Christopher Somerville

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


A cold morning in midwinter after a night of wild weather across the Lake District fells and valleys. The weatherman said all was set to clear to sunshine by midday, but it was still blowing a hooley on the tops as we dipped down the narrow mountain road to Buttermere village.

From the tiny settlement on its isthmus between Buttermere and Crummock Water, tough guys and gals wrapped in cocoons of winter clothing were heading for the heights. We were after something more modest today, the low-level circuit of Buttermere that’s one of the peachiest short winter walks in the Lakes.

We ducked into the diminutive Church of St James at the entrance to the village to gaze out of the window dedicated to supreme guidebook writer and illustrator Alfred Wainwright. The glass is perfectly blank; no need for any coloured image when the window frames a perfect view of Haystacks, the Master’s favourite peak where his ashes were scattered.

Broad-faced Herdwick sheep in the valley-bottom pastures saw us off around the lake, staring as though they’d never seen a human being before. At the far end of Buttermere, Fleetwith Pike rose magnificently, a sharp angle of fell running up to a peak with the knobbly spine of Haystacks alongside.

Soon these easterly fells were hidden by the lemon-yellow larches and wind-tattered silver birches and sycamores of Burtness Wood. Sourmilk Gill came rushing down its rocky cleft with tremendous noise and presence, a tumble of multiple strings of white water issuing from invisible Bleaberry Tarn high overhead. Up there the crumpled peaks marched southeast along the flanks of the valley – Red Pike and High Stile beside us, Grasmoor and Robinson opposite, two thousand feet above.

Every hillside stream was a torrent today, sluicing over mats of moss and liverworts in miniature waterfalls, coursing across the path. But as we reached the lake head the promised sun materialised over the shoulder of High Crag, flooding the fells with brilliant gold light.

From Gatesgarth Farm and the hump-backed valley road we took the homeward path along the northern shore. A flock of Canada geese with white chinstraps and shirt fronts bobbed on the lake, discussing our passing with hen-like clucks and coos. A rock scramble and a short splashy tunnel through an outcrop, and we descended to Wilkinsyke Farm at Buttermere village, as eager for tea and stickies as though we’d truly been storming the heights.



How hard is it? 5 miles; easy gradients, but rough underfoot; lakeside tracks.
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Start: Buttermere village car park, CA13 9UZ (OS ref NY 174169)

Getting there: Bus 77A from Keswick.
Road – Buttermere is signed from Borrowdale (B5289) and from B5292 at Braithwaite (A66 Keswick – Cockermouth).

Walk (OS Explorer OL4): From car park, through kissing gate; right along path (‘Lake’, then ‘Buttermere’). In 600m at gate with NT contribution box (174164), right; continue on track along south side of Buttermere for 2 miles to Gatesgarth Farm at lake head (195149). Left along B5289 (take care! narrow road with bends); in 600m, left off road (192154, fingerpost ‘Buttermere village’). Follow north side path. In 700m, short rock scramble at 187158 approx; short tunnel follows. At foot of lake, keep ahead at fork (178164, fingerposts) to Wilkinsyke Farm and road (176169). Left to car park.

Lunch: Syke Farm Tea Room, Wilkinsyke, Buttermere (01768-770277)

Accommodation: Bridge Hotel, Buttermere (01768-770252, thebridgehotel.uk); Buttermere Court Hotel, Buttermere (01768-770253, buttermerecourthotel.co.uk).

Info:
South side path, through rough and rocky in places, is recommended for wheelchair users in ‘Accessible Walks in the Lake District & Cumbria’ by Mike Routledge (Pathfinder Guides; pathfinderwalks.co.uk)

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


It was scarf and frozen fingers weather over the Wiltshire Downs on a murky, muted morning. As we left Bishopstone the village children were prancing to school past the thatched houses with their walls of clunch or chalk blocks. ‘David Beal, Master of Thatch’ proclaimed a board outside a cottage, with the proof of the pudding on show all through the twisty byways of Bishopstone.

Chaffinches sang us off along an ivy-tangled lane that led to a dry valley with medieval strip lynchets lying in parallel ledges along the slopes. We threaded our way among a flock of recumbent sheep, the gently rising track turning from grass green to chalky white as it reached the Ridgeway on the crest ahead.

The ancient ridge track, a dozen paces wide, was potholed and puddled. A blackbird sang with piercing sweetness from a hawthorn twig just above our heads, so close and unafraid that we could see the working of its throat and the trembling of its bright orange beak with every phrase.

A line of leafless beeches kept the wind from the sheds at Ridgeway Farm. Here we turned south past a pig farm, the pink incumbents scampering away as though stung simultaneously into flight. Solitary crows stalked the plough furrows around the dishearteningly named Starveall Farm, and a shaggy-legged horse with a white nose blaze came up to accept a handful of grass from the greener side of the fence.

At the top of the track we turned east with red kites cutting circles overhead. There were big views to far downland ridges north and south, and as we descended the slope of Idstone Down a fine prospect ahead to the tall white shape of Ashdown House, a grand hunting lodge built in the 17th century for Elizabeth Stuart, elder sister of King Charles I and sometime Queen of Bohemia.

Elizabeth had a curious life, targeted by the Gunpowder Plotters at nine years old to be a hostage and puppet Catholic monarch, then in her teenage years as marriage fodder for the European monarchies. She was nobody’s stooge, however, but a highly educated and accomplished person with a passion for literature and language.

We passed the clamorous rookery in Swinley Copse and followed a wide valley track up to turn for home along the Ridgeway. A permissive path led us aside down a steep, twisting valley, quiet and beautiful, and we beat the rain into Bishopstone by a very short head.

How hard is it? 7¼ miles; easy; downland tracks

Start: Royal Oak, Bishopstone, Swindon SN6 8PP (OS ref SU 247837)

Getting there: Bus 47 (Lambourn–Swindon)
Road: signed from A419, Swindon-Cricklade (M4, Jct 15)

Walk: Between Bishopstone Stores and Village Hall, take pathway (‘Ridgeway’) to road (247836). Right; right up Nell Hill. In 150m fork right (‘Ridgeway’). Follow ‘Ridgeway’ signs up valley to The Ridgeway (249823). Left; in ⅓ mile at Ridgeway Farm, right (253827, ‘Public Right of Way’) along track. In ¾ mile climb slope; at top, left at track crossing (259810); in 100m, fork left (260809, arrows). In ¼ mile through gate (265809, blue arrow); on along fence. In ½ mile bear half left (273810, ‘Ashdown’) to cross stile. Keep same direction downhill, pass Swinley Copse (276816); in 100m in valley bottom, left on grassy track (277818). In 1⅓ mile, left along The Ridgeway (264835). In ⅓ mile, right over stile (260832, ‘Permissive Path’). After next stile, bear left down Eastbrook Valley. At bottom, through squeeze stile (251834); down track to road (249837); left (take care!) into Bishopstone.

Lunch/Accommodation: Royal Oak, Bishopstone (01793-790481, helenbrowningsorganic.co.uk) – superb throughout.

Info: bishopstoneandhintonparva.org

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


A misty, moisty morning in the Chiltern Hills, with a wintry nip in the air. A group of hikers were enjoying thermos coffee and tupperware cake in the porch of the Church of St Mary le Moor at Cadmore End. Inside, strong colours glowed from the Victorian glass in the lancet windows, and a statuette on the font cover depicted a mother offering up her baby to the country in its hour of need – a very poignant memorial to First World War patriotic sentiment.

Mist hung in the trees and puddles made obstacle courses of the chalk and gravel tracks through the hills. A flock of starlings skimmed round in close formation before settling on a field to pick insects and worms from the sodden furrows. The countryside was a palette of washy greens, oranges and browns, pale and insubstantial in the moisture-thickened air.

In the margins of Hanger Wood a squirrel leaped overhead, knocking raindrops down to rattle among the hazel leaves. Acorns carpeted the path, none so much as nibbled. Maybe squirrels dine on caviar in the Chilterns.

Down in the valley by Harecramp Cottages a fleet of Land Rovers bounced towards their day’s shooting. I followed an old green lane among hips and haws, then climbed a steep little path to emerge at the crest of Turville Hill beside the white smock and skeletal sails of Cobstone Windmill, cleverly sited to catch every available wind.

Down below, Turville stretched along the valley bottom, picture perfect in mellow red brick. Here played out the extraordinary story of farmhand’s daughter Ellen Sadler, who fell asleep at home in Turville in 1871, aged 11, and could not be woken. Doctors, clerics, newspaper reporters and nosy celebrities attended her bedside, expecting to catch her out as a fraud, but nothing disturbed her Sleeping Beauty slumber until she awoke naturally some nine years later at the age of twenty.

There’s a gruesome fascination in the village inn’s name, the Bull & Butcher. The signboard displays a manically grinning butcher, cleaver in hand, with an apprehensive bull looking on. The pub itself proved warm, beamy, brick-floored and full of dogs – just the place for a nice pint of Brakspear’s golden nectar before the homeward plod by way of charming Fingest and the hollow bridleway through Hanger Wood.

How hard is it? 5 miles; easy; one short steep descent.

Start: Cadmore End car park, HP14 3PE (OS ref SU 786926)

Getting there: Car park is off B482 just east of Cadmore End school, between Stokenchurch and High Wycombe.

Walk (OS Explorer 171): cross road and green; left along lane. Opposite church (784925), right on track (‘Bridleway’). In 250m fork right by spinney (782925). In 450m at foot of slope, fork left into trees (778926, white arrow). In 700m cross road (773923); cross field to style (770925); left down lane. In valley bottom, left on green lane (767924). In ⅔ mile, nearing road, hairpin right (774917, yellow arrow/YA); in 50m fork left uphill to road (770915). Dogleg right/left past Cobstone Windmill; steeply down to Turville. 50m before road, left (769917), kissing gate/KG); half left to KG (771911); on to cross road (774910, ‘Chiltern Way’/CW). In 100m fork right (775911, YA, CW) to road (777910). Left; left up Chequers Lane; right by Sundawn * house (777911, fingerpost). In 100m fork right. In 250m, KG (780913); ahead up lane; in 300m fork left uphill (783914, blue arrow) to Cadmore End.

Lunch: Bull & Butcher, Turville RG9 6QU (01491-638283, thebullandbutcher.com) or Chequers PH, Fingest RG9 6QD (01491-756330, chequersfingest.co.uk)

Accommodation: Chilterns Fox, Ibstone Rd, HP14 3XT (01494-504264, thechilternsfox.co.uk)

Info: chilternsaonb.org

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


Unseasonably warm, unseasonably sunny – so said everyone in the car park as they prepared for their Sunday constitutionals across Haddon Hill, a fine double hump of sandstone standing proud on the south-eastern edge of Exmoor.

Once out on the open moor there were dark shaggy Exmoor ponies cropping the grass among the bracken, stonechats with black caps and white clerical collars calling wheesht-chip-chip! from the tips of gorse bushes, and a wonderful view north down to Wimbleball Lake lying as smooth as iced glass.

On top of the trig pillar at the summit of Haddon Hill sat a tiny boy clutching a woollen rabbit. His father teetered a-tiptoe behind him on the pillar, expounding on the remarkable view from the Exmoor outliers in the north to the craggy profile of distant Dartmoor away to the south.

I followed a rubbly track steeply down through a bronze sea of bracken towards the lake. Autumn seemed on the cusp of handing over to winter with the silver birch already bare, leaves of toffee and lemon hue lining the verges of the paths, and a robin giving out that sharp silvery burst of song so characteristic of woodland at the dead end of the year.

The dam wall and control house of Wimbleball Lake are an essay in stark brutalist concrete, in striking contrast to the naturalistic curves of water and woodland. A boy came riding his bike across the dam, wheelie-ing all the way and grinning like a prancing cowboy at a rodeo.

Down in the depths of Hartford Bottom, the densely wooded combe beyond, I trudged the muddy track from the few cottages of Hartford past the bubbling tanks of a fishery and on beside the meanders of the fast-rushing River Haddeo. A beautiful green cleft in the hills, mossy and full of the noise of lively water.

At Bury a car moved slowly between the trim stone cottages before inching across the village ford. I crossed the river alongside by way of a handsome old packhorse bridge with humpy back and pointed arches. Then it was a long winding climb from the sunny valley up to the open moor again under the overarching beeches of shaly, slippery Haddon Lane, half steep holloway, half trickling stream.

How hard is it? 6½ miles; moderate; bridleway road from reservoir dam down to Hartford is slippery; muddy between Hartford and Bury, and in Haddon Lane.

Start: Haddon Hill car park, near Dulverton TA4 2DS (OS ref SS 970284)

Getting there: Car park is off B3190 (Watchet-Bampton) between Ralegh’s Cross and Morebath.

Walk (OS Explorer OL9): Through gate at NW (top left) corner of car park. Bear right away from trees; follow main stony track gradually uphill to pass trig pillar (962286). Continue along track; in 300m fork right on grass path; in 150m sharp right (959286) on track heading for lake. In ½ mile fork left (967288) downhill past reservoir to road (969288). Left downhill to pass dam (965292). Continue downhill (‘Hartford ½’); at road, left (960294) through Hartford and on (‘Bury 2’). At Bury, left across bridge (945274). In 150m, just past Chilcotts house, left up Haddon Lane (‘Haddon Hill 1¼’). At Haddon Farm (955281) dogleg left/right onto track (‘Haddon Hill’). In 400m fork right through trees (958281, ‘Bridleway Upton’). In 100m into field; ahead through gate; half left up field slope to gate at far top left (962282). Forestry track to car park.

Lunch: Picnic

Accommodation: Ralegh’s Cross Inn, Brendon Hill TA23 0LN (01984-640343, raleghs-cross.co.uk)

Info: visit-exmoor.co.uk

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


A grey and blowy day across the Dorset coast and the deep-sunk Vale of Marshwood. Up at Lambert’s Castle the beeches thrashed and hissed, shedding their leaves downwind like flocks of birds.

A steep path took me down the fields to Roughmoor, where a sow and her three pink-and-black piglets were blissfully crunching up the beechmast fallen from the trees. They snorted and grunted and raised their snouts hopefully as I leaned on their fence, but I had nothing in my pockets to add relish to their feast.

Marshwood gives the impression of great depth and remoteness, a green mosaic of woodland and sloping pastures that Thomas Hardy would recognise today. At Roughmoor Cottage a splashy ford led to a holloway rustling with bracken and hart’s tongue ferns.

Up at Higher Stonebarrow the wind roared in the beeches that held the hedge-banks together with the grip of their root tangles. A basso profundo moan came from the high tension cables that crossed the valley. But once down in the squelchy green lane beyond Sheepwash Farm I was walking far beneath the rumpus of the gale. At the ford below Little Coombe the swollen stream gushed freely among horsetails and filled my boots, one of the myriad waters that once filled the carp pools dug by medieval monks at Fishpond Bottom.

A network of old cart tracks threads through Marshwood Vale. I saw no-one as I followed the sunken path to Little Combe and Great Combe, isolated farmsteads on green slopes under the grey sky. A glimpse of the roofs of Charmouth lining their cliff gap to the south with a wedge of wind-whitened sea beyond. Then I turned up straggling Long Lane to cross the earthworks of Coney’s Castle.

Two Iron Age hill forts, orientated south-north, dominate the eastern flank of Fishpond Bottom – the modest rise of Coney’s Castle, and to the north the bigger stronghold of Lambert’s Castle on its long slim promontory.

I’d just finished re-reading Bernard Cornwell’s sword-slashing King Arthur trilogy, ‘The Warlord Chronicles’. Romantic fantasy was irresistible here on the windy ramparts. I strode them like a warrior, wolfskin cloak flying free, sword in hand, as I prepared to repel the Saxon hordes massing in Marshwood Vale below.

How hard is it? 5¼ miles; moderate. Some boggy green lanes, fords.

Start: Lambert’s Castle car park, near Lyme Regis EX13 5XL (OS ref SY 367987)

Getting there: Off B3165 between Marshwood and Raymond’s Hill (A35)

Walk (OS Explorer 116): Back along drive. In 100m, opposite gate on left, right down path. Cross B3165 (366988); down steps; kissing gate; half left down to gate (365989). Right down drive. At Roughmoor Cottage cross ford (363991); up holloway to Higher Stonebarrow. Left up drive; at start of road, left (357990; gate with red dog notice). Bridleway bounded by hedge, then walls to cross B3165 (360987). Stile. Down right edge of field to cables; follow them left to green lane (363983). Right; in 50m, left (stile); right along upper edge of woodland on right. In 250m at telephone pole (363980), sharp left down through trees to road (364981); right. 50m past Sheepwash Cottage, left (364977) along wet green lane to Little Coombe Farm. 100m beyond, right (369975) for ⅔ mile past Higher Coombe and Great Coombe farms to Long Lane road (373968). Left for ¾ mile to Peter’s Gore crossroads (371981). Ahead (‘Marshwood’); in 20m, right past Lambert’s Castle/Wessex Ridgeway signs. North across Lambert’s Castle for ½ mile; at northern edge (372991) turn back along western rim to car park.

Lunch/Accommodation: Hunter’s Lodge, Raymond’s Hill EX13 5SZ (01297-33286, hunterslodgeinn.co.uk)

Info: marshwoodvale.com