Christopher Somerville

It’s no surprise to discover that the Cotswolds are the favourite destination of foreign visitors to the south of England. Lying as they do across the beautiful county of Gloucestershire, only an hour from London and very handy for Shakespeare Country, Bath and Cheltenham, the Cotswolds would have to be plug-ugly and as dull as ditchwater not to be the focus of a huge amount of tourist interest. And given their manifold attractions – the villages stone-built in hues of honey and silver, the gabled towns with their ancient market houses, upmarket delicatessens and creakily characterful hotels, the footpaths and bridleways through beechwoods and hidden valleys, the seductively undulating landscape, the rich orange soil, the meadows full of race horses and well-scrubbed sheep – one can only marvel that the hills have not been thoroughly, irretrievably spoiled.

Money has played a huge part in the survival of the Cotswolds as a rural, easy-on-the-eye, timeless piece of Old England. The Romans poured out money on building villas like the splendid specimen at Chedworth, and long, straight roads such as the Fosse Way which connected (and still connects) the Roman towns of Bath and Cirencester with the north Cotswolds. It was money in the form of wool wealth, untold millions of it, that built the golden towns and wonderful churches, the market houses and great field barns of the north Cotswolds in late medieval and Elizabethan days, when Cotswold sheep carried the riches of England around on their backs. And the handsome Palladian mansions that grace the south Gloucestershire hills were built for mill owners with money earned from the spinning mills in the steep valleys below, clothing the workers of the Industrial Revolution at home and abroad.

It is the southernmost sector of the Cotswolds that holds most surprises for visitors. There are few golden stone villages here. The limestone is hard and white, the landscape far steeper and deeper than the rolling countryside usually associated with the Cotswolds. Head east from the M5 at Junctions 14 or 13, and you’ll find yourself deep in proper south Cotswold country. Along the nape of the hills runs the Cotswold Way long-distance path, a superb grandstand from which to see and get to know the area. The vast Iron Age hill fort of Uley Bury crowns its hilltop, and nearby you’ll discover secret valleys where wonderful old houses lie – the delectable silver stone Tudor manor house of Owlpen, the eerie abandoned shell of the huge Gothic pile of Woodchester Mansion. Rivers rush through the narrow valleys, and it was the power of these swift streams to turn waterwheels and power looms that saw great mills, palaces of industry, sited in the Golden Valley and other clefts near the industrial centre of Stroud. Some of the mills, such as Longford’s Mill off the Avening-Minchinhampton road, have been converted at vast expense into complexes of houses and flats; others stand magnificent and empty among the ferns and mosses of their damp, dark valleys.

Up above these hidden valleys the rich brown fields of the south Cotswold landscape can appear almost flat. Here stands the market town of Tetbury, one of the true gems of the area, its wheel of streets revolving around the hub of the old Market House. Long Street in particular is a delight, lined with crooked, honey-coloured buildings such as Porch House with its goblin gables and leaning walls. North of Tetbury, the narrow streets of the hilltop village of Minchinhampton lead to a triangular market square and a church with a curious waisted spire. The late 17^th-century Market Hall and the dignified old merchants’ houses bear witness to how wool brought prosperity to south Cotswold villages. Social cachet is not the sole preserve of the north Cotswolds: both Prince Charles’s Highgrove House and Princess Anne’s Gatcombe Park lie here in the south of the region.

This area is a celebrated centre for the breeding and training of race horses. Kim Bailey, trainer of Cheltenham Gold Cup, Grand National and Champion Hurdle winners, runs his training stable at Thorndale Farm near Andoversford. ‘I love showing people around here,’ he declares, ‘it’s just so bloody beautiful.’ What is the magical attraction of racing, in a nutshell? ‘Oh, it’s very addictive. You’ve got to have a dream in life, and this is it. The Gold Cup is the pinnacle. Winning it with Master Oats in 1995 was one of the greatest moments of my life, something that no-one can ever take away from me. Quite honestly, if I dropped dead in the winner’s enclosure, I’d die a happy man.’

The A40 separates the south Cotswolds neatly from their northern neighbours. The north Cotswold landscape opens out; the land lightens in colour, widens and develops an ocean-like swell. Hundreds of miles of drystone walls divide the Cotswold fields and line the streets of towns and villages, all needing maintenance, too many of them neglected these days. The craft of stone-walling is still alive and well, though. Keep your eyes open and you’ll see wallers at work, craftspeople such as John Nicholson of the ‘Traditional Boundaries’ company. ‘We give the wall a batter,’ says John, ‘an inward slope towards the top, to let the rain slide off. The walls we build might last for hundreds of years – they’ve found Roman ones down at Chedworth Villa, 2,000 years old.’ Another local waller, Chris Ingles, enjoys coming across odd items left in old sections of wall by previous workers. ‘In one wall we kept finding little round snuff tins every metre or so, about as much as a waller would do in a day, and every sixth or seventh tin would be twice the size – pay day!’

Among the sheep farms and horse paddocks live some of the richest and most famous men and women on earth, secluded among the folded hills and steep little dells of the north Cotswolds. In honeystone villages such as Stanton and Stanway, Snowshill and Broadway, the Guitings and the Slaughters, the lovely old manor houses and the thatched cottages and tithe barns are kept in apple-pie order. Garden trees are topiarised, verges clipped, hedges immaculately laid. Much of the north Cotswold countryside is private park and estate land, very carefully and lovingly maintained. This is the Jilly Cooper face of the Cotswolds (though she, like the Royals, prefers to live in the south Cotswolds), the ‘Rutshire’ region where people are pictured floating in Versace and Aquascutum from one hunt ball and cocktail party to the next, pausing only to ride each other’s horses and partners. Chipping Campden is the archetypal north Cotswolds market town, where deep gold houses crouch under their thatched roofs, dormer windows with stone mullions peeping out like sleepy eyes under straw fringes, the High Street lined with little old shops, steep gables, pillars and porticos.

In the village of Dorn out at the northern edge of the Cotswolds, beyond the town of Moreton-in-Marsh with its wide sheep-straggle street, Sarah and Simon Righton run their exemplary Old Farm, a welcoming place of Gloucester Old Spot pigs and big sleepy Charolais cows, of lambs and dogs, with a thriving B&B business and a farm shop stuffed with their own free-range produce. ‘There’s a satisfaction to doing it the proper way,’ notes Sarah, ‘selling what we’ve produced ourselves to people who like to see where it came from.’ And Simon concurs: ‘My family have had this farm since the 1930s. My children can run about in the open air and socialise with our guests. The Cotswolds may be about tourism, and we benefit from that ourselves. But this area’s not all about tourism. We belong here – and we wouldn’t live and work anywhere else.’

Tucked down in a hidden valley south of Stroud, Woodchester Mansion is eerie and magical. This never-completed masterpiece of Victorian extravagance features stairs that go nowhere, doors that lead to nothing, and a wealth of ornamental stone carving. For details of open days, visit www.the-mansion.co.uk.

The Rollright Stones lie near Long Compton at the north-east edge of the Cotswolds. Legends say of the 4,500-year-old stone circle and the even more ancient tomb nearby that they are knights enchanted by a witch. Don’t visit at midnight if you value your life and your sanity … !

Britain’s most famous river starts life as a trickle, its source marked by an inscribed marble slab in a field near the Thames Head Inn on the Fosse Way between Cirencester and Tetbury. Gazing at the spring, it’s hard to imagine the mighty tideway that surges through London to the North Sea nearly 200 hundred miles away.

‘We’re very old-fashioned,’ twinkles brewery manager Valentine Teal, ‘and we like it that way.’ Donnington Brewery (www.donnington-brewery.com) with its swan-haunted pond is picture-perfect, and its superb bitter is drunk only locally – its 15 pubs are sited where a horse-drawn dray could reach them and return to the brewery in one day.

A tangle of lanes north of the Cheltenham to Stow-on-the-Wold road leads eventually to Guiting (pronounced ‘Gigh-ting’) Power. The houses of Guiting Power are of deep gold stone. The Norman church of St Michael sits on the ridge, while the houses dip to the village square with its post office-cum-teashop and village bakery – a rarity these days. Guiting Power boasts two pubs, the Farmer’s Arms (Donnington’s ales; see Secret Cotswolds) and the Hollow Bottom, a characterful horse-racing mecca.

Three miles south of Broadway lies one of the north Cotswolds’ most beautiful villages, Snowshill. The village street dips steeply downhill beside a stepped wall into the valley bottom, where the Snowshill Arms (another Donnington’s pub) welcomes all comers. In the heart of the village stands Snowshill Manor (www.nationaltrust.org.uk/snowshillmanor), an Elizabethan manor house in lovely gardens laid out in the 1920s. Just east of the village the hilltop is purple and fragrant in summer with lavender, grown in ridge-and-furrow fields.

The South Cotswold village of Bisley, hidden away in its valley just north of the A419 Stroud-Cirencester road, forms a tight huddle of beautiful stone houses under the guardian eye of the church of All Saints with its high rocket of a spire. The village school thrives, as do the village’s two pubs – the Stirrup Cup (dogs and walkers welcome), and the cosy Bear Inn with its asymmetrical rooms and log fire. Near the Bear stands the old village lock-up, just in case anyone has one over the eight.

23, Long Street, Tetbury, Glos GL8 8AA

From £69 double B&B

Tel: 01666-505690

www.theormond.co.uk

The Ormond at Tetbury sits snug and discreet in the town’s most charming, be-gabled street, right opposite Prince Charles’s Highgrove shop. A very pleasing sense of quiet, relaxed style pervades the whole hotel. Rooms are done out individually, and range from a four-poster with traditional ruched curtains to a more modern Scandinavian-style simplicity. The Ormond has recently picked up a Cotswold Life Food & Drinks Award 2008, and this seal of approval by local judges tells you all you need to know about the catering standards here. The menu is long on beef from the Prince’s Duchy organic farm via the local butcher, local duck and game, Cotswold cheeses, and bread made with locally ground organic flour. Cream teas await hungry walkers in mid-afternoon. Add pleasant, polite staff and a good range of locally brewed beers, and you’d search in vain to find a better Cotswold bolt-hole.

Camping Field,

Old Farm, Dorn, Moreton-in-Marsh, Glos GL56 9NS

From £7 a night, caravan or tent

Tel: 01608-650394

www.oldfarmdorn.co.uk

Canvas and caravans are both welcome; you can cook up a storm, too, with the Farm Shop’s own home-produced meat and other very local produce.

Lords of the Manor,

Upper Slaughter, near Bourton-on-the-Water, Glos GL54 2JD

From £191 double B&B

Tel: 01451-820243

www.lordsofthemanor.com

No piped music, no sharp edges to life in this former Rectory: just peace, quiet, luxury and escapism.

If you only do one thing …

• … watch the lambs being born at Cotswold Farm Park (www.cotswoldfarmpark.co.uk) near Stow-on-the-Wold. See the ewes give birth, bottle-feed and cuddle lambs – irresistible!
• … take a stroll along the Cotswold Way in Cranham Wood (off A46, 7 miles south of Cheltenham) – one of the best bluebell woods in the Cotswolds.
• … enjoy one of the special Events Days at the National Aboretum, Westonbirt (www.forestry.gov.uk/westonbirt), near Tetbury – a wonderful display of spring flowers and blossom.
• … buy fresh local produce at Tetbury Farmer’s Market in the 17^th-century Market House (9-1, first Friday every month), and local crafts and organic produce at the Highgrove shop in Long Street (www.highgroveshop.com).
• … go racing. The Cheltenham Festival (www.cheltenhamfestival2009.co.uk; 10-13 March 2009) is the biggest event in the British horse racing calendar, with the Cheltenham Gold Cup the pinnacle of the sport. If you just have to have a race horse yourself, contact Kim Bailey Racing (www.kimbaileyracing.com).
• … make a splash at the Cotswold Water Park (www.waterpark.org.uk) as you fish, sail, watch birds, canoe, go wakeboarding and water skiing, and much more.

A blowy Sunday morning in westernmost Pembrokeshire after a week of grey, horizontal weather – and boy, were we keen to see the sun. When the clouds began to shred away off the moor tops and the hint of a tint of blue shone through, we were out of our holiday cottage and down in St David's before you could blink.

St David's is one of those neat little towns you don't want to leave in a hurry. We slipped into the Cathedral between Holy Communion and Parish Eucharist to admire the beautiful Norman pillars of purple slate, the chisel marks of the masons still plain beneath the patina of 800 years' smoothing by hands, backs and shoulders. I ducked into the choir to indulge my passion for medieval misericord carvings. There were some beauties, including two very fine leafy Green Men, a curly dragon, and a crafty fox in a clerical cowl preaching to some trusting inhabitants of the farmyard. The light was low and muted in the church, built deep in a hollow so that – legend says – marauding Vikings might pass by without suspecting it was there.

We caught the little Celtic Coaster bus and went rattling down the twisting, high-banked lane to St Justinian's. From the cliff we gazed across the mile-wide strip of Ramsey Sound to the twin peaks of Ramsey Island RSPB Reserve. The solitary farmhouse stood above the landing slip, a tiny gleaming cube of white. Here was a pure drop of nostalgia for me. Twenty years ago I had waited on this cliff above the cream-and-crimson corrugated tin shed of the lifeboat, looking out to the ferocious tide-rips of Ramsey Sound through which a rubber boat was bouncing and smacking its way towards me. It had been a bumpy and spray-drenched old journey to the island, and a strangely enthusiastic welcome on arrival. I soon found out why – I had arrived just in time for the annual sheep shearing, and Ramsey was short-staffed.

What a hell of a weekend that turned out to be. Ramsey back then had been privately owned, under covenant of the National Trust, and its flock of sheep had been let run completely wild. Six of us, "assisted" by a half-trained pup called Spot, set out to gather them off the hills and slippery cliffs of the two-mile-long island. The tough guys sheared them in the stuffy shed, between glugs of beer and puffs of tobacco. I was appointed tallyman/door wallah, and scored a mark in purple wax crayon on the shed wall for each bucking, tittuping beast that sprang past me from the hands of the shearers. By the end of the day there were 198 strokes on the shed wall. I have never been sworn and shouted at so much, laughed so hard or ended the day in such a drunken daze of exhaustion and triumph. Sheer anarchic magic.

Holidaymakers who had booked a boat trip round the island were waiting at the lifeboat shed today, staring across the white horses of Ramsey Sound and cracking nervous jokes about losing their breakfast. Jane and I, turning along the cliff path where the wind was shaking the clumps of thrift and toadflax, felt glad to be keeping to terra firma. Sea wind is a constant here on the coast of Pembrokeshire, streaming the hedges of sea buckthorn inland and sculpting the gorse sprigs into rounded yellow clubs. The sharply canted cliffs fell away to the waves in weather-smoothed flanks of green and mauve, and a sparrowhawk hung in the wind a few feet above our craning faces.

Looking ahead into the long curve of Whitesands Bay, we saw the sands between the rocky headlands of Point St John and St David's Head covered in short figures, most of them in suits of black, running, screaming and leaping. It looked like a painting by LS Lowry with added glee. Down on the beach we discovered it was Young Life-Savers Day. In spite of the barking instructors and their gung-ho exhortations, most of the wet-suited youngsters looked as though what they were out for was a good splash in the pounding surf.

Among the dunes lay a humpy green mound, all that remains of the little Chapel of St Patrick where newly landed seafarers of the Dark Ages would kneel and give thanks for deliverance from the dangers of the twin headlands. Others, outward bound, would pray before embarkation for the saint's protection amid the hazards of the sea. St Patrick was felt likely to lend a sympathetic ear, since stories said that it was from Whitesands Bay that he himself had set sail in AD432 to bring the Word across the sea to the heathen Irish.

Did the great patron saints of Ireland and Wales, Patrick and David, ever meet each other on Ramsey Island, as other tales tell? Certainly the rugged island had its own macho 5th-century saint in the person of Justinian, a nobly-born Breton both misogynistic and imperious, who expelled two holy women from Ramsey so that he could live there, and so infuriated his own monks that they cut his head off. Nothing daunted, Justinian marched across the Sound to his burial place on the mainland with his head under his arm. They seem to have made them tough back then.

Out on the windy extremity of St David's Head we passed through the double wall of Clawdd-y-Milwyr, the Warrior's Dyke, built 15 feet high by the Iron Age farmers who lived out here behind this formidable barrier. Who was it that they feared so greatly? Now their great wall lies less than man height, scattered and tumbled among blue feathery buttons of scabious and white bells of sea campion. Nearby along the cliff path loomed Arthur's Quoit, a giant stone slab propped up by a slender upright. Our ancestors raised it as the capstone of a kingly tomb nearly 6,000 years ago. Or was it mighty Arthur, hero-giant of Welsh folklore, who hurled it here from Moelfre Hill? The head urges one story, the heart another, when one walks these rocky moors and cliffs so drenched in the mythological past.

The clink of rock-climbing harness recalled us to the practical present as a breath of warm sunlight stole along the coast. Climbers were inching their way down to the rocks of Ogof Coetan, the Cave of the Quoit, where the waves leapt fitfully and tongues of foam came licking up at the adventurers. Jane and I moved on along the path, threading our way through beautiful coastal heath of gorse and heather whose topmost sprigs held black-capped and russet-breasted stonechats. Time for a little climbing on our own account.

By tip of boot and finger we scrambled up the 600ft volcanic tor of Carn Llidi. Little children in shorts and trainers were prancing around the summit like mountain goats. Down below lay Whitesands Bay, a crescent of sand where lines of surf were creaming. Out at sea, gathering clouds hid the horizon. Here on Carn Llidi, Patrick the Welsh-born shepherd once stood, gazing west to where the pale blue peaks of Wicklow pierced the skyline a hundred miles off. There was no chance of seeing them this day. But the thought of them made me smile as we picked our way back down to the seashore once more.

Stepping out

Maps
OS 1:25,000 Explorer OL35, 1:50,000 Landranger 157

Travel
By train (www.thetrainline.com) or coach (www.nationalexpress.com) to Haverfordwest; bus 411 (www.pembrokeshire.gov.uk/coastbus) to St David's. Celtic Coaster bus (service 403, operates March-September) between St David's, St Justinian's and Whitesands Bay.

By car
M4, A48, A40 to Haverfordwest; A487 to St David's; minor road signposted to St Justinian's.

Walk directions
From St Justinian's car park (OS ref SM724252), walk down lane towards sea and turn right along Pembrokeshire Coast Path National Trail (signed with fingerposts and acorn symbols) for four miles via Whitesands Bay (734272), St David's Head (722279) and Arthur's Quoit (725281) to reach a short fingerpost (736287 – acorn symbols and ''YHA'') just before a stonewalled enclosure. Follow YHA up to right; in 100 yards bear left to follow broad grass track uphill with twin hump of Carn Llidi on your right. At saddle (739283 approx.), right along track to scramble up to summit of Carn Llidi (738280). Continue across two crests, descending by rock scramble to lower of two concrete wartime emplacements below Carn Llidi Bychan (735279). Turn left down path past Upper Porthmawr farm (737276) to reach Whitesands Bay car park (734272).

Length
5½ miles (7½ to return to St Justinian's via coast path)

Conditions
Some cliff-top stretches are narrow, other parts rocky underfoot. Climb to top of Carn Llidi involves a little scrambling. Wear walking trainers/boots.

Refreshments
Café and public loos at Whitesands Bay; Old Cross Hotel, St David's (01437 720394, www.oldcrosshotel.co.uk)

Accommodation
Old Cross Hotel, St David's (see above); www.welsh-cottages.co.uk for holiday lets.

Information
Tourist Information Centre, The Grove, St David's (01437 720392, www.visitpembrokeshire.com)

Everyone is walking these days, all over the world. Travel has never been easier; guided walks, and the companies that offer them, have never been so thick on the ground. Who doesn’t know someone who’s hiked to Machu Picchu, or climbed Mount Kilimanjaro, or gone trekking in the Himalayas? And yet some of the best walking in the world lies right on our doorstep in these fortunate isles where fantastically rich and varied geology, history, wildlife and humanity jostle for a walker’s attention at every step.

Right now is a brilliant time to be slipping on the trail sandals or lacing up the hiking boots. In Britain the colours are on the turn, the hedges are full of blackberries at their sweetest, and after the miserable summer we’ve endured the Clerk of the Weather seems set to compensate us with a fine Indian summer of an autumn. Further and higher afield the snows have yet to hit the mountains, and the big chill is still a month or two away. School children are back at the chalk-face, too, so good deals are on the table, the cliffs and beaches are emptying and the upland tracks are losing their hiking crowds.

It doesn’t matter where you are in the world: walking is the way to go. It’s clean and green, of course (or it should be, if you plan your own trip or go with a reputable company such as those recommended below). But more than that – it’s the best, in fact the only way to get at the heart and soul of a landscape. Fly, sail or drive it, train it or bus it or bike it: you won’t touch it as you could and should. On foot you talk to people at human pace in their own valley or on their native hillside. You not only see the wayside flower, the bird over the crags, the ruin on the promontory; you stop and look, you turn aside and scramble up to explore, to savour and to understand. In a world turning more and more virtual, homogenized and sanitized, walking is the true and only way to catch the unbeatable magic of strong and sometimes scary challenge, of meeting and communicating with real people in their everyday setting, of intense experience pouring in through all five senses at full stretch.

Here is my personal selection of 50 of the world’s great walks. Some are short, some are long. There are easy strolls and demanding hikes; walks way out in the wide blue yonder, and walks very near to home.

Enjoy them to the hilt!

1. England

Landslips have made Lyme Regis’s Undercliff uninhabitable – to humans. The narrow path threads England’s own untouched ‘rainforest’ landscape.

• Lyme Regis to Axbridge, Dorset/Devon border
• 3 hours
• Narrow woodland path – no escape routes
• Easy grade
• Nightingales, spring flowers, solitude, spectacular landslips
• www.jurassiccoast.com ; OS Explorer 116

2. England

Follow the Peter Scott Walk for 11 miles round the margins of The Wash estuary to King’s Lynn, savouring the remote marsh landscape.

• Sutton Bridge, Lincolnshire/Norfolk border
• 4-5 hours
• Flat sea wall
• Easy grade
• Huge skies, vast numbers of geese in winter
• King’s Lynn TIC (01553-763044; www.visitwestnorfolk.com); OS Explorer 249

3. England

In Upper Teesdale a delicate post-Ice Age flora is miraculously preserved along the Pennine Way beside the brawling River Tees.

• Langdon Beck, Co. Durham/Cumbria border
• 4-5 hours
• Meadow and moorland paths
• Moderate grade
• Spring gentians, bird’s-eye primroses, Teesdale violets, nesting redshank and lapwing
• http://www.ecn.ac.uk/sites/moorh.html; www.naturalengland.org.uk; OS Explorer OL31

4. England

A strenuous walk in wild Eskdale, least frequented corner of Lakeland, climbing to a stunning 360º prospect from Bow Fell.

• Brotherilkeld Farm, Eskdale, Cumbria
• 6-7 hours
• Rough, stony and steep
• Hard grade
• Rock, water, wind, sky
• Bk 4, A Pictorial Guide to the Lakeland Fells by A. Wainwright (Frances Lincoln, www.franceslincoln.com); OS Explorer OL6

5. North Wales

Around the tip of the Llŷn Peninsula. St Mary’s holy well in the cliffs overlooks turbulent Bardsey Sound and Bardsey island.

• Aberdaron, Gwynedd
• 6 hours
• Cliff and moor paths
• Grade: Moderate grade
• Spectacular cliffs, St Mary’s Well (OS ref 138252), views of Bardsey
• www.edgeofwaleswalk.co.uk; OS Explorer 253

6. Scotland

In the tumbled back country of Inverpolly, a boggy moor path and a scramble up the leonine mountain of Suilven.

• Lochinver, NW Highlands
• 8-9 hrs
• Moorland track, bog, steep climb, some scrambling
• Hard grade
• Glorious empty wilderness, golden eagles and otters, climbing Suilven
• http://www.walkhighlands.co.uk/ullapool/suilven.shtml; OS Explorer 442

7. Shetland

The most northerly place in Britain. Wind-blown, lonely and breathtaking.

• Burrafirth, Isle of Unst
• 3 hours
• Hill track, exposed moorland
• Moderate grade
• Nesting (NB – and aggressive!) great skuas, puffins, wild coast scenery, Britain’s Most Northerly Point
• www.unst.org ; OS Explorer 470

8. Northern Ireland

To the 573 m. summit of Slieve Gullion, County Armagh’s beautiful gorse-yellow mountain.

• Slieve Gullion Courtyard Centre, Co. Armagh
• 4 hours
• Forest, then rubbly mountain tracks
• Moderate grade
• Stunning views, legends of Fionn MacCumhaill, Stone Age chambered tombs
• www.newryandmourne.gov.uk/tourism/activities/walking/slievegullion; OSNI Discoverer 29

9. Republic of Ireland

A challenging 30-mile-in-a-day hike through the uninhabited mountain range of Nephin Beg, along the waymarked Bangor Trail.

• Bangor Erris to Newport, Co. Mayo
• A very long day,
• Rough, wet, boggy, steep in places
• Hard grade
• Utter silence and isolation, wild mountains
• http://mountainviews.ie/mv/index.php?walk=56; OSI Discovery 23, 31

10. Republic of Ireland

A Dingle Peninsula delight – stroll down the 8-mile beach of the Maharees sandspit beside Brandon Bay, with Brandon Mountain as a backdrop.

• Fahamore, near Castlegregory, Co. Kerry
• 3 hours
• Firm sandy beach
• Easy grade
• Superb sandy beach walking; views of Mount Brandon
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maharees; OSI Discovery 70, 71

11. Channel Islands

Strange rock shapes, pinnacle and spires emerge at low tide off Jersey. Walk out to 18^th-century Seymour Tower – but watch the tides!

• La Rocque, Jersey
• 2-3 hours
• Flat sand
• Easy grade
• Weird rock formations, rock-pool wildlife, sea-surrounded Seymour Tower
• http://www.thisisjersey.com/community/history-heritage/violet-bank/; OS Leisure Map of Jersey

12. France

Poignant walks along the front lines of the Battle of the Somme. How and where (but not why) 300,000 men lost their lives.

• Near Peronne
• 4 days of different walks
• Field paths, tracks
• Easy grade
• Expert commentary, battlefields, WWI memorials and cemeteries
• www.holts.co.uk

13. Portugal

The Alentejo region of Portugal, facing the Atlantic, has bracing salt breezes, flower-spattered fields and long uncluttered beaches.

• Around Porto Covo or Vila Nova de Milfontes
• As long or short as you like
• Long open beaches
• Easy grade
• Peach Tree Island Beach, Zambujeira do Mar and its cliffs, Odeceixe, lagoons of São André and many more
• www.infohub.com

14. Spain

From the high-perched monastery of Monserrat with its many art treasures, steeply up to a vast view among sculptural rock pinnacles.

• Monserrat
• 3-4 hours
• Rugged path; 1300+ upward steps
• Moderate grade
• Monserrat monastery, funicular railway, wild flowers, summit pinnacles
• www.abadiamontserrat.net; www.sunflowerbooks.co.uk (Walk 3 in Sunflower Landscapes: Costa Brava)

15. Belgium

Autumn is the season to hike in the extensive, wild and gorgeous forests of the Ardennes region, changing colour day by day.

• Around La Roche
• From gentle morning walks to all-day or longer hikes
• Forest tracks
• Easy/moderate grade
• Beauty of the forest in autumn, unfrequented tracks
• www.walkingworld.com; www.europaventure.be

16. Germany

Cross the tidal flats of Langeoog island in your bare feet at low tide, with cold black mud squidging between your toes. Child-like glee is guaranteed.

• Langeoog, Friesian Islands
• 2 hours
• Mud flats
• Easy grade
• Wild birds, wild coast, and mud up to your knees
• www.langeoog.de; www.segelschule-langeoog.de

17. Sweden

When General Winter invades Stockholm, the city’s waterways freeze. Stroll through snowbound streets and parks, then out across the canals and sea inlets.

• Stockholm
• Half a winter’s day
• Ice
• Easy grade
• Attractions: Stockholm under snow, thrill of ice walking
• www.stockholmtown.com

18. Faroe Islands

The Faroes are other-worldly, fabulously remote in the North Atlantic. Farmer Rasmus Skorheim of Eysturoy island takes guests up the hills to mindblowing viewpoints.

• Rasmus Skorheim’s farm, Selatrað, Eysturoy
• Time taken: 1 hour or more
• Terrain: Steep, grassy slopes
• Grade: Easy/moderate/hard
• Attractions: Rocks, water, wind, rainbows, sea and seabirds
• Details: www.visitesturoy.fo

19. Eastern Hungary

A September stroll across grassy plains among acrobatic horsemen and traditional shepherds. From the viewing tower near Tiszacsege, marvel at the evening flight of thousands of cranes.

• Hortobagy National Park
• A few hours
• Grassy plain
• Easy grade
• Open plain, traditional farming, flighting cranes
• www.hnp.hu

20. Slovakia

The High Tatras are full of champagne air, waymarked walks from gentle to very serious, and jaw-dropping views.

• Poprad, High Tatras National Park
• Several waymarked, all-day mountain walks
• Rugged mountains
• Moderate/hard grade
• Attractions: Towering mountain walls, flowery upland meadows, bracing clean air
• www.tanap.sk

21. Switzerland

A winter wonderland walk to deep-frozen Oeschinensee among towering, snow-capped Alps; then warm up with hot chocolate in the lake restaurant.

• Kandersteg, Bernese Oberland
• Half a day
• Forest and mountain paths
• Easy grade
• Ski-lift ride, frozen lake, high mountain views
• www.inntravel.co.uk

22. Austria

Along a peachy section of the Adlerweg or Eagle’s Way, a spectacular 175-mile hike through the Austrian Tirol.

• Karwendelhaus near Innsbruck, to Lamsenjochhütte above the Achensee
• 2 days
• Rubbly mountain paths
• Moderate/hard grade
• Stunning mountains, a night in the Falkenhütte mountain inn
• www.tyrol.com; www.adlerweg.tirol.at

23. Slovenia

Ascending Slovenia’s highest mountain, three-headed Triglav (2,864 m), is one of the great delights of walking the beautiful Julian Alps.

• Start from Pokljuka plateau near Bled
• 2-3 days (1-2 nights in mountain inns)
• Rough mountain paths, steep in places; sections of via ferrata
• Hard grade
• Majestic Julian Alps scenery, topping out on Triglav, Seven Lakes Valley
• Guides, info – ProMontana & Lifetrek Outdoor Agency (tel 0386-4-578-0662 or 0386-(0)4-177-0823; info@life-trek.com; www.promontana.si)

24. Italy

From coastal Amalfi, climb stepped paths through sweet pepper and nut tree gardens to Pontone, high overhead, with sensational views over Amalfi.

• Amalfi
• 4 hours
• Steep steps, field paths
• Moderate
• Stepped paths, traditional gardens, mountain and sea views
• www.sunflowerbooks.co.uk – Walks 6, 12 and 16, Landscapes of Sorrento and the Amalfi Coast by Julian Tippett

25. Corsica

GR20 is just about the toughest of the Grands Randonées, traversing the very rugged and mountainous backbone of Corsica amid spectacular scenery.

• Start at Calenzana, near Calvi
• 15 days
• Rubbly mountain tracks
• Hard grade
• Rugged mountains and gorges, pine forests
• www.sherpa-walking-holidays.co.uk

26. Tuscan Archipelago, Italy

The isles of Elba, Capraia, Pianosa, Giglio and Giannutri – wandering their winding paths through herb scrub is a rare delight.

• Ferries from Elba to Capraia and Pianosa; Porto Santo Stefano to Giglio and Giannutri
• Time taken: From 1 hour or longer
• Terrain: Hilly tracks
• Easy/moderate grade
• Attractions: Fragrant macchia scrub, tiny traditional villages, few other walkers
• Details: www.elbapromotion.it

27. Sicily

When it’s hot, hot, hot in Sicily, make for the cool beech forests, wildflower meadows and lakes of Nebrodi National Park, with Mount Etna rising majestically beyond.

• Start from Portella Calacudera, between Cesaro and San Fratello
• 5-6 hours
• Forest tracks
• Moderate grade
• Beech forests, ancient trees, flowery meadows, lakes
• www.nozio.com ; www.sunflowerbooks.co.uk (Walk 15, ‘Monte Soro and the Lago Biviere’, in Landscapes of Sicily by Peter Amann)

28. Gozo

Malta’s ‘little sister’ island tempts walkers with its network of field tracks through herb scrub, all leading to stunning cliffs, wave-cut arches and tiny stone-built villages.

• All over Gozo
• Variable
• Stony, uneven
• Easy/moderate grade
• Walled field tracks, salt pans, strange weathered rock formations
• www.breakaway-adventures.com

29. Crete

The south-west is a flowery paradise in spring. Walk an early-day circuit from roadless Loutro up the mountain to Anopolis, returning down the awe-inspiring Aradena Gorge.

• Loutro, near Chora Sphakion
• 5-6 hours
• Steep, rubbly paths
• Hard grade
• Spectacular flowers, yoghurt for breakfast in Anopolis, tricky but exciting gorge descent
• www.west-crete.com

30. Tenerife, Canary Islands

Tenerife offers all grades and kinds of walking. The Masca Gorge, a wonderful and gasp-inducing descent to a beach, is one of the finest.

• Start at Masca; return by ferry to Los Gigantes, bus to Masca
• 3-4 hours
• Descent by steps, boulders and rubble
• Hard grade
• Spectacular gorge, pools, flowers
• www.gaiatours.es

31. El Hierro, Canary Islands

Up in the misty forests of El Julan, beyond the chapel of Virgen de Los Reyes, walk through groves of sabines – twisted, ancient junipers, bent to the earth like sorrowing women.

• Parque Natural de El Hierro
• 1-2 hours
• Rocky paths
• Easy grade
• Ancient sabines, mountain ridge views
• www.elhierro.es; www.sunflowerbooks.co.uk (Landscapes of La Palma and El Hierro by Noel Rochford – see Amazon); www.spain.info

32. Madeira

Madeira’s famous and scary levadas (irrigation channels) traverse tunnels, ledges and waterfalls, with immense drops only a step away.

• Ribeiro Frio to Portela
• 3-4 hours
• Extremely narrow path – not for vertigo sufferers
• Easy grade
• Spectacular mountain scenery, thrill of the narrow path
• www.sunflowerbooks.co.uk (Walk 27 in Landscapes of Madeira by John and Pat Underwood)

33. Porto Santo, Madeira

A dry volcanic island with splendid peaks. Waymarked track leads from pass under Pico de Cabrito to the summit of Pico Branco and to Terra Cha viewpoint.

• 3 hours, there and back
• Steep, dusty, hot
• Moderate/hard grade
• Grandeur of peaks, stunning sea and island views
• http://www.madeira-web.com/PagesUK/p-santo.php

34. Jamaica

Learn bush lore and medicine on a guided hike in the beautiful Blue Mountains of Jamaica as you walk the Vinegar Hill Trail and climb jungly Mount Horeb.

• Many tracks start at Newcastle; enquire locally
• All day
• Jungle tracks, dirt roads
• Easy/moderate/hard
• Unspoiled jungle, sensational views, seldom-heard folklore
• www.great-adventures.com;
• http://www.silver-sands.com/blue_mountains_tour.html

35. British Columbia, Canada

The 47-mile West Coast Trail is a tough but amazing way to see the coast of British Columbia; a satisfying, challenging walk in a very wild place.

• Bamfield to Port Renfrew
• 5 days, camping out
• Muddy, often slippery trail; some tidal crossings
• Hard grade
• Bald eagles, whales, seals, sea lions and black bears, ancient forests, huge mountain views; occasional wolves and cougars
• http://www.pc.gc.ca/pn-np/bc/pacificrim/index_E.asp

36. Ontario, Canada

The Bruce Peninsula sticks out 50 miles into Lake Huron. Self-guided hikes in this wild, natural and rugged National Park, from easy to challenging.

• Bruce Peninsula National Park, Tobermory
• From 1 hour to all day
• Limestone paths, lakes, forest
• Easy to hard grades
• Forests, clear lakes, bears, orchids, red squirrels
• Details: http://www.pc.gc.ca/pn-np/on/bruce/activ/activ1_e.asp#hiking

37. Grand Canyon, Arizona

Hike down to a campground 3,000 feet below, descend sheer cliffs, leap off ledges into rapids, swim in turquoise pools – all in remote side clefts of the Grand Canyon.

• Hualapai and Havasu Canyon
• 3 days hike, 2 nights camping
• Day 1 – steep stony paths; Day 2 – scrambling, jumping, swimming
• Hard grade
• Sensational Grand Canyon views, walking 3,000 feet below the desert, flowers and blue pools, adventure and challenge all the way
• www.aoa-adventures.com

38. Mexico

You drop 1,500 m. to the tropical floor of the vast, little-known Copper Canyon where oranges and avocados grow. A walk through a strange lost world.

• Start at Areponapuchi, on railway between Chihuahua and Los Mochis
• 7 days
• forest, mountain and ravine
• Moderate/hard grade
• Oakwood forests, tropical depths, breathtaking canyon views
• www.himalayankingdoms.com (NB – new trek: call 01453-844400 for details)

39. Peru

Machu Picchu is famous, and crowded. The White Rock Trek is something else – a head-spinning trail through dramatic mountains to the remote Inca ceremonial site of Choquequirao.

• Vitcos, High Andes
• 11 days trekking
• Steep mountains and valleys
• Hard grade
• Inca remains, spectacular mountain views, taking the road rarely travelled
• www.himalayankingdoms.com

40. Patagonia, Chile

From grass path walking to mountain tracks, jaw-dropping views and pristine environment are guaranteed in this region of glacial lakes and towering rock spires.

• Torres del Paine National Park
• Treks from 1 day to several days
• Grassy pampas, lakeside paths, mountain tracks
• Easy to hard grade – your choice!
• Sensational unspoilt crags, grassy pampas and lakes
• www.journeylatinamerica.co.uk

41. Ghana

Walk through the rainforest canopy (superb butterflies, monkeys, birds – go at 7 a.m. to avoid the crowds); then hike at ground level to learn forest lore and medicine.

• Kakum National Park, near Cape Coast
• Half a day
• Narrow aerial walkway (it sways!), then forest tracks
• Easy grade
• Intimate view of rainforest from up above and down below
• http://wikitravel.org/en/Kakum_National_Park

42. South Africa

Everyone sees it from the city, and many set out to climb it – Table Mountain, symbol and icon of Cape Town. A hot, demanding hike; a mind-boggling view from the top.

• Lower to Upper Cableway Station
• 1-3 hours
• Stony, steep path
• Hard grade
• Narrow Platteklip Gorge, sensational views over Cape Town
• http://www.tablemountain.net/visitor_info/hiking.html

43. Tajikistan

A never-to-be-forgotten trek to the Fann Mountains on the Uzbekistani border, among people who rarely see a stranger, let alone a western tourist.

• Fann Mountains
• 2 weeks
• Harsh mountains
• Hard grade
• Turquoise jewel of Alauddin Lake, remote mountains of stunning beauty
• www.steppestravel.co.uk

44. Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan

Through the majestic Tien Shan Mountains of Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, high and remote country amid mind-bending mountain scenery.

• Start at Almaty
• 16 days trekking
• Tough mountain paths
• Hard grade
• Glaciers, gorges, high passes, snowy peaks, very few fellow walkers
• www.explore.co.uk ; www.steppestravel.co.uk

45. North India

A journey as much spiritual as physical, through lush green hills to Hindu devotions at Gangotri, the sacred source of the Ganges, among dramatic Himalayan mountains

• Garhwal Himalaya
• 10 days trek
• Forest and mountain paths
• Hard grade
• Source of the Ganges, breathtaking mountains, terraced hills and forests
• www.himalayankingdoms.com

46. South India

Every 14^th January, a male pilgrimage from the Pamba River to worship Lord Ayyappa in the mountain temple of Sabarimala. Male strangers are welcome.

• Sabarimala, near Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala
• 6-7 hours
• Steep, dusty jungle track
• Grade: Moderate/hard grade
• Fellow pilgrims, Pampa River bathing scenes, devotional activities, Sabarimala temple
• www.cyberkerala.com/sabarimala

47. Cambodia

Five days on foot and by transport (including boats), introducing you to north-east Cambodia in a series of easy-paced walks.

• Start at Ratanakiri
• 5 days of gentle walks
• Lakeside, jungle and hill paths
• Easy/moderate grade
• Elephants, exotic birds, hill villages, Angkor Wat, boat trips
• www.himalayankingdoms.com

48. Northern Territory, Australia

Circle Uluru (Ayers Rock), the gigantic whaleback of sandstone rock, in the dawn hush, and watch as the rising sun makes it glow fiery orange, as if from within.

• Uluru
• 3-5 hours
• Flat desert
• Easy grade
• Magic of the dawn glow, Aboriginal tales and outback lore
• www.ecotours.com.au, www.deh.gov.au/parks/uluru

49. Queensland, Australia

The Thorsborne Trail threads the preserved rainforest of Hinchinbrooke Island, a tough, magical hike punctuated by beachside camping and waterfall swims.

• Hinchinbrooke Island
• 4 days, with 3 nights camping
• Bush and mountain trail, steep in places
• Hard grade
• Wildlife from crocs to lizards, waterhole swimming, isolation
• http://www.epa.qld.gov.au/projects/park/index.cgi?parkid=244

50. New Zealand

Fly by helicopter deep into the bush along the twisting Mohaka River; hike and fish for your supper in the trout-filled waters.

• Mohaka River, North Island
• 24 hours
• Forest tracks, river bank, some river walking
• Easy grade
• Lonely forest, spectacular river gorge, wilderness fishing, camping out
• www.chrisjolly.co.nz

* Many thanks to Andy Harrison, Lou Somerville, Doug Clark, Julian Chichester and Hugh Thomson for their help and advice

Cyclamen were glowing pink under the beech trees on Mengore Hill in the mild Slovenian autumn air. But even their beauty, and that of the Soca River seen winding in milky turquoise bends between the mountains of the Julian Alps, could not soften the chill that went through me at first sight of the gun caverns.

Their naked rock mouths, opening like black wounds in the flanks of Mengore, had not healed at all in the 90 years since the horrific fighting of the First World War, when they belched smoke, flame and bullets again and again down the steep slopes of this hill.

"The Italians were up there on the Kolovrat ridge," remarked Edward Granville of Upland Escapes, pointing west to a long green mountain back. "When the fighting started in earnest in 1915 they selected their crack troops, their bersaglieri and alpini mountain fighters, to attack the Austro-Hungarians. But after a year or so they were using pretty much anyone who could be made to go over the top.

There were 11 major Italian offensives on the Soca Front – the Isonzo Front, as the Italians called it – trying to break eastward into Austria, but they never did get through." Edward gestured down the slope. "You can see why." The cause of the Italians' failure to take Mengore Hill was all too obvious. The hill is only a pimple compared with the majestic mountains round about.

But its slopes rise at an angle of 1:2 – in places, far steeper than that. A heavy-laden infantryman with a rifle to encumber him, a frightened young conscript already demoralised by one bloody repulse after another, outlined against snow or pale grass as he stumbled upwards among the decomposing corpses of previous assaults, made an easy target for an experienced machine gunner or sniper securely ensconced in a solid rock cavern high above. Mengore Hill, and the other hills and mountains around it, were like the battlefield of the Somme tilted at 45 degrees. The advantage was all with the dug-in defenders.

Upland Escapes specialises in walking holidays in carefully selected areas that other organisations don't frequent. Generally these settings lack such ferocious and poignant history. The company's Slovenian tour, however, goes right to the heart of the Alpine region contested so bitterly between the Allied forces, represented here by Italy, and the armies of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

In this 90th anniversary year of the last and greatest of the Soca Front battles, Edward had come out to Slovenia to guide me through a stunningly beautiful mountainous landscape, where over 29 months, and on a front less than 50 miles long, more than a million Italians and nearly 700,000 of their opponents – Austrians, Bosnians, Poles, Hungarians and Germans – died or were mutilated for life.

What these enormous armies were doing, entrenched opposite each other along the Soca River mountains only a few hundred feet apart, exactly mirrored the positions of their respective Allies 1,000 miles away on the Western Front in Flanders.

The Italian commander, the stubborn and autocratic General Luigi Cadorna, convinced himself after each catastrophic repulse that the next strong push, if determined enough, would achieve a complete and decisive eastward breakthrough – a "stroll to Vienna" – and victory. The Austro-Hungarian troops held most of the vital high ground and were determined to prevent that breakthrough, while awaiting their own chance to advance westward into the Friulian plain of northern Italy.

The stalemate produced a campaign as bloody and terrible as that on the Western Front, but one which – apart from Ernest Hemingway 's classic and romantic account of it in A Farewell to Arms – has remained all but unknown outside Italy, Austria and Slovenia.

By another row of defensive tunnels beside the path up Mengore Hill, Edward and I found a noticeboard with two faded black-and-white First World War photographs of this same location. The soldiers have built wooden "houses" out from the stark rock of the tunnel mouths; they have knocked up rough benches and tables where they sit amid wild flowers trained up into a tiny garden – touching efforts by lonely men separated from their families to bring a touch of the domestic and familiar into a place of filth, noise and death.

At the top of the hill we came to a chapel. From here Edward pointed out the mountain ridge where a young Erwin Rommel (later to become the famed and feared "Desert Fox" of the Second World War) won the coveted Blue Max decoration, storming the hilltop during the Austro-Hungarians' one great victorious offensive of October 1917.

Before that military triumph broke the stalemate on the Soca, General Cadorna (who never came nearer the front than Udine, nearly 50 miles away) drove and punished his troops with threats, demotions and executions to undertake 11 fruitless and fatal assaults on the impregnable Austro-Hungarian line. I saw more of these fortifications on another climb, this time up the domed hill of Humèiè in the northern sector of the line.

Here in the damp beech woods and autumn crocuses, the black mouths of the gun caves and their connecting tunnels yawned in the impossibly steep slope of a hill where thousands died.

My three-night stay was based at the farm of Vinko and Irena Kranjc in the upland hamlet of Koseè, under the 7,400ft peak of Krn, the highest mountain of the region. Everything you eat and drink is produced by the Kranjc family from their bursting orchards and lush green pastures. Near this homely paradise two contrasting museums filled out the Soca Front picture.

In the neighbouring village of Drenica, Mirko Kurinèiè has spent 40 years filling his attic with items collected from the battlefields. Displayed here in profusion are helmets with bulletholes, spoons and forks, homemade snow shoes, shell caps, diaries discovered under rocks, propaganda postcards ("Is your girl getting off with a spiv back home while you're dying on the Isonzo?"), and chest and groin protectors crudely forged of cast iron.

Very different is the immaculately organised, award-winning museum in the nearby town of Kobarid. A huge scale model of the entire region helps you appreciate the relative positions of the combatant armies.

But it is the contemporary photographs that leave you stunned and silent – Italian corpses contorted by gas attack, zigzag lines of soldiers toiling up snowy slopes, a field hanging of a "coward", bodies stacked like firewood, faces blown apart and crudely reconstructed, a naked man under the knives of bloodied surgeons while a general looks on with a smile of polite inquiry.

Kobarid is known to Italians as Caporetto, a name synonymous with disaster. The two museums furnish facts, figures and images of what happened on October 24, 1917 when the Austro-Hungarians initiated their first and final offensive on the Soca Front. A beautifully restored section of the Italian front-line trenches at Predolina just north of Kobarid gives an idea of the environment in which the young men fought and died.

But I only caught the terror and futility of the battlefield when I climbed with Edward high above Predolina on to the crest of the ridge around which the Austrian advance surged towards the north Italian plain.

The October 1917 Austro-Hungarian offensive would eventually grind to a halt in northern Italy on the Piave River, more than 100 miles to the west, a stasis that would last until the overall Allied victory in November 1918. The Italian troops high on this knife-edge ridge, however, reeling from the shattering effects of Austrian mines exploding under their trenches, hearing the shouts and screams of battle in the morning mists below, then fleeing headlong down the slopes of Mount Vrsiè to captivity or death in the valleys, knew nothing of the future.

Staring out across the mountains from the ridge today, it's hard to imagine a more serenely peaceful prospect. But the terrified and half-frozen young men who left behind their fish tins, their helmets, their barbed wire and their boot soles remain ghostly presences.

Soca Basics

From London Stansted, Ryanair (www.ryanair.com) flies daily to Trieste and Easyjet (www.easyjet.com) flies to Ljubljana. Hire car and onward route instructions included in Upland Escapes package. Upland Escapes (01367 851111, www.uplandescapes.com) organises flexible, independent holidays in beautiful, unfrequented upland areas. These include group or solo walks and cycle rides, guided or self-guided, from easy to challenging.

In Slovenia it has a choice of 20 self-guided walks, five escorted walks and four cycle routes, several featuring Soca Front sites. Breaks cost from £615 per week, including hire car, escort/guide, local b & b accommodation, packed lunch, maps and guidebook. Three-night minimum stay.