Christopher Somerville

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

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A strong cold breeze was blowing off the Durham moors down Weardale, and clouds jostled with blue sky on the skyline to north and south. We peeked in the windows of Westgate’s remarkable Methodist Chapel, its pews massed in a thicket of curlicued and painted ironwork. Primitive Methodism was a strongly held faith here in west Durham, whose lead miners and pack horsemen led rough and uncertain lives.

A footpath led north from the village up a steep-sided cleft where the Middlehope Burn came jumping and sparkling down over rocky steps and ledges. We followed upstream to a wide bend of the burn; here the remnants of Low Slitt* lead mine lay scattered.
*spelt variously Slitt or Slit – Slitt seems to be the most frequently used

A waterwheel pit for pumping out the mine, the great stone base where a hydraulic engine lifted buckets of lead ore from the workings, deadly little culverts you could fall into in a twinkling, and a washing floor on a promontory near the river, where little boys with heavy bucker hammers smashed rocks and sluiced the fragments to release the precious ore.

We scrambled up a steep bank to a round reservoir, and stood there looking across the old mine to the hush or gash in the fellside where great torrents of water were released to tear away the turf and expose the vein of lead beneath. Mine tips lay above at the edge of the moor, a fleet of green whalebacks grown grassy with a nap as sleek as velvet.

Today this is a scene as peaceful and lonely as can be – great sweeps of daleside, empty save for the dotted sheep, a couple of isolated farms, the ruin of a barn or two, all under an enormous sky.

We found a stony lane that led up to the walled fellside track of Springsike Road, boggy with dark mud and patches of rush. Sheep called, the wind blew, hidden streams trickled. Everything seemed simplified and straightforward up here between the dale pastures and the moors.

Wheatears flirted on the wall tops, their white rumps flashing as they flew away. Mountain pansies purple and white, wild thyme tussocks and autumn gentians grew by the way. A long walled bridleway brought us easily down into Weardale again and we sauntered back to Westgate beside the peaty River Wear, as clear and brown as molten toffee.

Start: Hare & Hounds, Westgate, Weardale DU3 1 RX (OS ref NY 908381).

Getting there: Bus 101 (Bishop Auckland)
Road: Westgate is on A689 (Stanhope-Alston).

Walk (6¼ miles, moderate hill walk, OS Explorer OL31): Left along A689; first right; in 200m, left (‘Slitt Wood’). Follow path north beside Middlehope Burn. In ½ mile at Slitt Mine site (906392), left up bank by info boards to dam/pool above (904392). Right around dam; at stile (904393) bear right on path with wall on left. In 250m cross stile (904396); in 300m, right over wall stile (905399). In 150m, left up rough rocky lane (904400). At top, right (901399) along Springsike Road walled lane. At road (893407), left uphill. In ½ mile road bends left (885405); in ¼ mile, left (882401, fingerpost) along walled bridleway. In 1 mile at road, left (886387); in 150m, right (888387, fingerpost), half right down to drive. Right to road (886385); left; in 400m, right between house and shed (889382). Cross River Wear (888381). Left on Weardale Way for 1½ miles; left across river (909380) into Westgate.

Conditions: Springsike Road can be wet/muddy

Lunch: Hare & Hounds, Westgate (01388-517212, hareandhoundswestgate.blogspot.com

Accommodation: Westgate Manor, Westgate DL13 1JT (01388-517371, westgatemanor.co.uk)

Info: Durham Dales Centre, Stanhope (01388-527650); thisisdurham.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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After a morning of downpours, rags of blue sky and great anvil-topped thunderheads of cloud were contesting the heavens over the Chiltern Hills.

This part of south Buckinghamshire is gloriously rich in woodland, perfect for a walk among autumn scents and colours especially after rain, when the black earth of the forest floor smells rich and every turning leaf gleams as though polished up for parade.

Horses flicked raindrops from their tails in paddocks still wet and glistening. Green lanes and hedge paths led us through the beech woods where squirrels leaped among the twigs, shaking down showers of raindrops. We walked pathways paved with fallen beech leaves, gold and lemon.

Two big woods, Common Wood and Penn Wood, are the particular pride of the neighbourhood. These are ancient woodlands, where Roman ironmakers collected wood for their furnaces, Saxons and medieval Londoners hunted deer, and Georgian chair-makers and wheelwrights harvested the beech-wood for their specialist trades.

Now they lie open for walkers, crisscrossed with permissive paths dedicated by Penn Estate. In Common Wood hornbeam and hazel, holly and oak made variegated patterns among the predominant beech, against a sky where thunder grumbled and rain showers came pattering by. We found tiny creamy fungi on stout black stalks, with gills as delicate and transparent as mother of pearl.

The path branched north towards Penn Wood past the rough pasture of Farther Barn Field, where a bunch of British White cattle with shiny black noses lay chewing the cud on the dry patches of ground they had reserved when the rain began. One cow had a pair of magpies perched on her back; she seemed entirely at ease with them.

Up in Penn Wood a patchy blue sky was breaking overhead as we turned for home. By the path a purple leaf beech, encased in a stout tree guard, carried a plaque. It had been donated by Prince Charles and planted in 2000 by Earl Howe, to commemorate the successful campaign waged by determined locals to prevent the wood being ‘developed’ as a golf course.

A strange and welcome irony, since it was Earl Howe’s ancestor who had enclosed the common here in 1855 and deprived the local commoners of their immemorial rights.

Start: Winchmore Hill, Bucks HP7 0PH (OS ref SU 933949)

Getting there: Bus 73 (Amersham)
Road: Winchmore Hill is signed off A404 between High Wycombe and Amersham

Walk (5½ miles, woodland paths, OS Explorer 172): From left corner of playground on village green, follow ‘Chiltern Way’/CW. In 300m cross road (929949); follow CW among trees. In 500m, left along tarmac road (927945); in 300m, on left bend (926942), CW forks right. Leave trees; anticlockwise round field edge, down to road (923939). Right; left up Noaks Lane; in 40m, right (922939, CW) along Penn Bottom. In 300m, right off CW up field (918940); through Brook Wood; cross road (919946) into Common Wood. Left along wide ride, forking right in 250m (‘Penn & Common Wood Long Trai). In 1 mile, in clearing with slatted ‘Common Wood’ notice board 50m on left, right downhill (904953, red stripe post) through Gravelly Way Plantation. Cross road (906959) into Penn Wood past gate (info board on right). Follow broad ride east for 1 mile to junction (921959); right to road; left into Penn Street. At junction, ahead (‘Amersham’); in 30m, left by The Cottages (923957, fingerpost); follow yellow arrows for ¾ mile across fields, through Priestlands Wood to Winchmore Hill.

Lunch/Accommodation: Potters Arms, Winchmore Hill HP7 0PH (01494-726222, pottersarms.co.uk) – lunch booking advisable

Info: High Wycombe TIC (01296-382415); 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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The village of Dent is wholly charming, all cobbled streets, narrow ways, stone-built houses and cosy, welcoming pubs. Sunk in its green dale below the Cumbrian fells, it’s a natural magnet for walkers on the long-distance Dales Way and the field paths and walled lanes that swoop up and down the hillsides.

A road past whitewashed cottages led us to the village green and the foot of Flinter Gill. A stony lane rose steeply under trees, its stream bouncing down to sluice across the Dancing Flags. This pavement of square flagstones was set in the streambed by the village weavers of times past; they would lay out their cloth here and stamp it to thicken the fabric.

Just above stood the twisted hollow trunk of a wishing tree – three times ‘deiseal’ or clockwise through the hole and you would gain your heart’s desire, but woe betide anyone foolish enough to pass through ‘widdershins’, the other way about.

Higher up, the lane passed High Ground Barn. Here in the cool and quiet of the old barn we found a collection of venerable farm and household implements – chaff cutter, horse rake, tilt cart, mangold slicer. Alongside hung black and white photos of the backbreaking work of the old-time farms – forking hay, washing and shearing sheep, stone walling, peat cutting.

Up at the crest of the fell we joined Occupation Lane, a perfect example of a Pennine walled lane, its rutted course ribboning up and down across the fellsides. From here we had a majestic view – across Dentdale to the great dun-coloured whaleback of Aye Gill Pike, the valley rising gently in beautiful lowland green pasture to the flattened pyramid of Great Knoutberry closing the eastern sky line.

Ahead rose the long back of Middleton Fell. A thousand feet higher than us, a shepherd on a quad bike steered for the ridge. As we neared the Barbondale road we could hear him yelping commands to his dog, high and clear on the windy air.

We descended a field track past Combe House with its carefully tended garden, then on down to the Dales Way in the dale bottom. Following it back to Dent, we saw a kingfisher streak along the water, a momentary scintillation of blue and orange above the peat-brown river.

Start: St Andrew’s Church, Dent LA10 5QL (OS ref SD 705870)

Getting there: Bus S1, S3, S4, S5 (Dent-Sedburgh); westerndalesbus.co.uk
Road: Dent is signed from Sedbergh, on A684 (M6, Jct 37)

Walk (7 miles, field paths and hill tracks, OS Explorer OL2): From south door of church, ahead down alley. Pass George & Dragon on your left; opposite Mill Cottage, right to village green. Left (704869, ‘Flinter Gill’) up lane. In ¾ mile pass bench; right (698859, ‘Keldishaw’) along Occupation Lane walled lane. In 1½ miles, right along road (680862); in ¼ mile, left (683864, ‘Underwood’) on green track across fields (occasional yellow arrows/YA). In 2nd field, path swings left to run below trees. On past Combe House (681875); follow YAs across beck to Tofts farm (682879). Down drive. In 200m, where concrete gives way to stone, sharp left (685879, YA below). Diagonally down field past ruin; down track to field bottom and road at Raw Bank (684883). Left; in ¼ mile, right (681885, ‘Dales Way’); right along river on Dales Way for 2¼ miles to Church Bridge (707872); right into Dent.

Conditions: Dales Way slippery and stumbly with tree roots in places.

Lunch/Accommodation: George & Dragon, Dent LA10 5QL (01539-625256, georgeanddragondent.co.uk) – cosy, friendly village inn.

Info: Kendal TIC (01539-735891); visitcumbria.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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After days of wild weather and whitened seas along the Sussex coast, a quieter morning dawned over the South Downs. In the hamlet of Walderton, master thatcher Chris Tomkins had his straw bundles and pegs laid out along the gutters of a flint and brick cottage, all handy for the day’s work.

Small clouds went jostling like sheep along the wooded skyline. Our path led east beside stubble fields, sheltered in that characteristic Sussex Downs landscape of dip and rise, every curve of the chalky land pleasing to the eye and heart.

We scanned the furrows as we walked, looking for the bevelled edges and teardrop shapes of Neolithic flint tools lost or left behind by our distant ancestors.

Down behind the neat cottages and carefully tended gardens of Stoughton stood St Mary’s Church, already here when the Normans landed, a blocky building with narrow windows high up. Inside under a simple beam roof a tapestry round the walls depicted the thousand-year story of the downland village in its cradle of woods and slopes.

Beside the flinty lane that led away from Stoughton stood a plain granite pillar. In the adjacent field 23-year-old Pilot Officer Boleslaw Własnowolski – ‘Vodka’ to the other chaps in the mess of 213 Squadron at Tangmere – died in November 1940 when his Hurricane fighter was shot down by a Messerschmitt Me-109. The Polish flag that swathes the pillar, and the poppy wreaths at its foot, show how this young foreign flyer is still remembered here.

The lane ran up to the crest of the downs, where the little grassy domes of the Devil’s Humps lay in line astern. From these Bronze Age burial mounds we had a stunning view south over the glinting inlets of Chichester Harbour, where the spire of Chichester Cathedral lanced into the cloudy sky against a backdrop of trees, creeks and the dull silver plain of the sea.

Flint-cobbled tracks led us south, skirting the scrubby slopes of Kingley Vale National Nature Reserve, a marjoram-scented heaven of wild flowers and butterflies.

We turned for home along a downland highway past the brooding wreck of a great flint barn, and on through woods of oak and beech where the wind whistled and loose leaves pattered earthwards like multi-coloured rain.

Start: Barley Mow Inn, Walderton, Chichester PO18 9ED (OS ref SU 790106). Open again. Please ask permission to park, and give pub your custom!

Getting there: Bus 54 (Chichester-Petersfield)
Road – Walderton is on B2146 (signed from Westbourne, off A27 Portsmouth-Chichester)

Walk (7½ miles, easy, OS Explorer OL8): Right along road. In 50m, right across bridges; grass path to road. Right; in 50m, left (788107, fingerpost); right along field edges. Cross road (792110); on (occasional ‘Monarch’s Way’/MW signs). In 400m, path forks (796113); keep ahead across field to trees (796116). Inside trees, right (MW, ‘bridleway’/BW); immediately keep ahead downhill to road in Stoughton (801114).

Sharp left to church; return to road; right for 150m. By Tythe Barn House, left (801113, BW) up lane. In 350m pass war memorial (804111); on up to top of rise. Forward to 3-finger post (812106, BW); left along track. In ½ mile pass Devil’s Humps (819110); in another ½ mile, right (824115, white arrow in blue circle/WABC) up path; in 150m, right (blue arrow/BA) up stony bridleway.

In 250m cross bridleway (825113, 4-finger post); on downhill. In 550m pass Kingley Vale signs (827108, KV); on down for 500m, right at 4-finger post (828103). In 550m pass KV gate (824100) and on (BW). In 150m, fork right uphill at edge of trees. In 650m, at KV gate on right, fork left (819102, WABC). In ¼ mile, entering yew grow, fork left at 3-finger BW post (815104).

In 650m, at edge of trees, don’t fork left downhill, but keep ahead (809104) into open. In ½ mile, right at ruined barn (800104); inside trees, left along track. In 650m, fork right (794105) downhill past Walderton Down notice to road (792107); left to pub.

Lunch: Barley Mow, Walderton (02393-631321, thebarleymow.pub) – booking advised. Take-away service also available.

Accommodation: Coach & Horses, Compton PO18 9HA (02392-631228, coachandhorsescompton.co.uk) – open and Covid-compliant.

Info: Chichester TIC (01243-775888, visitsoutheastengland.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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Harlech Castle is a lowering presence, there’s no getting away from it. The great turreted stronghold, one of the seven ‘Ring of Iron’ fortresses sited around north Wales in the 1280s by King Edward I, was planted on its rock above the Dwyryd Estuary to dominate and subdue the rebellious locals.

Dark and ominous-looking, the castle frowned down on us as we left Harlech railway station. Soon enough the Wales Coast Path signs pointed us away across the pasture of Morfa Harlech where shiny brown cattle munched, muzzle to grass.

The seaward view was obscured by a line of woodland, but once past the tattered farm of Glan-y-mor the path rose to a most sensational view. Ahead stood the rugged outliers of southern Snowdonia, all scoops and hollows and sharp ridges. Off in the west the mountains declined to the tumbled hills of the Lleyn peninsula lying out on the sea horizon. Sunlight chased dark blue shadows across this dramatic landscape.

The prospect across the Dwyryd estuary was even better. It was the turn of low tide, the river no more than a glinting coil through wide sandbanks. Just opposite rose the fantasy village of Portmeirion, architect Clough Williams Ellis’s dream collection of towers, turrets, cupolas and campaniles, their pinks and blues thrown into prominence by the backdrop of dark woods.

Far beyond, perfectly placed by celestial hands, the tall grey cone of Snowdon’s peak lifted into a blue sky scudding with clouds. A sensational view to all quarters.

We sat and shared an orange and stared our fill, then went on around the lumpy hill of Ynys Llanfihangel-y-Traethau, the ‘Isle of St Michael on the Shore.’ Round on the far side we found the neat little church of St Michael, Victorian in appearance, but actually built more than a century before Harlech Castle, when this hill was a tidal island and horsemen rode across the sands to worship here.

The Wales Coast Path led on towards Llandecwyn Station, dipping down to run north beside the slowly filling marsh creeks through drifts of pale pink thrift. A farmer sheared his ewes under the sea wall, and a sandpiper alighted on the black slate rocks for a moment before dipping its white breast and skimming off on scimitar wings.

Start: Harlech Station, LL46 2UL (OS ref SH 581314)

Getting there: Rail to Harlech. Bus 38, 39 (Dolgellau-Porthmadog)
Road – Harlech station is on A496, just below Harlech Castle. Car park behind station (‘No Through Road’).

Walk (6¾ miles, easy, OS Explorer OL18): From station, right along A496. In 600m, left (582320, ‘Wales Coast Path’/WCP fingerpost) on path to gate. Left along side of housing estate; follow WCP signs. In ½ mile, half left (WCP, 580327); through 3 gates to edge of wood (578332), Right, following WCP. In ¾ mile, approaching Glan-y-mor Farm, half-left across fields to gate by farmhouse (580345). Right along WCP. In 1½ miles at Llanfihangel y Traethau church (595354), anticlockwise round churchyard wall to gate, then right along wall to gate with WCP. Follow WCP to cross road (599355); in 300m, left across watercourse (603353); follow WCP on seawall path for 1¾ miles to cross railway (617373). Left round base of Bryn Glâs hill; in 300m, right through gate (618376, WCP), past cottages, down drive to road (620376); left to Llandecwyn station. Return by train to Harlech.

Lunch: Old Cheese Market, Harlech (07483-316228)
(open)

Accommodation: Crown Lodge, Ffordd Isaf, Harlech, Gwynedd LL46 2PR (01745-817289, thecrownlodge.uk) – characterful stopover with tremendous views.

Info: visitwales.com; walescoastpath.gov.uk

Harlech Castle: cadw.gov.wales; harlech.com; satmap.com; ramblers.org.uk