Christopher Somerville

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

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The two-car train rattled and squeaked its way out of Golspie, heading north-east to Brora along the outer edge of the Moray Firth. The woods and fields of the Sutherland coast flickered past the windows in bright morning sunshine, the winter sun casting a silver track across a sea as thick and slow-wrinkling as oil.

Setting off to walk back from Brora’s neat little station, we passed the village’s barrel-roofed ice house, and the tiny fishing pier laden with crabbing creels. Down on the shore we headed south-west along a pebbly strand that soon turned rocky, with slabs of pale ochre sandstone moulded into sculptural shapes by the sea. A pair of black-tailed godwits with bills like slender broadswords stalked the tideline, and a flight of oystercatchers took off in a scrabble of piping and wailing.

The pebbles of the shore were wonderfully coloured – orange and jet, speckly grey and jade green. Among them our boots scraped and tinkled, the noise drawing the round-eyed stares of a coven of grey seals. They lay as fat and glistening as slugs, their hind flippers twitched up like bluetit tails, waiting out the falling tide, each on its chosen slab of rock.

We crossed a skein of fords below Sputie, whose double waterfall cascaded down the cliff into a smoking pool. Beyond the fall the coast took a more westerly curve, opening up a handsome prospect of snowy mountains beyond the long east-trending arm of the lower Moray coast.

Above the shore stood a thick circle of stone walls, the remnant of the 2,000-year-old broch or Pictish tower known as Carn Liath, ‘the grey stone-heap’. Beyond again, the roofs and turrets of Dunrobin Castle rose above the treetops, a fairytale castle fit for a sleeping princess. This classic Scottish Baronial mansion was built for the 1st Duke of Sutherland. The Duke gained immortal notoriety for the harshness with which his orders of eviction were carried out on the hill herders and subsistence farmers of his enormous estates early in the 19th century.

Many of those clearance victims ended up on the coast at Golspie, forced to adopt new lives as fisherfolk. The 1st Duke stands in gigantic statue form at the summit of Ben Bhraggie behind the village, still dominant over the coasts and hills he once controlled with an iron hand.
Start: Brora railway station, KW98 6PY (OS ref 907041).

Getting there: Rail to Brora. Bus: service X99 (Inverness-Thurso). Road – Brora is on A9 between Golspie and Helmsdale.

Walk (8 miles, easy, OS Explorer 441): From Brora station, left along A9; 2nd left down Harbour Road. In 300m, bear left and follow ‘Back Shore & Beach Car Park’ to slipway down to shore (909035). Right along shore for 3¼ miles to Carn Liath broch (870014). Continue along shore for 1¼ miles. Opposite Dunrobin Castle walled garden, right inland (852006) up inclined road. Near top, opposite castle, left (850008, waymark post) on path through castle woodlands (occasional ‘village’ signs) for ¾ mile to cross Golspie Burn footbridge by Tower Lodge (839002). Left along shore path for 1 mile; 200m beyond pier, right inland up roadway (828995) to Ferry Road (825996). In 200m, left at B&B sign up laneway; right to Golspie station (824998). Return to Brora by train.

Conditions: Best done on a falling tide; some slippery rocks on shore

Lunch/Accommodation: Royal Marine Hotel, 7 Golf Road, Brora KW9 6QS (01408-621252; royalmarinebrora.com)

Info: Inverness TIC (01463-252401)
visitscotland.com; satmap.com; ramblers.org.uk

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

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A jaunt to Christmas Common with the festive season just around the corner, on the coldest and brightest morning of the year. Ice in the puddles, our breath like smoke on the still air, and a high-flying jet soundless ploughing quadruple furrows of pure white across the blue field of the sky.

From the edge of the escarpment we got one of those views that makes you want to come and live right here, right now – the steep wooded slope dropping away to run out into mile after mile of sunlit Oxfordshire plain, a wide world dressed in the pale colours of winter.

A green woodpecker emitted its sharp, quacking alarm call as it saw off two unwanted intruders, a buzzard and a red kite. The buzzard dived sulkily back into the trees, but the kite sideslipped and climbed to resume its graceful balancing on the cold air above the hills.

At the foot of the escarpment we turned along the stony track known variously as Ridgeway, or Icknield Way, or simply and accurately, the Old Road. Old man’s beard and scarlet bryony berries made witches necklaces in its hedges, fieldfares and mistle thrushes flew straight and level out of the scrubby trees, and the low sun laid stripes of green and gold across the ancient ruts and flints.

By Dame Alice Farm (named after Alice de la Pole, Duchess of Suffolk and Geoffrey Chaucer’s grand-daughter) and Dumble Dore (possibly not named after the Hogwarts headmaster) we made our way into the Chiltern woods that so thickly blanket these chalky hills. Fallen leaves of poplar and beech made a silver and gold carpet to shuffle through.

A winter silence fell over the afternoon. The chill air in the damp hollows of the woods nipped our fingers and noses. Long-tailed tits swung and squeaked from tree to tree, the only singers in these sunlit woods.

As the day began to darken into dusk we turned along Hollandridge Lane, an ancient packhorse route across the Chilterns, for a last brisk mile to Christmas Common, with thoughts of a Christmas noggin at the Fox and Hounds to spur us on.

Start: NT car park, Christmas Common, Watlington, Oxon OX49 5HS (OS ref SU710936)

Getting there: Car park is on Hill Road, 2 miles east of Watlington.

Walk: (8¼ miles, easy with some short steep climbs, OS Explorer 171): Right along Hill Road (please take care). At junction turn left; in 50m, left (‘Oxfordshire Way’/OW). In 2nd field, don’t turn left through kissing gate (712937); keep ahead downhill to turn left on OW. In ¾ mile, left along Ridgeway (703945). In 1¼ miles left off Ridgeway at Lys Farmhouse (690929) up driveway. Pass Dame Alice Farm; in another 250m, left (692922); ‘W11’ and white arrow/WA on tree) to B480 at Dumble Dore (698926).

Right; in 50m, left (stile) on field path with hedge on right. In 500m through gate (702923, WA, yellow arrow/YA); on through woods. In 500m ahead through 2 gates (705920, blue arrow/BA). In 100m fork left (‘W15, No Riding’). In 400m cross road at Greenfield (711919). Pass barn (BA) and on. Follow BA for 700m to valley bottom. Left here (713911, ‘W19’, WA). In 400m, left at path crossing onto Chiltern Way/CW (717910, BA).

In 150m fork right (bent WA) and follow WA and CW through trees. In 550m cross valley floor (722913); climb far slope (‘PS8’, CW, WA), keeping gully close on left, to leave wood by stile (725915). Forward to Hollandridge Lane (726916); left for 1 mile. At houses on left opposite Prior’s Grove, left (717929, Oxfordshire Way). In 30m fork right just inside wood (OW); follow WAs to road (714930). Right past Fox and Hounds PH; in 300m, left (714934, ‘Watlington’) along Hill Road to car park.

Lunch: Fox and Hounds, Christmas Common (01491-612599, topfoxpub.co.uk)

Accommodation: Fat Fox Inn, 13 Shirburn Street, Watlington OX49 5BU
(01491-613040; thefatfoxinn.co.uk)

Info: Henley-on-Thames TIC (01491-578034); chilternsaonb.org, chilternsociety.org.uk
visitengland.com; satmap.com; ramblers.org.uk

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

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Half a dozen red kites were wheeling over the village hall car park at Harewood. They swooped down on their crooked wings, seeming almost close enough to touch, wailing as they showed off their colours of russet and cream. ‘Lady in the village feeds them,’ said Keith at the Muddy Boots café. ‘They know it’s nearly lunchtime.’

It was an auspicious start to our walk through the broad acres of Harewood Park, landscaped in the 1770s with a sculptor’s eye by Capability Brown.

‘The pleasure grounds and gardens rare
Laid out, by Mr Brown, with utmost care…
Though both, which now such beauty yield,
Were lately but a furrow’d field.’

Thus the author of ‘The Tourist’s Companion,’ surveying Harewood Park fifty years after Brown first started work. On this cold afternoon, two centuries later, we saw the great landscaper’s vision matured to perfection – magnificent oaks, Spanish chestnuts and limes shading the artful slopes and folds of ground where red stags grazed together like contented clubmen.

Beyond Harewood the manipulated landscape gave way to a ridged countryside of pastures where weather-stained sheep cropped the grass. Birds flocked together, obedient to the winter imperative to keep close and survive – giant clouds of pigeons across the sky, rooks in the stubble, and a marvellous congregation of 200 lapwings, stabbing for worms in the rain-softened furrows of a field among imperturbable ewes.

We climbed a zigzag lane to a ridge with a northward view towards the far distant fells of the Yorkshire Dales. At our feet rolled the River Wharfe – not the noisy young river familiar to us from walks in Upper Wharfedale, skittish over a shallow stony bed, but a slow-flowing adult river through these lowland fields. Uprooted willows and tangles of twigs caught in the bankside branches told of the Wharfe’s capacity for springtime flooding even here, far down the dale.

We turned west towards Harewood along the Wharfe, past Netherby Deep with its hidden whirlpool and reputed thirty foot drop in the river bed. On the bronze-brown surface there was no hint of such subaqueous drama – just the eddy of a turning fish, and the patter of the last willow leaves of the year as they dropped into the river.

Start: Village Hall car park, Church Lane, Harewood, W Yorks LS17 9LJ (OS ref SE 321453) – £2 all day

Getting there: Bus 36 (Leeds-Harrogate)
Road – A1(M), Jct 45; A 659 Otley road, west to Harewood.

Walk: (10¼ miles, parkland, green lanes, field paths; Explorer 289). From car park, right past lodge (fingerpost), following Ebor Way. In nearly 1 mile, left at 4-finger post (307450). Pass Home Farm (306447). Beyond brick garden wall and cattle grid, right (307441), ‘bridleway’). Pass Carr House; into woods; in 250m, by telegraph pole on right, left (303438) up sunken trackway (unmarked) to join waymarked Leeds Country Way/LCW. Follow LCW for 1½ miles to cross A61 (325431). Follow road (‘Wike’); in 650m, left (331428, fingerpost) on green lane. Follow LCW for 1½ miles, passing Biggin Farm (342430). Pass Gateon House Farm; in another 200m, left (352436, ‘bridleway’ fingerpost) off LCW. Green lane north to road (353442); left to cross A659 (346451); driveway past Fairfield Farm house and barns, then field path descending to River Wharfe (346462). Left on Ebor Way for 2¼ miles back to Harewood.

Lunch: Muddy Boots Café, Harewood Village Hall (07742-248916) – open daily.

Accommodation: Wood Hall Hotel and Spa, Trip Lane, Linton, Wetherby, W Yorks LS22 4JA (01937-587271, handpickedhotels.co.uk) – The setting of this hotel, in broad grounds and with a fabulous view, makes it ideal for a winter weekend break. It’s warm and welcoming, a touch of luxury for a special occasion. Plenty of walks nearby to sharpen an appetite for some excellent cooking, too.

Info: harewood.org; visitengland.com; satmap.com; ramblers.org.uk

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

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Wall-to-wall blue sky over the north coast of Jersey – and an icy east wind, too, cutting across the rocky bay of Rozel. We leaned on the kiosk counter of the Hungry Man, munching bacon baps, fuel for a wintry walk along the cliffs.

Up on the coast path the wind snatched at the tree tops and shoved us brusquely along. A pale mauve haze hung in the north, softening the outlines of Alderney and Sark. A tangle of tide rips cut across the kingfisher-blue sea, a winter view in a million.

In Bouley Bay the gale tore at the sycamores and ilex trees overhanging the rubbly coast path, and the restless sea sucked at the granite cliffs with a curious jingling roar. Credulous folk once believed it was the sound of the Black Dog of Bouley, a monstrous mythic hound with eyes like cartwheels, dragging his chain around the Bouley cliffs. Better to stay indoors by night and not risk meeting the Black Dog – so said the smugglers, and the locals were happy to obey.

The Victorian fort of L’Etaquerel lay in a dramatic cliff-edge location. It was built in the 1830s to keep out the French. They never came, but a hundred years later the Germans invaded the Channel Islands. Round the far side of Bouley Bay, down in the sheltered cleft of Le Petit Port, we found a simple granite monument recorded the death of Captain Philip Ayton, a British commando killed during an Allied raid on the occupied island at Christmas 1943.

From the rock pinnacles on the headland of La Belle Hougue we looked back to see the haze lifting from Alderney. Soon we made out, far to the east, the lonely reef of Les Écréhous, studded with tiny fishermen’s huts, white cubes that seemed to float unsupported on the intense blue of the sea.

On a rock in the bay of Le Havre Giffard a cormorant stretched its neck skyward, attempting to gobble down a fish before a marauding black-backed gull could snatch it away. We passed the pepperpot turret of the promontory fort of La Crête, and headed downhill towards the sprinkled houses and grey cliffs of Bonne Nuit Bay. Here a merman once turned himself into a white stallion for love of a beautiful Jersey maid. So local stories say – and they never lie, do they?

Start: Hungry Man Kiosk, Rozel Bay, Jersey JE3 5BN (OS ref 696545)

Getting there: From St Helier – Bus 3, St Helier-Apple Cottage bus stop (5 mins walk to Rozel). Return: Bus 4 Bonne Nuit-St Helier.
Road: From St Helier, A6 to Maufant; B46 to Durrell Wildlife Park; left on B31; in 150m, right on Rue du Pot du Rocher, then La Route du Cotes du Nord to Rozel. Return, Bonne Nuit-Rozel – Bus 4 and 3, as above.

Walk (6½ miles; rugged coast path, many steps; Jersey Leisure 1:25,000 map): Head back along Rozel harbour. Up road. At Rozel Tea Room (694544), right up Rue du Câtel. In 600m, fork right (691545) to car park. Bear left (west) along coast path (690548). In 4 miles, below La Belle Hougue headland, path splits (656562); both paths leads to La Crête Fort (647560) and Bonne Nuit harbour (641561).

Lunch: Hungry Man Kiosk, Rozel Bay (01534-863227, facebook.com/thehungrymanjersey; NB closed Mondays in winter); Bonne Nuit Beach Café (01534-861656, bonnenuitbeachcafe.co.uk)

Accommodation: Atlantic Hotel, St Brelade, Jersey JE3 8HE (01534-744101, theatlantichotel.com) – extremely comfortable hotel with wonderful food.

Info: Jersey TIC (01534-859000); jersey.com; satmap.com; ramblers.org.uk

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

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Ill-fated, black-eyed little Anne Boleyn lived as a child in the north Norfolk countryside at Blickling Hall. But the Tudor mansion she knew is not the one we admired as we crunched down the grave drive – these pepper-pot turrets and huge central clock belong to the following century, as do the curly Dutch gables.

Blickling Hall is magnificent, and so are its widespread grounds. We followed a waymarked walk which skirted the inverted comma of the ornamental lake. Storm-splintered cedars spread their wide dark skirts in the pastures, and the carcases of dead oaks lay as pale and massive as elephant corpses among the long grasses.

We passed a signature beech, its smooth grey bark incised with lovers’ names and initials – SDF & Di, AW loves BW, Olly hearts Dolly. A cold west wind drove wavelets against the northern shoreline of the lake, where we took to well-trodden tracks among fields full of the glinting leaves of sugar beet.

Boardwalks spanned the squelching woodland of Moorgate Carrs. We crossed the dimpling water of the River Bure where whorled mint gave out a savour half minty, half sharp. The blackberries in the green lane hedge were sharp on the tongue, too.

In the corner of a field by a margin planted to please the palates of pheasants with goldenrod, mayweed and purple brassicas, we lay on our backs for half an hour for the pure pleasure of watching the sky. Then it was up and on, heading south through pastures grown tufty and lumpen. We recrossed the Bure, a skein of rushy watercourses dried to trickles in the grass where tangled curls of water plantain pushed up their flowers, each with its three pale blue petals.

From the southern skirts of Itteringham a dusty lane ran east between stubble fields. Pheasant poults went scurrying away up the rows, too flustered to feed, too young to fly. The wind rose and shoved at our backs, and we were glad to get into the shelter of Blickling Park’s Great Wood.

On a grassy ride in the middle of the wood we came on a bizarre structure, a sharply pointed pyramid as tall as a house. Over the eastern portal posed a fine stone stag, brandishing real antlers. Within this eccentric mausoleum John Hobart, 2nd Earl of Buckingham, lies alongside his two wives.

The plaque on the western face of the pyramid, topped by a great bull, seemed to suggest that the Earl had married his own daughter. Perhaps I misunderstood it. In any case, I can report that the north- and south-facing openings of the tomb make great echo chambers. They allow one to sing harmonies with oneself, to truly eerie effect.

Start: NT car park, Blickling Hall, Aylsham, Norfolk NR11 6NF (OS ref TG 176286)

Getting there: Blickling Hall is on B1354 Saxthorpe road, signed from Aylsham (A140 Norwich-Cromer)

Walk (7 miles, easy, OS Explorer 252): From car park walk down road to Blickling Hall. Down drive towards house; just before buildings on right, turn right through hedge, up steps. Keep right of Courtyard Bookshop; half right to map notice; from here follow waymarked Estate Walk (blue arrows). At top of lake (179295), left along gravel path. In 150m fork right (orange arrows). In 400m, right at 3-finger post (174295, ‘public footpath’).

In 500m, right on road at Moorgate (174300); in 100m, left (yellow arrow/YA). Boardwalk crosses Moorgate Carrs and River Bure (175301). In 250m path turns left along field edges (YA), and on to road at Fring Wood (174308). Left, in 700m, fork right (167308) up drive past White House Farm; on along field edge tracks westward for ½ mile. Descend through gate to broad green strip at The Rookery (152309). Don’t go through gate with YA opposite; bear left along wood edge; in 100m through gate, follow hedge on left southward for 2 long fields / ½ mile to cross several channels of River Bure and reach road opposite Orchard Farm (154299).

Left, in ½ mile on left bend (161297), ahead through Woodgate car park; past 5-bar gate, follow stony track on outskirts of wood (orange arrow). In 600m, sandy track on left (165292) leads to mausoleum (166295).

Lunch/Accommodation: Buckinghamshire Arms, Blickling NR11 6NF (01263-732133, bucksarms.co.uk)

Blickling Hall: nationaltrust.org.uk/blickling-estate

visitnorthnorfolk.com; satmap.com; ramblers.org.uk