Christopher Somerville

Bucknell, Hopton Titterhill and Redlake Valley, Shropshire

Jul 092022

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

A hot summer’s afternoon in Shropshire, the River Redlake overgrown with rushes, the grey stone walls along Bucknell’s village street sprouting deep pink valerian.

A green lane us away up sloping fields where brown and white cattle chomped their cud in the shade of big old hedgerow oaks. A red kite planed low over the grass on long crooked wings, and a pair of swallows raced overhead in a twitter of excitement as they swerved and snatched insects out of the still air.

‘Walking With Offa’ said the waymarks along the path. The mighty defensive rampart and dyke built by King Offa of Mercia in the late 8th century runs south and north along the Welsh Borders a few miles west of here, but the terrain around Bucknell offers the same challenge to a walker – steep slopes, sudden descents, boggy valleys and forested hills.

A high-banked lane fringed with white bindweed and deep yellow St John’s wort led to the high farmstead of Mynde, from which the path plunged down a hillside into the well-named depths of Darky Dale. Next came a climb through bracken banks and up the thickly forested slopes of Hopton Titterhill, which landed us breathless at the summit.

The viewpoint marked on the OS map turned out to have been obliterated by the growth of trees, but it didn’t matter. In a clearing under the knoll we sat to eat our apples and crunchy biscuits on a lacy white picnic cloth of heath bedstraw, serenaded by the clicks and whistles of a tree pipit perched in a spruce nearby.

The forest track went gradually downhill among soft hair-like grasses full of cuckoo spit, a frothy defence extruded by the nymphs of froghopper insects. They shelter from predators in these gooey cradles, tiny white bugs in their hundreds.

We followed the path down to Meeroak Farm, and on down a beautiful green cleft looking across the River Redlake’s green cleft valley to the crumpled faces of Stowe Hill and Caer Caradoc. The return path along the valley was a delight, with the river curving close below and a thrust fluting its evening song.

How hard is it? 6¾ miles; moderate; field and footpaths

Start: Baron at Bucknell Inn, Bucknell SY7 0AH (OS ref SO 351741)

Getting there: Train to Bucknell
Road: Bucknell is on B4367, signed off A4133 Ludlow-Knighton road

Walk (OS Explorer 201): Left along road; left up Dog Kennel Lane. Between Brookside and Caverswall, left (355742, ‘Walking With Offa’/WWO) up green lane, then fields to cross road (355747, ‘Mynd’). In 100m, right (WWO, stile); field path (stiles, yellow arrows) to lane beyond house (356752). Right; in 300m, left (358753, fingerpost, ‘No Through Road’). 40m past Mynde Farm*, right on field path, descending to lane (359758). Dogleg right/left (WWO) and on through gate.

Cross valley floor (359759) and bear left, keeping parallel with Darky Dale stream on left. In 200m, stile into trees (359760, WWO). In 150m at gate, bear right uphill (357761, WWO). By metal gate at top of bank, left (359764, WWO) on path inside edge of wood. In 100m cross forest track (359765); take right-hand of two paths (not one with red/white arrow/RWA). In 300m cross track (357767); ahead up track (RWA). In 250m, where climb flattens, fork left (356769) on downhill track. In 150m, by pond opposite RWA pointing ahead (354770), right up through trees to meet a cross-track at hill summit (354771).

Left on track across hill; on down to track junction (353774). Left; in 250m, bear right off track onto clear grassy path (351773), descending to cross forest road (349773) and on. Keep straight line ahead at edge of forestry for ½ mile. At Meeroak Farm, through kissing gate (344766); left (yellow arrow, ‘Viaduct’ waymark). Follow farm track for 300m. In a dip, right (345762, WWO); follow WWOs for ¾ mile down to valley road (336756). Left; in 800m on right bend, ahead through gate (342753, WWO). Follow WWO for ¾ mile; at house, fork right (345743, gate, ‘Viaduct’) along lane to Bucknell.

Lunch/Accommodation: Baron at Bucknell Inn, Bucknell (01547-530549, baronatbucknell.co.uk)

Info: Ludlow TIC (01584-875053), visitshropshire.co.uk

Holt Country Park and Hempstead, North Norfolk

Walks No Responses »

Jul 022022

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

We kept a good eye out for silver-washed fritillaries as we puzzled our way along the tangled path and sunny glades of Holt Country Park. But the elusive butterflies, leopard-spotted swoopers that love oak and conifer woods like these, were deep in their midday snooze, and not to be seen.

No matter – the woodland ponds and puddles were buzzing with insect life drawn out and about by the strong Norfolk sunlight. Soon Jane’s sharp eyes had picked out a beautiful dragonfly, a keeled skimmer, a great rarity in East Anglia. Somehow this spot suits them, a marginal place where woodland meets the heath and mire of Holt Lowes. Our skimmer, a large male, perched still long enough for us to admire his ice-blue dagger of an abdomen before he darted away after a midge or perhaps a female skimmer.

We followed a path of flint and pale sun-baked clay among ling and bell heather along the edge of Holt Lowes. Thick clumps of gorse grew as tall as the silver birch of the heath. The fresh lime green of young bracken relieved the sombre colour scheme, along with the occasional shard of brilliant yellow from solitary gorse blooms.

Our way led through a belt of pines and showy pink rhododendrons to Hempstead Road. The quiet country lane descended between sandy banks to pass an abandoned old mill, its flint walls sturdy, its cast-iron flywheel still in position.

In hot afternoon sun we trod a field-edge path, a former green lane now shorn of its hedges, that curved round ponds and lanes to reach the tall farmhouse of Hempstead Hall. A bulbous old Spanish chestnut stood beside the road, who knows how old? – spiral-twisted, battered by storms, pollarded by lightning,

At Hempstead the Church of All Saints was a cut-and-shut affair, a stumpy brick tower, a flint-built body and a 20th-century apse with a perky little thatched roof. A gravestone inscription commemorated Bob Mack (1919-1999), ‘whose strong hands were skilled at the plane and the lathe.’

A lovely quote, and a beautiful place for a handy man to lie at rest, and for two weary walkers to eat their picnic on the churchyard bench before the homeward stroll.

How hard is it? 5 miles; easy; woodland and field paths

Start: Holt Country Park car park, Holt, Norfolk NR25 6SP (OS ref TG 082375)

Getting there: Bus 45 (Holt-Norwich)
Road – Signed off B1149, just south of Holt (A148, Cromer-King’s Lynn)

Walk (OS Explorer 251): Pass wooden bird totem. Right; in 50m, left (green arrow). In 200m, left past pond (084374), through gate; left up side of Holt Lowes heath, parallel with trees. In ½ mile, left through gate (089380); in 100m, at purple arrow post, right to cross car park to Hempstead Road (089383). Right; in ⅔ mile, right (097378, footpath fingerpost). In 400m bear left past pond (095374), between barns to road. Past pond on right; fork left (yellow arrow/YA) past Hempstead Hall (097373); on for 300m. Opposite bungalow on left, right (099373, footbridge, YAs); field path to road at Hempstead Church (105370). Right; in 300m, right at Church Farm (105367, fingerpost) on field path. In ⅔ mile dogleg left/right past barn (096368) and on. In 700m descend; cross River Glaven (087367); on (YAs) to road (084368). Right, following paths parallel to road. In 500m, at pond, left through gate (084373); retrace steps to car park.

Lunch: Hetty’s House Tearoom, Holt Country Park

Accommodation: Byfords Hotel, Shirehall Plain, Holt NR25 6BG (01263-711400, byfords.org.uk)

Info: Holt TIC (01263-713100)

Wales Coast Path (Blaenplwyf to Llanrhystud), Ceredigion, Wales

Walks No Responses »

Jun 252022

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

A cool, showery day over the hills of mid Wales, but a strip of blue sky and an onshore breeze were forecast for the coast of Cardigan Bay.

Clouds like grey cannon smoke rolled across the hilltops inland of Blaenplwyf. The Friesian cattle at Rhosfawr farm stared moodily at us as we passed. One cow was wearing an e-bell on her collar, designed to warn her away from the electric fence around the pasture.

In the rushy fields approaching Pentre we spotted a hornet in the grass, its wings too soaked with the morning’s rain to allow it to fly. Two dogs came barking to the farm gate, soon retiring after making their point. We followed a stony lane over the ridge and down towards a royal blue sea.

This section of the Wales Coast Path runs along cliffs of spectacular formation, undercut by the sea, bulging out in dark brittle rock topped with even more shaky clay. The string of coastal farms is threatened with ruin as the clifftops erode and crumple.

In medieval times this coast belonged to the rich and powerful Strata Florida abbey. Mynachdy’r Graig, ‘the monks’ house on the rocks’, was one of the abbey’s granges or outlying farms. Today, abandoned as a working farmhouse and less than forty metres from the ever-advancing cliff edge, its plain square dwelling and slate-roofed sheds are in the care of the National Trust.

Everything was utterly quiet and peaceful, the only sound the gentle wash of the sea on the rocky platform at the feet of the cliffs. A bevy of young choughs went cackling by, swooping like fighter planes. Outcrops beside the coast path were rock gardens of stonecrop, bell heather and wild thyme.

The path rose and fell for mile after mile, the cliffs and promontories of Cardigan Bay spread out from the Llŷn peninsula down to Pembrokeshire. As we stopped to admire the view, a big bird of prey came gliding by far below. Too bulky for a kite, too masterful in flight to be anything other than an osprey on a fishing expedition from its base up the coast at the Dyfi Osprey Project.

Its wingtips downturned, an arc of white feathers across its shoulders, it gave not a single flap, just cruised the wind, bigger and more powerful than anything else aloft. A most magnificent spectacle.

How hard is it? 7 miles, moderate one-way coast walk

Start: Blaenplwyf, near Aberystwyth, Ceredigion, Wales SY23 4DJ (OS ref SN 576755)
Finish: Llanrhystud, near Aberaeron SY23 5DQ (OS ref SN 539697)

Getting there: Bus T5 (Aberystwyth – Cardigan)
Road – Blaenplwyf is on A487 between Aberystwyth and Llanrhystud

Walk (OS Explorer 213): From bus stop south along A487. At end of houses, right (boulder, green cabinet) up lane. In 100m through gate on right (573754); keep right of Rhosfawr farm sheds, then right up field track to road (570755). Left; in 100m, right (stile, yellow arrow/YA) to road at Pentre (568753). Right; in 50m right up lane beside Llain Bach. In ½ mile, meet Wales Coast Path/WCP near Ffos-lâs farm (560755). Left on WCP. In 4½ miles, with caravan site in view ahead, descend long slope; through gate (535705), right (WCP) to kissing gate, then fingerpost (534703). Left off WCP here; follow YAs to Banc (539703). Down drive; in 50m right (gate, YA), anticlockwise round scrub patch to stile in corner (YA); down scrubby hillside with hedge on left. In 200m hedge turns right; left over stile in corner here (539701, YA); right down green lane to road (538699). Left to A487 and bus stop in Llanrhystud. Bus return to Blaenplwyf.

Lunch: Black Lion, Llanrhystud SY23 5DQ (01974-202338, @blacklion.llanrhystud.9)

Accommodation: Aelybryn, Llangwyryfon, Aberystwyth SY23 4EX (01974-241744, aberystwythbedandbreakfast.co.uk)

Info: walescoastpath.gov.uk; visitwales.com; dyfiospreyproject.com
@somerville_c

Long Eaton, River Trent and Attenborough Nature Reserve, Nottinghamshire

Walks No Responses »

Jun 182022

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

It didn’t take long to shake the dust of post-industrial Long Eaton from our shoes. As soon as we had turned off the main road and were down on the towpath of the Erewash Canal, it was all cosy red brick architecture, drooping willows and slowly chugging narrowboats with flowerbox roofs.

In the half century between its completion in the 1780s and the coming of the railways, the Erewash Canal had an absolute field day transporting everything from millstones and deal planks to cheese, lead and pottery. In 1808 alone it carried more than a quarter of a million tons of coal. The focus of all this activity was down at the southern end, where at Trent Lock it joined a mighty confluence of waterways.

Trent Lock still buzzes and bustles, but these days with fishermen, boaters, duck feeders and drinkers at a brace of jolly pubs. Here the River Soar, the Erewash and a couple of cut-through canals join the River Trent, a wide and powerful water highway that bends and snakes along its valley. Over the trees beyond the river loomed the eight massive cooling towers and giant chimney of Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station, an apparition more like an artistic installation than a coal-guzzling, CO2-belching monster of obsolescence.

Walking the western bank of the Trent past swimming lakes and broad meadows, we watched sand martins flitting round their nesting holes in the orange-red flanks of the river. Sand and gravel lie in thick beds along the Trent Valley, dug out over the years to form great hollows now flooded into a new purpose as wildlife lakes.

Flocks of Canada geese, great crested grebes and tufted duck with their slick black ponytails sailed the calm waters of Attenborough Nature Reserve’s string of manmade lagoons. Nottinghamshire Wildlife Trust has run the reserve since the 1960s, a remarkable achievement in enabling free public access alongside the welfare of wildlife here.

A whitethroat let out a burst of burbling song from a goat willow as we headed away from the gravel pits past Attenborough’s Church of St Mary with its dark stone needle of a spire. From a perch in a half-downed alder a blackcap projected a counterblast of brilliant notes, the sound fading behind us as we turned up the village street towards the station.

How hard is it? 5 miles (7½ with Kingfisher Trail, 6¼ with Tufted Duck Trail); easy; riverside paths.

Start: Long Eaton station, NG10 2DF (OS ref SK 481322)
Finish: Attenborough station, NG9 6AL (OS ref 518346)

Getting there: Rail to Long Eaton.
Road: Long Eaton railway station is on Wilsthorpe Road, signed off A6005 Beeston-Derby (M1 Jct 25)

Walk (OS Explorer 260; downloadable Attenborough Nature Reserve trail map at broxtowe.gov.uk): From Long Eaton station, cross roundabout; follow Fields Farm Road across canal; right (486322) onto canal towpath. South to Trent Lock (491311). Left along Trent Valley Way. In 3 miles, at grass triangle, left (520335, ‘Attenborough Nature Centre’). At roundabout (516339) left to Nature Centre. To continue walk, from roundabout/car park follow ‘Bridleway to Attenborough Village’. In 300m, you reach a fork (518342). If following Tufted Duck or Kingfisher Nature Trails, bear right for circuit, returning to roundabout/car park, and to fork. To finish this walk, left from fork (‘Attenborough Village & Church’) on bridleway past St Mary’s Church (519343). Left up Attenborough Lane (‘Erewash Valley Trail’) to Attenborough station.
Return to Long Eaton station.

Lunch: Attenborough Nature Centre, Barton Lane, Chilwell, Notts NG9 6DY (0115-972-1777)

Accommodation: De Vere Orchard Hotel, Beeston Lane, Nottingham, NG7 2RJ (0115-697-8175, devere.co.uk)

Info: nottinghamshirewildlife.org

Nassington, Nene Valley and Old Sulehay, Northants

Walks No Responses »

Jun 112022

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

The houses of Nassington looked lovely this sunny afternoon in their creamy yellow-grey limestone, the crocketed spire of St Mary’s Church rising above all. Inside the church, tall arcades rose into the cool interior air. Armed knights and their horses rode the walls in red ochre, courtesy of some anonymous medieval muralist.

Village children were squealing in the primary school playground as we set out north from Nassington along the broad valley of the River Nene. The age-old debate over the pronunciation – ‘Neen’ or ‘Nenn’ – of this East Midlands river was eventually settled by means of a croquet match, the winners declaring in favour of the latter. How very British.

The Nene Way led through lush buttercup meadows along the river’s flood plain. An ancient barge slumbered in retirement up a rushy side channel where reed buntings squeaked and chittered. We stopped to sit and nibble apples and cheese in the shade of a poplar grove, lulled by the soporific sighing of millions of long-stalked leaves agitated by each gentle breath of breeze.

The stone-walled lanes of Yarwell lay baking in the sun. Up at Wansford the many arches of the Tudor bridge spanned the Nene and its flood meadows. In Wansford churchyard lay Albert and Ann Padley, married 71 years and separated in their deaths by just four days – a testament of constancy illustrated by the two companionable swans carved on their headstone.

A treble hum of bees and hoverflies greeted us as we entered the shade of Old Sulehay Forest, a refuge for plants, insects and birds. This piece of ancient woodland above the Nene Valley is not a forest in the sense of a solid block of trees, but rather a mosaic of different soils and habitats. Figwort, bryony, herb bennet and wild strawberry carpeted the broad ride through the wood, and on the limestone soils in the old quarries of Stonepit Close and Ring Haw we found milky blue masses of speedwell, silverweed with papery yellow flowers, common spotted orchids, and tall nettle-leaved bellflower about to bloom.

The homeward path ran through beautiful wildflower meadows. Here we paused to watch a whitethroat perched in the fork of a tall sprig of angelica, its white chest puffed out, round black eye as shiny as polished jet, and sharp thorn of a beak packed with green caterpillars for its hungry nestlings.

How hard is it? 7¼ miles; easy; field and woodland paths

Start: St Mary’s Church, Nassington, Peterborough PE8 6QH (OS ref 063962)

Getting there: Bus – CallConnect (0345-263-8153, lincsbus.info)
Road: Nassington is signed off A6118 at Wansford (A1, Peterborough-Stamford)

Walk (OS Explorer 227): From west end of church, left along Church Road. At T-junction, right (068962), in 50m, left, following waymarked Nene Way/NW north for 2½ miles to Wansford Bridge (074992). Left; left along Yarwell Road. Pass surgery; in 150m, right (070991, fingerpost, stile) on path. In 150m left (black arrow (BLA), parallel to road. In 450m path bends left; in 30m fork left; in 100m, right (067988) on bridleway through Old Sulehay Forest for 1 mile. At road, left (054984); on left bend, right (054980) through gate on path round Ring Haw. In ½ mile through 5-bar gate (053973); cross byway; take path to right of Ring Haw Field Station. Kissing gate, then field edge path. In 200m through 5-bar gate (052970); left (arrow) on field path (BLAs). In 350m, right across old railway (055968); left (arrows, BLAs) across fields. In ½ mile through housing estate to road in Nassington (061964); left to church.

Lunch/Accommodation: Queen’s Head, Nassington PE8 6QB (01780-784006, queensheadnassington.co.uk)

Info: wildlifebcn.org

West Stow Anglo Saxon Village and the King’s Forest, Suffolk

Walks No Responses »

Jun 042022

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

A heavy grey day over the Suffolk Breckland, and a carpet of wild flowers on the sandy heathland at Ramparts Field. White campion, acid yellow stonecrop, blue viper’s bugloss, purple knapweed, and the stars of the show – maiden pinks, each delicate flower on a slender stalk, the five petals an intense cherry pink.

Breckland lies on deep beds of sand under peaty soils. Once exposed by the tree-felling and ploughing of early settlers, the sand began to drift and blow about in sandstorms, the worst of which buried whole villages in the 17th century. Today it hosts enormous numbers of coniferous trees in the shape of Thetford Forest and the King’s Forest, planted between the wars to guarantee the country a supply of timber.

We found St Edmund’s Way at the edge of the King’s Forest and followed it through the trees. Here on a grassy knoll stands West Stow Anglo Saxon village, a remarkable experiment, a group of thatched huts of split timber and wattle built on the site where settlers from what’s now Germany established a village shortly after the Romans left these shores.

We wandered round the dark, fire-scented little houses with their wooden hearths, box beds and skins hung up to cure. The archaeologist who built them weren’t sure what the originals were really like, so each of these dwellings represents a style on the road to enlightenment. One conclusion is inescapable – domestic life in 5th-century Stow must have been crowded, smelly, noisy and without privacy.

A grassy path among head-high umbellifers led us on, the scent of firewood still in our noses. We followed tracks among tall pines, their dusky trunks clad with rough plates of bark like saurian hide, then down along the reedy River Lark and its broad string of gravel-pit lakes where great crested grebes were sailing.

Our return way led through the heart of the King’s Forest, a path of black mud and pink pine needles that passed a paddock hazed blue with viper’s bugloss. At the western edge of the forest we turned for home down the Icknield Way, by whose ancient route travellers have been crossing the great sands of Breckland for at least six thousand years.

How hard is it? 5½ miles, easy, forest tracks

Start: Ramparts Field car park, West Stow IP28 6HF (OS ref TL 788716)

Getting there: West Stow Country Park is signed off A1101 (Barton-Mills – Bury St Edmunds); car park in 100m.

Walk (OS Explorer 229): Left up road. In 300m right (792715, ‘St Edmund Way’/SWE). In 200m left (791713, kissing gate, ‘Access Land’). In 100m, right (‘Otter Gate’); fork left (‘Lake Walk’). In 500m, at bench, left (795713, ‘Beowulf/Grendel Trail’). Through Otter Gate; at info board, right (St Edmund Way/SEW) to Visitor Centre (800714) and Anglo-Saxon village (798713). From Visitor Centre, follow SEW signs for ⅔ mile via pump house (803712) to roadway (809710). Right; in 200m by car park, left (807709, black arrow/BLA); on SEW. In 400m pass sewage farm (811708); in 150m, left off SEW by fence (812706) to road (813709). Right; in 50m left up track; in 300m left (814712, blue ringed post) on forest path. At T-junction, right (809213); in 40m, left (BLAs) to T-junction (804716). Left. In 300m by Wideham Barn, track bends right (801717);
turn immediately left by pole. In 400m where track bends right beside deep pit (798718), left on path at edge of trees for 350m to Icknield Way (795719). Left to road (792715); right to car park.

Lunch/Accommodation: Guinness Arms, Icklingham IP26 6PS (01638-597547, guinnessarms.com)

Info: West Stow Anglo Saxon Village – 01284-728718, weststow.org

Arne National Nature Reserve, Poole Harbour, Dorset

Walks No Responses »

May 282022

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

A gorgeous afternoon of sun and blue sky over the Dorset coast – exactly the sort of day to be walking the sandy paths of Arne National Nature Reserve, a rare and precious example of conservation triumphant.

Almost all of Dorset’s lowland heaths, the landscapes that Thomas Hardy immortalised, have been lost to farming and housing encroachment since his day. If the RSBP hadn’t got hold of Arne’s 1,000-odd acres of lowland heath on the western shore of Poole Harbour, the chances are it would all have been ploughed up or built over. That would have been the end of the Dartford warblers, the nightjars, the marsh harriers and raft spiders, lizards and slow worms that inhabit this highly specialised marsh and seashore – not to mention the spoonbills and ospreys that have recently set up home here.

We followed the Red Trail through quiet woods of oak and beech between hay meadows streaked yellow with buttercups. Soon the pastoral scene had given way to gorsy heath of tall pine trees. As we crossed a clearing a small burst of bird of prey, dark and intent, went scurrying across the sky – a hobby, uttering a burst of sharp yelps like a woodpecker as it disappeared.

The hobby’s prey, red dragonflies and electric blue darters, were zipping about in mating pairs over a string of weedy ponds. Stout southern marsh orchids grew in a rank beside the path, now dull red with fallen pine needles, that led to a sandy little beach at Shipstal Point where olive green wavelets fell on the shore.

From the viewpoint hillock behind the beach we got a fine prospect over Poole Harbour, the thick wooded hump of Brownsea Island prominent among a flotilla of little islets. Common terns and oystercatchers overflew the tidal waters. The millionaires’ paradise of Sandbanks lay hidden by the bulk of Brownsea, out of sight and a whole world away.

Back at the car park we set out on the second half of the walk, the Coombe Heath trail across a windy, sombre-coloured heather upland. Hidden in the scrub were Dartford warblers, rare little songsters with blood-red eyes. Camouflaged in sandy hollows lay ash-coloured nightjars, and I recalled a midsummer evening at Arne when they came out at dusk to perform their churring mating calls and wing-clapping flight.

Down in the inaccessible marshland beyond the tip of the heath, a tall pole held a sturdy platform. A large white bird of prey sat there, and looking through binoculars we realised with a thrill it was an osprey. As though intuiting it had been spotted, it slowly rose and flapped away. A memorable sight, this beautiful rare fish eagle, in a most remarkable place.

How hard is it? 4½ miles; easy; woodland and heathland paths

Start: Arne RSPB car park, Arne, Wareham BH20 5BJ (OS ref SY 971877)

Walk (OS Explorer OL15; downloadable trail map at rspb.org.uk/arne): From Visitor Centre follow ‘Shipstal Trails’. Red Trail for 1½ miles to 4-finger post (982884). Left to Shipstal Point beach. Returning, left up steps to viewpoint. Right down steps to 4-finger post. Left (‘Car Park’) back to car park. Through gate at far end; follow ‘Coombe Heath Trail’ (white arrows) anticlockwise via viewpoint (975868) back to car park.

Getting there: Arne RSPB is signed off B3075 at Stoborough, just south of Wareham.
Summer shuttle bus service, June-August (2RN) from Wareham bus/train station.

Lunch: Arne RSPB café (closes 4 pm)

Accommodation: The Bear, 14 South Street, Wareham BH20 4LT (01929-288150, thebearwareham.co.uk)

Info: rspb.org.uk/arne; 01929-553360

Hawick and Drinkstone Hill, Scottish Borders

Walks No Responses »

May 212022

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

The copper-coloured River Teviot runs curving past the tall old mills of Hawick, chasing itself down sloping weirs and sluicing through boulder shallows. The power of river water brought industry to Hawick long before steam, in the manufacture of woollen garments famous for their fine texture.

These days the past glories of the sprawling Teviotdale town are spelt out in fine old sandstone public buildings, great blocks of former mills and the beautifully laid out Wilton Lodge Park beside the river. If the strollers we met among the lawns and flowerbeds looked a little jaded, they could blame it on the Common Riding, only just finished, an ancient summer festival in which any local capable of keeping their saddle joins the Callants and other horseback revellers in beating the bounds of the town at the canter, then celebrating madly.

We climbed steps by a gushing waterfall, and took to the old drove road of Whitehaugh Lane that climbed by steady stages northward into a high green upland. Rain showers and sun splashes hunted each other across a landscape of hummocky little hills striped by stone walls, abruptly rising and falling on either hand.

At Whitehaugh we crossed the Cala Burn chuckling among mossy boulders. In the higher pastures sheep fastidiously selected their mouthfuls of grass among sedges, and great black and brown slabs of cattle stood like stone carvings on the skyline, silhouetted against bosomy silver clouds that battled it out with emergent patches of blue sky.

At the top of the lane the path swung east and made off across a wide moor, rough and tussocky among heather tufts and boggy patches, dotted with pink shell-shaped petals of lousewort and the blue flowers of insectivorous butterwort held aloft on black stalks as slender as hairs.

The Borders Abbeys Way brought us home downhill, a winding lane with a most sensational view ahead of the far off Cheviots spread across the English Border in a series of waves of green, purple and ochre. A sight to make a galloping Callant draw rein and grin with pride.

How hard is it? 9 miles; easy; lanes and upland paths

Start: Common Haugh car park, Hawick TD9 7AN (OS ref NT500146)

Getting there: Bus 20 (Kelso-Hawick)
Road: A7 from Carlisle; A698 (Kelso); A68, A6068 (Newcastle)

Walk (OS Explorer 331): Left along Victoria Road. In 200m into Wilton Lodge Park (‘Riverside Path’). In 400m, right by war memorial (493145, ‘path to waterfall’). Up steps to road (492146); left. At T-junction, left (‘Romans & Reivers Route’). In 150m, right up Whitehaugh Road (490145). In 1¾ miles, cross bridge by ‘Whitfield & Crurie’ sign (476165); in 100m, left (blue arrow/BA, ‘Hawick Circular Riding Route’/HCRR, ‘Cross Borders Drove Road’/CBDR) up Whitehaughmoor drive.

In 40m, fork right (BA, CBDR). In ¾ mile through gate (BA, 470176, HCRR); on beside fence; in 250m, right through gate (469179, BA, HCRR). Follow grassy track east across moor. In 1 mile, on Hayside, approaching Drinkstone Hill trig pillar, BA on waymark post points left (480183), but keep ahead down to gate. Half right across field; left along plantation edge to gate in wall (485183), don’t go through, but bear left along wall to gate (486184) to turn right along Borders Abbeys Way.

In 2 miles, fork right at gate of St Andrew’s (496161); in 250m, just before right bend, left (493159) on concrete track to electricity substation. Right (kissing gate, yellow arrow, ‘Hawick Paths’/HP) along substation fence, then follow HP waymarks past Kippilaw Moss (492155), over saddle between hills, down to cross Dean Burn (488150), up to road (486148). Left to Hawick.

Lunch: Santa Marina restaurant, Teviot Crescent, Hawick TD9 9RE (01450-378773, santamarinarestaurant.co.uk)

Accommodation: The Bank Guesthouse, 12 High St, Hawick TD9 9EH (01450-363760, thebankno12highst.com) – cheerful, full of character.

Info: Hawick Common Riding 2022 (hawickcommonriding.co.uk)
visitscotland.com

Beer, Branscombe & Hooken Undercliff, Devon

Walks No Responses »

May 142022

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

The seaside village of Beer was looking particularly good this sunny afternoon from our viewpoint on Beer Head cliffs. The houses huddled close behind their pebbly beach, set between cliffs spectacularly coloured in red, grey and white. Beyond the cove a yellow strand led off east toward the long line of Chesil Beach and the low wedge of the Isle of Portland, blue and misty in sea haze.

Its isolated position and handy nearby caves made Beer a natural haven for smugglers. King of them all was Jack Rattenbury, the ‘Rob Roy of the West’. What a rollercoaster life he enjoyed in the early years of the 19th century. Jack was captured again and again, by the French, by the Spanish, by the excisemen and the press gang. Somehow he managed to return like a bad penny to his native harbour at Beer; usually richer and never the wiser.

We followed the path over the coastal pastures of South Common, past a gaunt old signal tower and steeply downhill to the pebbly beach at Branscombe Mouth.

Just inland, the village of Branscombe curled along its road towards the fortress-like tower of St Winifred’s Church. In the cool interior we found a beautifully carved Elizabethan west gallery, and on the wall nearby a painting made perhaps a hundred years earlier.

Only one of the Seven Deadly Sins depicted has survived – Lust, portrayed by a man with flowing hair under a green cap, and a woman in décolleté with a saucy pillbox hat. Gazing amorously at one another, they seem quite undeterred by the spear being rammed through their midriffs by a half obliterated devil.

A fluffy cat came to help us with our picnic on the bench outside. Then we climbed a steep path up the bank opposite, through woods scented with wild garlic, to reach the coast path and a steep descent to Branscombe Mouth once more.

In March 1790 a mighty landslip caused Hooken Cliff, just east of Branscombe Mouth, to crash seaward. The homeward path led through the undercliff created by the slip, a tremendously lush, ferny ‘lost world’ where whitethroats and thrushes sang their evening melodies among spires and towers of rock.

The cliff faces over our heads were banded in brilliant white chalk, dusky red mudstone and greensand. Looking back from the top of the climb we had a last glimpse of the westward coast, the sea sparkling in late sun, the cliffs marching away in red sandstone slopes to be lost in the evening sea fog along the distant shores of Tor Bay.

How hard is it? 6 miles; strenuous; many steep steps, some unguarded cliff edges.

Start: Cliff Top car park, Common Hill, Beer, EX12 3AQ (OS ref SY 227888)

Getting there: Bus 899 (Sidmouth-Seaton), Mon-Sat
Road – Beer is on B3174 (signed off A3052, Lyme Regis-Sidford)

Walk (OS Explorer 115, 116): Left up road. In 400m fork left (224887, ‘Bridleway’). Follow Coast Path to Branscombe Mouth. Many steps down East Cliff. At foot of West Cliff, right (207881, ‘Branscombe Village’) to Branscombe. Left at road (198887) to church (196885). Left through churchyard, down to cross stile on south boundary (yellow arrow). Steeply up steps to Coast Path (196882). Left to Branscombe Mouth. Up first field of East Cliff; keep ahead at fingerpost (210881, ‘Coast Path Beer’) between chalets and on through undercliff (narrow path, slippery in places, unguarded edges, many steps). In 1 mile climb to clifftop path (222880); right to car park.

Lunch: Smugglers Kitchen, Fore St, Beer EX12 3JF (01297-22104, thesmugglerskitchen.co.uk)

Accommodation: Bay View, Fore St, Beer EX12 3EE (01297-20489, bayviewguesthousebeer.com)

Info: beer-devon.co.uk

Low Force, High Force and Upper Teesdale, Durham Dales

Walks No Responses »

May 072022

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

If an alien walker enquired the season and place to catch upland Britain at its very best, I’d direct him to spring in the Durham Dales, here in Upper Teesdale with the Tees blustering down the valley, its waterfalls seething, nesting lapwing and curlew giving their haunting cries in the meadows, and the wild flowers in full glory all along the dale.

The setting of the valley is superb, too, sinuating with the broad river between tall dark crags of volcanic dolerite that give way to green pastures and miles of bleak moorland. Farmhouses and barns are dotted around the hills, but there is something notably wild about Upper Teesdale, lending a sense of freedom and exhilaration to any walk here.

On a cool grey afternoon we gazed from the Swingy Bridge (officially Wynch Bridge, a bouncy span) upriver to where the Tees poured in creamy cascades over its jagged bed and down the rocky steps of Low Force. The grassy banks were spattered thickly with wild flowers, all blooming together in a rush to take advantage of the short spring season – primroses and cowslips, spherical yellow globeflowers, bluebells and wood sorrel, violets and early purple orchids.

As we followed the Pennine Way upriver a muted roar and rumble heralded High Force, a tossing wall of peaty brown water crashing seventy feet down three huge steps of the Whim Sill, the dolerite intrusion that shapes the dale. We stood at the brink, watching the fat lip of water curl downward into space and thunder off its walls into the rocky basin at the foot.

Along the path juniper bushes yielded a savour of gin when pinched. Once past the quarry at Dine Holm Scar the view lifted into an altogether wilder prospect, with long ridges of moorland ahead. On the way up the knobbled knoll of Bracken Rigg the path ran beside a fence excluding the sheep, and there on the other side, safe from the nibbling teeth, was a little clump of bird’s-eye primroses, tiny and deep pink with egg-yolk yellow ‘eyes’ – remnant flora of the post-glacial tundra still thriving up here.

We descended to Cronkley Farm and recrossed the Tees where sandpipers were pattering on the pebbles. The homeward way lay just above the dale road, a path through pastures where brown hares scampered off, lapwings tilted earthward with creaking cries, and young blackfaced lambs ran to the admonitory bleating of ewes in ragged fleeces still stained with winter.

How hard is it? 8 miles; moderate; some rough places underfoot.

Start: Bowlees Visitor Centre, near Middleton-in-Teesdale DL12 9XE (OS ref NY 907282)

Getting there: Bowlees Visitor Centre is signed on B6277 (Middleton-in-Teesdale to Alston)

Walk (OS Explorer OL31): From Visitor Centre cross B6277; path to cross Wynch Bridge (904279). Right on Pennine Way for 4 miles to cross Cronkley Bridge (862294). Pennine Way turns left, but follow track ahead. In 50m ahead up flagstone path. At top, right through gate (864294); through next gate; left past barn. Through wicket gate; past house, follow drive to road (866299). Right; in 100m left through car park; left; in 100m, right (868299) past school and cottages. Wall stile to field path; lane from Dale Cottage (872296); field path from Middle Moor Riggs (877293). Pass ruined East Moor Riggs (880292); in next field, half left to bottom right corner. Gate by corner of house; drive to road (884294)’ right. In ½ mile on right bend, ahead (890289); follow walled lane for 1½ miles to Bowlees.

Lunch/Accommodation: Langdon Beck Hotel, Forest-in-Teesdale DL12 0XP (01833-622267, langdonbeckhotel.com)

Info: Middleton-in-Teesdale TIC (01833-641001)
thisisdurham.com; northpennines.org.uk

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