in public, raising funds for fruitless rescue expeditions with her tears and imploring.

I had it all to myself, the whole magical place. Fulmars circled, puffins scurried, gannets wheeled and plunged, the wind blew like a challenge. I dropped to the turf, grinning all over my face, and stared out north to where, a thousand miles beyond the curve of the sea, the Arctic ice began.

Start & finish: The Ness parking place, Burrafirth, Isle of Unst (OS ref HP612147).

Getting there: Flybe (www.flybe.com) / Loganair (www.loganair.co.uk) fly from Inverness and Glasgow to Shetland.

Bus and ferry (http://www.zettrans.org.uk/bus/NorthIsles.asp), Lerwick-Haroldswick, Isle of Unst. The Ness is another 3 miles (bicycle hire, Dial-A-Ride service, 01957-711666)

Road with ferries: A968, B9086.

Walk: (5 miles, moderate, OS Explorer 470). From Ness parking place at end of road, follow marked circular path (green-topped posts) round Hermaness. Allow 2-3 hours. Remote, windy, boggy and slippery underfoot: dress warm and dry; walking boots. Take great care on cliff edges. Bring binoculars and stick. Information leaflets in metal box at start of path. NB: Great Skua (‘bonxie’) dive-bombs during chick-rearing season, generally late May until July, coming close but rarely striking. To deter, hold stick above head. Please avoid Sothers Brecks nesting area, May-July.

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

Lunch: Bring picnic.

Accommodation: Irene and Tony Mouat, Clingera, Baltasound, Unst, ZE2 9DT (01957-711579) – exceptionally friendly B&B, or self-catering at North Dale (sleeps 4: 3½ miles from Hermaness) or Baltasound (sleeps 6).

Cruises to Muckle Flugga: contact Tony Mouat, above.

Hermaness info: Scottish National Heritage, Lerwick (01595-693345; www.snh.org.uk)

More info: Lerwick TIC (01595-695807)

www.visitshetland.com; www.visitscotland.com

Aubourn and Bassingham, Lincolnshire

Walks No Responses »

Jul 112009

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

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‘Lincolnshire?’ say friends who’ve never been there. ‘Flat as a pancake; just boring.’ More fool them. The westernmost corner of the county along the River Witham is wonderful for rambling, threaded by immaculately maintained and waymarked footpaths. There’s a subtle dip and roll to the landscape. Medieval sites, village with vigorous community lives; woods, ponds, moats, green lanes; west Lincolnshire has it all. Nonetheless, you rarely see another soul about the fields. What a pleasure it is to have such an undiscovered piece of walking country to oneself, especially on a drowsy afternoon after a pint and a sandwich in the flower-bedecked Royal Oak at Aubourn.

In a thistly field beyond the village, Jane and I found the Anglo-Saxon manor site of Hall Close, all lumps and bumps of grassed-over earthwork, half-dried moats and masonry. In a thicket by the river, broken fragments of wall and dragonfly-haunted pools showed where a monastic settlement once throve among its fishponds. Up the bank stood a 15^th-century dovecote of creamy oolitic stone with nesting holes for 500 birds – last remnant of Haddington Hall, seat of the ancient Meres family.

On the far side of a quiet green lane we went on across pastures heavy with meadowsweet, over pungent beanfields, through the slumbrous hamlet of Thurlby where mulberries and horse chestnuts half-smothered the houses. As we crossed the River Witham and came into Bassingham, the tower of St Michael & All Angels was striking three over a fantastic collection of gargoyles grinning and gurning from the church eaves. Did Walt Disney, on a visit to his ancestral village of Norton Disney a few miles away, come here taking notes? Certainly more than one of the Bassingham grotesques put us in mind of Mickey Mouse’s cock-eyed pup Pluto.

Bassingham was primping its herbaceous borders for Open Gardens Weekend. Schoolchildren queued up politely in Green’s Stores to buy sherbet lemons. Walking back along the well-kept field paths to Aubourn, watching swans on the river and listening to yellowhammers issuing their eternal requests for ‘A-little-bit-of-bread-and-no-cheese!’, Jane and I began to wonder if we had slipped through a crack in the space-time continuum and wandered into some improbable land of lost content.

Start & finish: Royal Oak PH, Aubourn LN5 9DT (OS ref SK 925628)

Getting there: A1 to Newark, A46 towards Lincoln; right through Haddington to Aubourn.

Walk (6 miles, easy grade, OS Explorer 272): From Royal Oak, left; in 70 yd, left (fingerpost) up path. Through kissing gate at end; left; follow yellow arrows (y.a.) to road (918628). Right across bridge; in 100 yd, left over footbridge. Follow y.a. across 3 fields, then Hall Close historic site, to cross green lane (912626). Continue same line for ½ a mile to road (907622); left into Thurlby. Beyond bend, left (‘Bassingham’) along pavement. 200 yd past cottages, left (907609) across field; cross road (908605), and on across fields. Opposite Bassingham church, left (906598) across river to road (909598). Right to church.

Return up road; left at war memorial (‘Thurlby, Lincoln’); left by Green’s Stores. Just past Five Bells PH, left (912602) down Water Lane. In 100 yd, right (fingerpost) down path and on through fields. Cross road (910605); on past Witham Farm, following y.a. for 1 ¼ miles to weir (913625). Right to end of green lane (916623); left along road; immediately left (fingerpost) across 2 fields to road (919626). Right to clock tower; left into Aubourn.

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

Lunch: Royal Oak, Aubourn (01522-788291; www.royaloakaubourn.co.uk)

More info: Lincoln TIC (01522-873213)

www.visitlincolnshire.com; www.ramblers.org.uk

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