Christopher Somerville

When Queen Elizabeth II came to the Elan Valley in October 1952 to open the brand-new Claerwen Dam, she was a young woman of 26, only eight months into her reign. First published in: The Times Click here to view a map for this walk in a new window

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The enormous Claerwen Reservoir completed a hand of five here in the hilly heart of Wales – the others had been built when Elizabeth’s great-great-grandmother was still on the throne. Today the five resemble natural lakes. It seems as though they must always have been here, snaking their way gracefully at the feet of the hills.

Thick mist was settling in along the hilltops as we splashed across a succession of silvery cascades and took the stony hill track from Claerwen Reservoir up to the shallow pass at Cefn Llanerchi. The cool air gently stirred sedges and dried thistle heads. A stonechat with bold white eye-stripes and peach-pink throat perched at the uppermost point of a sprig of gorse and cried, ‘Wheesh-tsk-tsk!’ Moorland rills coursed down the wet peaty slopes in scribbles of silver.

Out in the squelchy grassland beyond the pass stood a stone row – two monoliths roughly shaped into slabs, two massive boulders alongside, and a standing stone five feet tall. Who thought it worthwhile to align them up here five or six thousand years ago, and why? There’s no knowing – but the view was beautiful, even under the mist, a keyhole glimpse of the screes, crags and high slopes cradling Garreg-ddu Reservoir.

Down through a sweet-smelling conifer plantation among rain-polished liverworts and mosses, with Caban-coch reservoir lying below, and then on along a bumpy and puddled old track beside the loudly rushing Afon Claerwen. Two red kites circled high over Rhiwnant Farm, where black cattle were enjoying their last graze of the year before the farmer put them under cover for the winter. A tough old ewe perched precariously on top of a stone wall, cropping whatever greenery she could find among the roots of a hazel hedge.

Big slugs crawled through the wet grass of the bog, making the most of the moist afternoon, their black bodies shining as though encased in PVC. Back at Claerwen Reservoir, we crossed the river and climbed up beside the great dark dam wall once more.

Start: Claerwen Dam upper car park, Elan Valley (OS ref SN 871636).

Getting there: Bus T57 (pre-book on 01597-810666), Rhayader to Elan Valley Visitor Centre
Road – A44/A470 to Rhayader; B4518 through Elan Village and on; in 1 mile, left across dam (‘Claerwen’); in 4 miles, fork right to upper car park.

Walk (9 miles, moderate, OS Explorer 200. NB: online map, more walks at christophersomerville.co.uk): Return down road. At fork, left. In 100m, left (877630, bridleway fingerpost); follow bridleway (occasional blue arrows/BA) up past masts (899636). Detour SE to stone row (905631); return to gate at corner of plantation (903635). Woodland track (occasional BA) descends for ⅓ mile to track crossing (908636). Right; follow track for 1½ miles, out of wood and down to road (904617). Right for 300m; left by phone box, over bridge. Right by barns (901615, bridleway fingerpost) along minor road. At Rhiwnant, right (895617, cycleway arrow) on stony lane. In 300m fork right and keep near river for 2 miles to Cerrigcwplau Farm by Claerwen Dam. Cross stream by footbridge (869633); cross river by road bridge. Though metal kissing gate opposite (870634); path up to upper car park.

Lunch: Picnic. Tea: Elan Valley Visitor Centre

Accommodation: Elan Valley Hotel, near Rhayader, LD6 5HN (01597-810448; elanvalleyhotel.co.uk) – very friendly; ace chef!

Information: Elan Valley Visitor Centre, LD6 5HP (01597-810898; elanvalley.org.uk) – ranger service, walks, etc.

www.ramblers.org.uk www.satmap.com www.LogMyTrip.co.uk visitwales.com

Hurley lies modestly beside the River Thames a little west of London, a quiet village of handsome red brick houses. First published in: The Times Click here to view a map for this walk in a new window

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The single road ends just before the river at the remnants of a Benedictine priory – church, house and barn made of flint, infilled with that soft blocky building chalk known as clunch.

Jane and I set out under a sky opaque with cold milky light. A scraping of snow clung to the field slopes. Big burly sheep cropped the grass, their fleeces dark with winter mud. Under the sycamores and beeches in High Wood at the top of the down, little Eeyore-stile shelters of propped-up sticks showed where local children had been hiding out in their own make-believe world.

A horse-gallop forty feet wide led like a green highway towards thickly wooded Ashley Hill, where bare trees stood knotted with mistletoe clumps. A stripped-back, skeletal landscape, as thin and stark as this midwinter season. By contrast we found the chimney of the Dew Drop Inn smoking cheerfully. The secluded pub, tucked down in its dell, exuded a seductive smell of burning beech and hazel logs. What a siren note a good pub fire sings out to winter walkers. We stepped inside out of the cold air and spatter of rain, and found soft lamplight, low chatter and the growl of sweet soul music on the sound system. A quick one, eh?

Back outside in a nipping wind we went on along a muddy bridleway that wound through green wooded country, gently rolling, generously wooded. From a nature reserve coppice we got a stunning view out over a swooping field where seven dark horses walked slowly in line abreast up the slope, tossing their heads conversationally together. On the squared-off stump of a fence post lay the greeny-white skull of a squirrel, clean and feather-light, the tremendously long incisors seeming too large for the narrow face structure.

Down in the valley the River Thames ran snow-swollen and brassy brown, a muscular arm of water flexing towards London and the sea. We followed it back to Hurley past willow-smothered eyots or islets, on through flooded meadows where Canada geese sailed with dignity and black-headed gulls screeched over their feast of drowned insects like greedy clubmen over the port and stilton.

Start: Hurley village car park, High Street, Hurley, SL6 5NB approx. (OS ref SU 825840)

Getting there: Bus service 239 (courtneybuses.com), Henley-Maidenhead
Road – Hurley is signposted off A4130 between Maidenhead and Henley-on-Thames

Walk: (5½ miles, easy, OS Explorer 172. NB: online map, more walks: christophersomerville.co.uk): From car park, right along village street to cross A4130 (827831). Ahead up fenced path. At top of rise, ahead (828827) through High Wood, then on along horse gallop (yellow arrow/YA). In 600m cross track (828820); ahead (YA) across field and along green lane past Ladyeplace to road (828815). Right; follow ‘Dew Drop Inn’ past end of Honey Lane (825815). In 250m, right (823814; ‘Knowl Hill Bridleway Circuit’/KHBC) past Dew Drop Inn. In 400m, left at T-Junction (822818; KHBC). In 400m, right (818817) along track. In 600m, enter Nature Reserve (813819). At far end KHBC turns left (813822), but go right here (‘bridleway’) for ½ mile to cross A4130 (812830). Down Blackboy Lane to River Thames (810835). Right on Thames Path for 1¼ miles. At tall footbridge (825842), right to car park.

Lunch: Dew Drop Inn, Batts Green, Honey Lane (01628 315662; dewdrophurley.co.uk) – cosy, warm and welcoming

Info: Maidenhead TIC (01628-796502);

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Slieve Gallion was Seamus Heaney’s home mountain, a bulky familiar in the childhood countryside that shaped his poetry, ‘one of the dream boundaries of my imagination’ as he put it himself.
First published in: The Times Click here to view a map for this walk in a new window

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But today I found it hard to see the mountain clearly. Heaney had died less than a month ago, and my head was crammed to spilling point.

Yesterday at Laurel Villa, Magherafelt’s own House of Poetry, the ‘On Home Ground’ poetry festival had turned into a wake and thanksgiving for Ireland’s greatest poet since W.B. Yeats, Nobel Laureate and local boy. Everything seemed Heaney-coloured this cloudy midday on Slieve Gallion: the blue-fingered spruce trees, the birdsong in Iniscarn Forest, the tin-roofed farms and sedgy fields that he so brilliantly brought to new life with his pen, ‘snug as a gun’.

A long muddy track carried us up through the forest, where long-tailed tits sent their needly thin cries through the treetops. Up near the crest of the hill we broke out of the spruce and pine into open country. A path beaten into the heather led to the summit cairn, a solid flattened dome of stones, burial place of Callan, grandson of one of the High Kings of Ireland 1700 years ago.

We stood by Callan’s grave, savouring the hundred-mile view. In the east, Heaney Country lay along the shores of cloud-like Lough Neagh – the green meadows around the poet’s birthplace of Mossbawn, Church Island’s spire beside Lough Beg, Castledawson and Magherafelt. Away beyond, Slemish Mountain, a pale grey cardinal’s hat under cloud; the Mourne Mountains sharp and clear in the south; and in the west the whole graceful spine of the Sperrin Hills, green and grey, with tiny fields raked up in converging lines of hedges rising toward their foothills.

A curling tarmac road led down from Slieve Gallion’s peak, handing over to a rough farm track that descended through the rushy fields of small farms with rain-faded green corrugated barns. No grand images or thundering metaphors here today, but drifts of Heaney’s lines going in and out of the mind, along with a snatch of the beautiful old air of ‘Slieve Gallion Brae’:

‘May good fortune shine upon you when I am far away,
And a long farewell to bonny, bonny Slieve Gallion Brae.’

Start: Iniscarn Forest car park, near Desertmartin, Magherafelt, Co Derry (OS NI ref H832908)

Getting there: A6/A31 to Magherafelt, B40 to Desertmartin; B40 towards Draperstown. In 3 miles, left at crossroad up Iniscarn Road. Parking place on right in 3½ miles, signed ‘Iniscarn’.

Walk (5½ miles, moderate, OSNI Sheet 13. NB – online map, more walks at christophersomerville.co.uk): Pass gate, up forest track. In a ⅓ of a mile at ruined house, left (827905) past gate ‘2’. Keep ahead. Where track narrows keep uphill; keep to path that’s been trodden bare and muddy, climbing through spruce to reach open mountain and fence 1½ miles from start (814891). Right along fence; left over stile to masts and cairn beyond (813896). Back to mast; follow road (stony, then tarmac) for 1½ miles. Pass between rock outcrops; in 200m, on sharp right bend (820885), left along stony track. In ½ mile, at top of farm drive (824891), left along stony road, descending for a little over a mile to road (835905). Left to car.

Lunch: Bradley’s Bar, Desertmartin (028-7963-2377)

Dinner: Church Street Restaurant, Magherafelt (028-7932-8083) – fabulous Irish cooking

Accommodation: Laurel Villa, Magherafelt, Co Derry, BT45 6AW (028-7930-1459) – supremely hospitable and helpful ‘House of Poetry’.

Downloadable instructions: walkni.com

discovernorthernireland.com; www.satmap.com

An enormous sky of blue and silver wheeled above the dark earth fields of west Lincolnshire as we set out from Swinstead to wander the paths and rides of Grimsthorpe Park.
First published in: The Times Click here to view a map for this walk in a new window

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Stubbles, iron-rich ploughlands and cattle grazing – this is agricultural England, in which the big country estates sit handsomely in their landscaped grounds. The de Eresby family have held Grimsthorpe Castle since before the Reformation. Their seat and stronghold stands on a green ridge overlooking a long lake perfectly set in its valley.

We crossed the wide fields west of the lake, whose alders and willows framed a picture-book view of the castle. South lay the stew ponds that kept Grimsthorpe’s monastery well supplied with fish in medieval times. The sinuous little valley that curves away through the monastic site is known as The Vaudey, a corruption of the beautiful name the monks gave it – Vallis Dei, the Valley of God.

Dozens of partridge poults went scurrying frantically before us as we turned from the lakeside into the woods. The track led us east to Edenham for a pint of Market Deeping-brewed beer in the Five Bells, and a sandwich in the shade of the churchyard trees. Then it was off down Scottlethorpe Road, where stickily pungent hops hung in the hedges and naked ladies posed in miniature statue form among the geraniums at Cowman’s Cottage.

Alongside the lane ran the overgrown cutting of Lord Willoughby’s Railway. It didn’t exactly fulfil the dreams of its founder, Lord Willoughby de Eresby of Grimsthorpe Castle. He opened it in 1856 to connect two bigger railways on either flank of his estate, but his tiny branch line closed only 17 years later, scuppered by its limitations – mainly the speed of the trains, which at a maximum of 8 miles per hour was not all that attractive to paying customers.

From Scottlethorpe Road we went west across the park, following the green way of Steel’s Riding through woodland full of majestic old oaks, then over the fields to Creeton and a railway with a history rather more magnificent than that of Lord Willoughby’s Railway. A mile or two north of this stretch of the East Coast main line, on 3 July 1938, the A4 locomotive Mallard flew into history at 126 mph, the fastest speed ever recorded by a steam train.

The racing railway has a companion through the countryside, the ancient drove road of The Drift where cattle and sheep would meander to distant markets at two miles an hour. We sauntered its ribbony course before turning aside to cross the Swinstead Valley – a deep-sunk and beautiful hollow of calcareous grassland never ploughed or fertilized. All lay gilded by the low evening sun as we climbed to the ploughlands and turned for home.

Start: High Street, Swinstead, near Bourne, Lincs NG33 4PA (OS ref TF 019225)

Getting there: Bus service 4 (centrebus.info), Grantham-Stamford
Road – Swinstead is on B1176, signed off A151 Bourne-Colsterworth road

Walk (11 miles, easy, OS Explorer 248): From High Street, walk up Park Road. 150m past ‘Park Farm’ notice, left (021223, yellow arrow/YA) across field. At far end follow hedge; left through hedge beside gate (025223); right along track and through Crow Wood. In ½ mile, where trees end with view of Grimsthorpe Castle ahead (032222), bear right off track along grass path to cross end of lake (039220) and on to T-junction (040219). Left on tarred road. In 250m, where lakeside track bends left (041219), turn right on stony track. In 50m, left up fence (YA), then rising gravel track, then through The Grove plantation. At end of trees (048219) dogleg left/right (YAs) to cross fields (YAs), keeping same direction towards Edenham church tower. In ½ mile, nearing village, cross old railway by stiles/YAs (057220); across paddocks towards houses. At A151 (060220), right through Edenham past Five Bells PH and church.

In ⅓ mile, right along Scottlethorpe Road (062215). In 2 miles, look for 3-finger post on right (041197). Right through gates here, across field. Bear right (038199) along edge of Elsea Wood to Pebble Gate (037201); then (YAs) for 1½ miles along Steel’s Riding through woods, then along field edges. 50m short of first house in Creeton, bear left over stile (015200) to lane. Right through Creeton to B1176 (011199). Left; in 200m, right at bend (010198, ‘Counthorpe’). In 700m, road bends left under railway; but keep ahead here (006204, fingerpost) up The Drift green lane. In ⅔ mile it climbs, levels out and broadens. In another ½ mile, just before it descends again, turn right along wood edge (003222; YA in sight 50m along this path). Descend into valley; cross footbridge (007223), left, then right up path (YA), climbing to crest. Left over stile (009226, YA); right along hedge (YA, stiles) to green lane (014225). Left to B1175 (015226); right into Swinstead.

Lunch: 5 Bells, Edenham (01778-591111; the-five-bells.co.uk)

Accommodation: Toft Country House Hotel, Toft PE10 0JT (01778-590614; tofthotelgolf.co.uk)

Information: Stamford TIC (01780-755611); visitlincolnshire.com

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Bright sun slanted across the Cambridgeshire flatlands, silvering the tree trunks of Holme Fen as we stepped from a bumpy old drove road into the green heart of the nature reserve.
First published in: The Times Click here to view a map for this walk in a new window

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‘The largest silver birch wood in lowland Britain,’ said Carry Akroyd, leading the way. ‘I just love this place.’

The East Anglian fens have a passionate champion in Carry, an artist with sharp eyes who works in vivid colours and bold, decisive shapes. I’d long admired the observant realism of her fenland paintings – straight dykes running to the skyline, square arable fields sinuating with tractor tracks, tangled marshes where lapwings flicker in black and white, and level horizons pierced by wind turbines and smoking brickfield chimneys. It was a huge pleasure to be walking with Carry through the landscape that has inspired such striking images.

Along The Drain, by kind permission of the artist, Carry Akroyd (see ‘Walks – Holme Fen’ for her website, upcoming exhibitions etc.).

The path led on beside an insect-riddled dyke. A beautiful little falcon came dancing down the ditch – a hobby with spotted chest and yellow talons, snatching dragonflies to dismember and eat on the wing. At the corner of Trundle Mere we climbed into a bird hide and looked out from on high across the broad empty fens to a skyline of far-off wind turbines and silos – a Carry Akroyd scene, stretching before us. ‘I try to make a portrait of a place,’ she said, ‘that’s more than the sum of what you can see. But it has to be honest.’

There’s an ongoing scheme, the Great Fen project, to return all this countryside, nearly 15 square miles of intensively farmed land, to native fenland once again, managed for wildlife. What a superb vision, magnificent in its ambition.

We turned back through the silver birches of Stilton Roughs, the willows of Caldecote Fen and the great oaks of Home Lode Covert, to reach open flatlands once more. Cattle were chomping rich grass where wheat had grown only three years ago. ‘It’s happening, the Great Fen,’ said Carry, looking over the new meadows, ‘and it’s so exciting to see it coming alive.’

Start & finish: Layby on New Long Drove (OS ref TL 214885)
Getting there: A1(M) Jct 16; A15 to Yaxley; minor road to Holme; B660 towards Ramsey St Mary’s. In 1 mile, left up New Long Drove; layby on right in ¼ mile, by reserve barrier. NB – limited space!

Walk (6 miles, level, OS Explorer 227):
Continue along road for 100m; left over footbridge, right on path, first left through wood for ½ mile. At T-junction on Short Drove, right (208890); in 150m, left across footbridge (209891); path bends right to T-junction; left on grass path. In 450m by ‘Discovery Trail’ post (206895), bear left. In 250m, at big patch of rhododendrons, bear right; in 50m, right on unmarked path between trees (204893) for 200m to reach Holme Posts (203894).
Cross road; left along fenced path to bird hide on Burnham’s Mere (202895). Return to road; left for 250m. Where trees end just before Holme Lode Farm (204896), left past NNR sign along path. In 300m, just before T-junction of drains, left (203898). In 250m, right over footbridge across Caldicote Dyke (201898). Right for 20m; left into trees; fork immediately right, and in 30m right again, to continue parallel with Caldicote Dyke for 300m to south-east corner of wood (203899). Left on grass ride to Trundle Mere Hide (201903), where you turn left along wood edge. In 250m (199902), left into wood. At T-junction, right; in 100m, left; at 200899 fork right to T-junction with Caldicote Dyke (201898 – hidden by bank ahead). Right for 350m to T-junction with railway just ahead (197896). Left across Caldicote Dyke (footbridge) for ½ mile to gate onto road (198889).
Left along road; in 300m, right across Holme Lode (200891), past NNR sign and on, south-east along grass path. In 300m path widens into clearing; pass crooked oak on right, then in 70m turn right by pine tree with ‘withered arm’ branch (203889). Follow grass track which winds for over ½ mile to south-west corner of wood near railway (199884). Turn left along grass track; follow wood edge. In 700m, pass footbridge across drain on right (204886); keep ahead along Short Drove into wood. In 250m, right (206887) on track south-east for ½ mile to ditch with cottage on your right (212883). Left for 10m; right across ditch onto New Long Drove; left to car.
Lunch: Picnic
Accommodation: Stilton Cheese PH, Stilton, PE7 3RP (01733-240546; stiltonsheesepublichouse.co.uk) – NB Pub’s bar and kitchens are closed on Sunday evenings, but accommodation stays open; you can eat at the welcoming Bell Inn (01733-241066; the bellstilton.co.uk) just down the road.

Great Fen Project: greatfen.org.uk
Holme Fen NNR: naturalengland.org.uk
Carry Akroyd: carryakroyd.co.uk
Exhibitions – Mall Galleries, London till 10 Nov; Robert Fogell Gallery, Stamford, Lincs till 23 Nov; Wildlife Art Gallery, Lavenham, Suffolk till 30 Nov.
Carry’s 2014 Calendar now on sale, 3 for £20, via her website!

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