Christopher Somerville

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


The old wool-trading and lace-making village of Thorncombe lies up and down its sloping street, a handsome huddle of old cottages in a steep, remote piece of countryside where Dorset tips over into Somerset.

The sun was finally groping its way through the clouds after days of miserable rain. The fresh wind and brilliant autumn colours of the woods put a spring in our step as we followed the rim of the deep ferny cleft of Stonelake Brook.

The Monarch’s Way led north through pastures where the wet grass polished our boots for us. Flints underfoot crunched and crackled. Off on our left side the church and houses of Thorncombe sloped down their hillside, framed by oaks and beech trees in wind-tattered gold and scarlet.

Down at Synderford bridge we picked up the Jubilee Trail and followed it north across the red mud squelch of rain-swollen brooks and the broad clover leys on Chitmoor. Devon Ruby cattle grazed the fields at Wheel House Lane, the sturdy little bull inspecting the females with close solicitude.

A screeching chorus of pheasants arose from a maize field as we neared Forde Abbey, where the last of the afternoon was slanting across the old monastic buildings. The view down the drive from the ornate gates was of a surf of pink, white and purple cyclamen along the lime avenue leading away to beautiful gardens and fountain pools.

Just beyond Forde Abbey the meanders of the River Axe mark the Dorset border. We crossed the bridge into Somerset and turned west through lush river meadows dotted with fine old cedars. Along the river, the pink blooms of Himalayan balsam opened their spotted throats to release a spicy fragrance. We edged round a deep gravel pit, pushed our way through an elephantine jungle of maize nine feet tall, and skirted the empty yards of Forde Abbey Farm.

Now the sun made a belated return, streaking the sky with patches of blue and fringing the clouds with a sharp lining of silver. Lemon yellow beech leaves scuffed under our boots as we came past Whistling Copse and turned for home.

A great view of rolling country to west and east, and we were crossing Thorncombe’s cricket field where goldfinches in a flicker of wings were gobbling up the grass seed laid on the pitch by the groundsman in hopes of a perfect surface for next summer’s opening match.

How hard is it? 6½ miles; easy; field paths. NB GPS and OS Explorer map are helpful for route-finding.

Start: St Mary’s Church car park, Thorncombe, Dorset TA20 4NE (OS ref ST376034)

Getting there: From Crewkerne (A30, Chard-Yeovil) follow ‘Forde Abbey’, then ‘Thorncombe’.

Walk (OS Explorer 116): Path through churchyard to road; left to junction at chapel (376032); right uphill. In 100m pass ‘Old Alley’; left (375032, fingerpost/FP). At stile, ahead (yellow arrow/YA); in 2nd field, stile (377027, ‘Liberty Trail’) through trees. In 200m, sharp left on Monarch’s Way/MW (377025) to pass Yew Tree Farm (383031, ‘Wessex Ridgeway’). At road, right (380035).

At Synderford sign, left (382037, FP, Jubilee Trail/JT), skirting water treatment plant. Cross brook; bear right up field slope with hedge on right to gap (380037, JT). On by hedge, following JT waymarks to cross brook in trees by stepping stones (376041). Left up hedge, left through hedge at top of bank (375043); right to kissing gate/KG. Follow right-hand hedge; in 200m, right (374045, KG); left up hedge. In 200m, left with hedge on left (374047); follow JT to Wheel House Lane (371048).

Left; opposite Thorncombe turning, right (366047, FP, JT) across fields to road (362053). Right past Forde Abbey gates, across River Axe. Left (362054, ‘Horseshoe Road’). In ½ mile, recross Axe (356051, YA). Follow Liberty Trail/LW and YAs clockwise round gravel excavation at Westmills Plantation (354050). Cross road (355046, ‘Forde Abbey Farm’) across field. Skirt to right round Forde Abbey Farm buildings (357042); follow farm drive. At fuel tank fork left (363037, blue arrow) across field to Horseshoe Road (366037). Right (LT). In 200m bear right along hedge (366036, FP). In 650m path descends and bends right; left here (368030, stile) to stile in conifer hedge (370030). Across recreation ground to cross road (371031), then more fields (YAs) to Thorncombe.

Lunch: Bell Inn, Winsham TA20 4HU (01460-30677)

Accommodation: Haymaker Inn, Wadeford, Chard TA20 3AP (01460-64161, thehaymakerinn.co.uk)

Info: Chard TIC (01460-260051); fordeabbey.co.uk

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


Kids on bikes came skeltering down the hill at Silverhill Wood Country Park. Young buckthorn with bright orange berries, maples, hawthorn and spruce formed a scrubby forest rich in autumn colours, with fine views opening over rolling green country.

At the summit of the hill we came to a seated figure in bronze, a miner in helmet and pit boots, holding up his Davy lamp and scanning it for signs of gas. It was the only clue that beneath the woodland and the hill itself lay the pit heap of Silverwood Colliery, one of seventy-five Nottinghamshire coal mines now closed but commemorated on a plaque below the statue.

Nottinghamshire County Council has done wonders hereabouts, greening the area’s colliery sites, turning slagheaps into woods and industrial railways into multi-user paths. The hill summit at Silverhill Wood is said to be the highest point in Nottinghamshire at 205 m/673 ft, a claim fiercely contested by several other ‘highest points’ locally. The Country Park added an extra five metres to the top of the pit heap, just to make sure.

Standing beside the bronze miner we saw Lincoln Cathedral’s towers thirty miles away on the eastern skyline, the crooked spire at Chesterfield and the outline of Bolsover Castle to the north, and north-east the slim chimney at Pleasley Pit, our next aiming point on this walk.

At the bottom of the hill we found the Teversal Track, an old railway in a tunnel of large oak, ash and beech, with views out into a landscape of dip and roll. A tremendously tall embankment crossed the tiny wriggling stream called Merril Sick, and the old line came to Pleasley Pit, closed in 1986 and now a country park and mining museum.

Unlike almost every other redundant pit in the area, Pleasley has retained its tall brick engine house, its 130-ft chimney, and its two gaunt headstocks with their winding wheels over the old shafts. As objects of industrial architecture they are stunning; as memorials to hard, productive working lives, extremely poignant.

A right-angle of two old railways led through more gently rolling countryside. The wind stripped lemon-yellow leaves from the trackside hazels and laid them on the path. We landed back at Silverhill Wood aware as never before of the roadways, levels and shafts hidden under these fields and hills.

How hard is it? 8 miles, easy, mostly flat paths and tracks

Start: Silverhill Wood Country Park car park, Silverhill Road, Fackley, Notts NG17 3JL (OS ref SK 470616)

Getting there: Bus 417 (Sutton-in-Ashfield)
Road – M1 Jct 29, A617 to Pleasley; Teversal and Fackley signed from here.

Walk (OS Explorer 269): From side of car park furthest from entrance, follow path. In 100m, left past info board, uphill to miner’s statue (471621). Down steps, left along trail. In nearly 1 mile pass between lakes (477620). Left beside lake to Teversal Track (480617,‘Pleasley 2 miles’). Left for 1¾ miles to T-junction at ‘Pleasley Country Park’ sign (495640). Right to Pleasley Pit museum (499643). Through car park; left along Pit Lane; in 100m, right along Skegby Track (501643). In a little over 2 miles at ‘Skegby Track’ sign, right (494616) onto Link Track (sign). In 1 mile at ‘Silverhill’ sign (479615) keep ahead and fork right on narrow path to road (478616). Dogleg left/right over barrier into Silverhill Wood Country Park. In 400m left at Lakes; left (477620) back to car park.

Lunch: Carnarvon Arms, Fackley Road, NG17 3JA (01623-559676, thecarnarvon.co.uk)

Accommodation: Tap Haus, 219 Leeming Lane North, Mansfield Woodhouse NG19 9EX (01623-625804, taphausmansfield.co.uk)

Pleasley Pit Mining Museum: pleasleypittrust.org.uk

Info: nottinghamshire.gov.uk

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


Aiming for the thousand-foot needle of Winter Hill TV mast on a chilly morning, we made out a network of paths coming from every direction, climbing to converge at the summit of the hill. Skylarks sang over the boggy track we chose, and meadow pipits gave out their sudden sharp ‘snip-snip’. We sat for a sip of water and a good stare round, out across the West Pennine moors, bleached by the onset of winter, opening northwards towards the distant sun-brushed hills of the Forest of Bowland.

At the summit of Winter Hill a cold wind whistled and groaned through the skeletal radio towers. To the west the promised view over Morecambe Bay, Blackpool Tower and out to the mountains of Snowdonia was hazed out to a milky blur under a streaky blue sky. Other walkers were out and about, striding purposefully across the moor.

Winter Hill has an ominous name. Memorials are widespread, one to a Scots traveller murdered here in 1838, another to the victims of an aeroplane crash in a snowstorm in 1958. Down at the southern brink of the hill we came to Two Lads, a pair of cylindrical cairns commemorating two boys who were lost here – or perhaps raised in honour of the two sons of King Edgar of the Saxons.

A broad braided track dropped down from Crooked Edge Hill to the cheerful Pike Snack Shack, where a cuppa and a sticky slab fortified us for the homeward trek. A rocky road led away west below the dark castellated bulk of the tower on Rivington Pike, an 18th-century hunting lodge, to reach the wonderful folly of the Pigeon Tower, a slender rocket of a building that called out for a Rapunzel to let down her hair. It was built by Lord Leverhulme as part of his remarkable project early last century to lay out Italianate and Japanese terraced gardens on the slopes below.

Rich men’s foibles notwithstanding, Rivington Moor and Winter Hill are democratic places. Bolton, Bury, Wigan and Blackburn lie below, the hill and its open spaces tantalisingly in sight. A mass trespass in 1896 saw 10,000 people break down private gates and occupy the ground. It would take another hundred years for the moor and hill to be declared open access land for all, but today the folk from all around can walk where they will.

How hard is it? 7½ miles; easy with one steady climb; moorland paths (can be soggy) and cobbled lanes.

Start: Black Dog Inn, Church Street, Belmont, Bolton BL7 8AB (OS ref SD 674158)

Getting there: Bus 535 (Bolton)
Road: Belmont is on A675, Bolton-Preston

Walk (OS Explorer 276): Up Church Road. In 400m, left on path round Ward’s Reservoir. In 700m, just before car park up on right, left across stream (666158). Uphill beside tumbledown wall. Where it bends left (665155), ahead up path, aiming for tall TV mast. At top of Winter Hill, bear right around fence to road (661148). Left and follow road. In ¾ mile on left bend, right at fingerpost (657136). Cross footbridge; ahead to reach Two Lads cairns on Crooked Edge Hill (655133). Right on broad path (ignore yellow arrow waymark post!), descending to Pike Cottage and Pike Snack Shack (649132). Right along stony roadway for 1¼ miles to Pigeon Tower (640143). Fork right here along stony Belmont Road for 1½ miles to meet Rivington Road (653158). Right to car park (665159) and reservoir path back to Belmont.

Lunch: Pike Snack Shack, Pike Cottage BL6 6RU (07949-338820, m.facebook.com/thepikesnackshack)

Accommodation: Black Dog Inn, Belmont (01204-811218, joseph-holt.com)

Info: visitlancashire.com; rivingtonterracedgardens.org.uk

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


A cold morning of cloud rolling low above the wintry landscape of the Berkshire Downs. Glints of blue hinted at a less gloomy afternoon as we set off from Great Shefford along the shallow valley of the River Lambourne.

At East Shefford Farm the Dutch barn was stuffed with hay for the winter. A pair of red kites hunting the valley planed with easy grace across the ploughed fields. We climbed gently on an old farm lane between fields of pale flinty soil under the reedy twittering of skylarks. When we looked round at the crest, the houses of Great Shefford had vanished, sucked down into a fold of ground by perspective.

Along a golf course hedge, through a stand of cherry trees that had carpeted the ground with their red and gold spearblade leaves, and down to Chaddleworth across paddocks where horses in padded winter coats blew jets of steam from their nostrils.

A mass dial was incised in the door jamb of St Andrew’s Church, the doorway decorated with Norman dogtooth carving. Under the tower arch some sly stone-carver had inserted a fat pagan face with a knowing grin. Superb needlework on the pulpit cloth showed a skylark rising as ecstatically as those over the fields outside, the song represented as gold flames flickering out of its wide open beak.

In medieval times a widow who was ‘unchaste’, in other words remarried, generally forfeited the rights that went with her deceased husband’s land. However, at Chaddleworth she could reclaim them on performance of a forfeit – namely, riding into the manorial court seated backwards on a black ram while chanting a ‘ribald rhyme’. I would have loved to hear that little ditty, but no-one in Chaddleworth seemed to know it.

In the parkland around Chaddleworth House we passed shaggy cattle with enormous horns, munching peacefully and scratching their necks on low-hanging branches. Out on the downs again the wind roared, seething in the beech trees and sending gold leaf showers whirling across the winter wheat.

Back in the Lambourne valley we turned along a disused railway line thick with sloes and bearded lichens to find the diminutive Church of St Thomas beside the river opposite East Shefford Farm. Decorative tiles floored the building, the walls were painted with faded texts, and a medieval Nativity fresco was surmounted protectively by a spiky sun and a crescent moon with a calm expression of absolute serenity.

How hard is it? 8½ miles; easy; field paths

Start: Great Shefford PH, Great Shefford, Hungerford RG17 7DW (OS ref SU 384752)

Getting there: Bus 4 (Newbury)
Road – Great Shefford signposted at M4, Jct 14

Walk (OS Explorer 158): Follow A338 (“Wantage”). In 350m, right (386753, “Lambourn Valley Way”/LVW). In 500m, left past barns (390749), up track. In ½ mile, right (395757, Finger Post/FP, yellow arrows) across field, then golf course to cross road (407764). On along hedge; in 900m, half-left across fields (412772) to road (411778) and Chaddleworth church. Back to road; left; in 100m, left (412778, gate, FP) across parkland. Cross road (415777) by village hall. On across field; dogleg right/left across road (414774, FP, “Waylands”). In 500m at three-finger post (412771), half-left across field to road (413767). Right to road (412762); right; left past golf clubhouse (411761). On beside golf course, then Elton Lane south for 1½ miles. Right at Elton Farm (398741); left (397743) on railway path (LVW) to Great Shefford.

Lunch: Great Shefford PH (01488-648462, thegreatshefford.com)

Accommodation: Queen’s Arms, East Garston RG17 7ET (01488-648757, queensarmseastgarston.co.uk)

Info: Hungerford TIC (01488-682419)

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


A sunny autumn morning over the Dorset hills, the grass in the pastures wet with dew. The stone-built cottages and church tower of Powerstock looked across a shadowed valley to Nettlecombe, sunlit on the ridge opposite.

From the fields beyond, we looked ahead to see Eggardon Hill rising on the south-west skyline, an upturned boat on a green sea of high ground. We crossed the old railway line below Nettlecombe, where a cheerful man with a car boot full of yapping terriers was whistling for a stray. It scampered up, frisking and unrepentant. ‘Getting his own back,’ said his owner, fondly, ‘because he didn’t get a walk yesterday.’

This is Thomas Hardy country, a landscape of knolls and chalky downland, promontories, dimpled ridges and hunting fences in the well-grown hedges. In the south-west a streak of gold showed where the cliffs of the Jurassic coast were crumbling. A late-hatched red admiral butterfly basked on the cobbles of the field track, where puddles from last night’s rain glinted in the strong low sunlight.

Down on Spyway Road we turned past a thatched longhouse and the lonely Spyway Inn before following a bridleway past South Eggardon Farm. Back in the 18th century Isaac Gulliver, King of the Dorset Smugglers, owned the farm. He planted a clump of pine trees on Eggardon Hill as a landmark for his fleet of fifteen luggers bringing silk, lace, tea and gin untaxed from the Continent. The trees were felled by order of the authorities, and Gulliver himself became a respectable citizen. He took up the banking trade, and when he died in 1822 he left an estate worth £5 million in today’s money.

Now the crumpled ramparts of the Iron Age hill fort on Eggardon Hill stood in full view, a little line of limestone outcrops at one end. We climbed through sheep pastures where mistle thrushes, newly arrived for winter, pattered and halted with heads held high as they surveyed us warily.

A fenced path led to the hilltop, its smooth flanks hollowed and velvety, seamed like corduroy with hundreds of erosion terraces. Handsome bronze and white cattle moved slowly off in front of us, as a superb prospect opened southward, the sea showing grey-blue in the dips of the cliffs.

A succession of green lanes brought us back to Powerstock, from where Eggardon Hill resumed its modest status as one bump among many in this steep green country.

How hard is it? 7 miles; moderate; field paths, hill tracks

Start: St Mary’s Church, Powerstock, Bridport DT6 3TD (OS ref SY517961)

Getting there: Powerstock is signed from A3066 (Bridport-Beaminster)

Walk (OS Explorer 117): Pass 3 Horseshoes pub. In 100m, right downhill (‘Nettlecombe’); path to road (517956). Left past inn; in 100m, right past No 3; in 50m, left across playing field. Cross road (520953); cross field to bench; down woodland path; cross old railway (520950). Field track for 1¼ miles to road (528933). Left past Spyway Inn. Left (530932) up drive. At South Eggardon House, right on bridleway up to road (545939). Left; in 350m left (546942) for circuit of Eggardon Hill. Back at ‘National Trust’ gate (544945), left (gate) across field to lane (546946); left. In ¾ mile, lane bends right (536952); ahead here (green lane). In ½ mile track bends left (529955); ahead (yellow arrow/YA) to cross old railway (523956). In 200m, right (522956, stile) downhill. At bottom dogleg left/right (521956) over footbridge. Streamside path, then lane up to road (520960). Left to Powerstock.

Lunch/Accommodation: Marquis of Lorne, Nettlecombe DT6 3SY (01308-485236, themarquisoflorne.co.uk); Three Horseshoes, Powerstock DT6 3TD (01308-485328, palmersbrewery.com)

Info: visit-dorset.com