Christopher Somerville

Winster and Wensley, Derbyshire Dales

Mar 142020

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

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Winster and its surrounding countryside were once a roaring, clanking, fume-laden lead mining environment, but you’d scarcely guess that nowadays. The grey-roofed hillside village lies along its jitties, a tight tangle of picturesque laneways that overlook a beautiful green valley. Only the velvety nap of the lumps and bulges on the hill slopes tells of the spoil heaps and mineshafts now sinking back into the landscape.

Under a sky of unblemished blue we threaded our way down the jitties and through the village. A path paved with old stone flags hollowed by countless feet led down across wet pastures into the valley and up again to the former packhorse road of Clough Lane.

Rutted, puddled, stony and scarred, the old way led east between its flanking stone walls. As it dipped and snaked through the wooded banks of Cowley Knowl, we saw ahead through the leafless trees the houses of Matlock wedged under their hill across the valley. Beyond, the skyline was broken by a fantastic cluster of black towers and battlements – the silhouette of Riber Castle, a grand 19th-century baronial pile built by Matlock mill owner (and millionaire) John Smedley.

In the valley bottom we cast around among old mine heaps to find the path. It rose steeply through Cambridge Wood to reach Wensley, another former lead mining village charmingly placed for views of hill and dale.

Beyond Wensley a green path followed the edge of Wensley Dale through stone walled pastures, then up a long bank peppered with old lead mine shafts, now sunk to mossy dimples in the ground.

At the top we turned along the Limestone Way long-distance trail, crossing tiny walled fields by way of innumerable squeeze stiles, their ancient stone uprights supplemented by tiny wicket gates on springs that snapped shut with a bang. Persons unusually stout of leg would have quite a job to negotiate these.

Lark song shimmered overhead. Pied wagtails hopped and bobbed as they turned over flakes of cow dung, looking for titbits. And as we came in sight of Winster’s pink-grey houses far below, the view opened northward past Darley Dale to Chatsworth House, pale and magnificent, half a dozen miles off, and the cushiony outlines of the South Yorkshire moors far in the distance against the china-blue sky.

Start: Winster South car park, Winster, Derbs DE4 2DR approx (OS ref SK 239602)

Getting there: Bus 172 (Bakewell – Matlock)
Road: Winster is on B5057, signed from A6 (Matlock – Bakewell) at Darley Dale.

Walk (7 miles, moderate, OS Explorer OL24): Right on gravel track to pass houses. Down lane by Rock View cottage; right at junction; right past Bank Cottage, down to cross B5057 at Market House. Down Woodhouse Lane; on down paved path for ¾ mile; north across valley and up to Clough Lane near Ivy House (244617). Right for 1 mile. Descend to T-junction by gateposts at Cowley Knowl (259619). Right to T-junction; right past barrier; fork left (fingerpost) downhill. At bottom, right across footbridge (258617, yellow arrow/YA); steeply up through Cambridge Wood and on to Wensley. Dogleg right/left across road (261610). Down steps; left along path (YA); in 200m fork sharp right uphill (not ‘Snitterton’). Follow path (YAs, stiles) southeast, soon steeply uphill, for 1½ miles. Just before road (271592), right on walled path; cross road and on along Moorlands Lane. In 400m right (266590), following waymarked Limestone Way for 2 miles to Winster.

Lunch/Accommodation: Miners Standard PH, Bank Top, Winster (01629-650279, theminersstandard.co.uk)

Info: winster.org; satmap.com; ramblers.org.uk

Molland & Anstey Moors, Exmoor, Devon

Walks No Responses »

Mar 072020

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

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It’s just as well that the Courtenay family, stout recusants and traditionalists, held such sway in the countryside around Molland back in the 19th century. They didn’t see why Victorian ‘improvers’ should be allowed to lay a finger on the tiny moorland village’s Church of St Mary. So no-one did. What’s survived here is the most perfect Georgian interior, a rare treasure.

We opened the church door on a maze of softly shining box pews, a fine 3-decker pulpit, and the Ten Commandments sternly admonishing us from their place above the low chancel screen. The north arcade leans so dramatically out of kilter that it had to be braced with wooden beams. And the elaborate, faded Courtenay wall monuments are a-bulge with cherubim, swags, scrolls and elaborate encomia.

Daffodils and primroses were struggling out in the churchyard, whipped by a cold wind from the south. We put our backs to it and went trudging up a stony bridleway over the moors that rose to the north in waves of creamy grass and black heather.

Up here it’s all airy bleak and open, proper Exmoor upland where the weather comes hard at you. The views are enormous, across the winter-dried moors to lush pasturelands lower down. A lark sprang up singing, the first of the year, and a group of moorland ponies champed their way along a combe bottom, shaggy manes and tails flailing in the wind.

We followed the hoofmarks of trekking ponies along the bridleway until it reached Anstey Gate. Just down the road we passed a memorial stone to Philip Froude Hancock (1865-1933), genial huntsman and international rugby player. A rugged monument to a rugged man, this 13-ton granite boulder was hauled up here in 1935 by a steam lorry, which almost blew up its boiler climbing the steep Exmoor lanes.

Below Guphill Common we turned back along a moor road, skirting its winter potholes and dipping into muddy combes. A bridleway brought us down into lower country of steep green pastures, where heavily pregnant ewes lumbered off and starlings whistled their jaunty vespers from the bare oak tops far below.

Start: Church car park, Molland, South Molton EX36 3NG (OS ref SS 807284)

Getting there: Molland is signed from B3227 (Hayne Cross intersection on A361).

Walk (6½ miles, rough moorland tracks, some short steep sections, OS Explorer OL9): Up lane between church and London Inn; left by church; in 30m, right on footpath past farmyard, across fields (fingerposts) and Moor Lane (810286). Ahead (yellow arrow/YA); down to cross footbridge (812288); steeply up to gate; up to far right corner of field (814290). Lane to Smallacombe. Follow bridleway (blue arrows) across ford (816291). Fork left; in 100m, ahead (not right; fingerpost). Follow bridleway hoofprints northeast, then east across moor. In ½ mile ignore left fork (821297); keep ahead on track bending gently right over hill ahead.

At Anstey Gate, right along road (835298). In 500m pass memorial stone on left; in another 100m, right opposite boundary stone (840296); between posts, and follow faint track running half-left across Guphill Common, heading for line of trees, then for their right-hand end. At road, right (845288); in 1 mile pass 4-finger post (830293, ‘Molland’). Cross Anstey’s Combe (827294), then the following ford (824294). In 300m, bridleway bends left with hedge-bank; on through gate (821291, fingerpost). Follow it down to road (819282).

Right (‘Molland’); cross stream; immediately right (817283, steps, stile, fingerpost). Steeply up to YA post; up to stile (YA). Follow YAs to road (813283); follow ‘Molland’ to village.

Lunch: London Inn, Molland (01769-550269, londoninnmolland.co.uk)

Accommodation: George Inn, South Molton EX36 3AB (01769-572514, thegeorgesouthmolton.co.uk)

Info: South Molton TIC (01769-572591); satmap.com; ramblers.org.uk

Little Berkhamsted & Hertfordshire Way, Herts

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Feb 292020

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

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Bonfires crackled in the gardens of Little Berkhamsted, everyone’s dream of an English village. White weather-boarded houses faced the immaculately kept cricket field, and dog walkers greeted each other with the easy manner of people at home and content.

Hertfordshire lays under brisk grey skies, the countryside folded in on itself in the quiet stillness of a long winter. Golf balls clicked and hummed over the greens of Essendon Country Club. In the oak woods the wind lifted last year’s brittle brown leaves and brought a faint whiff of damp bark and rain-softened earth.

At Essendon the flint-built Church of St Mary carried a wall plaque recording the events of 3 September 1916, when bombs jettisoned from a Zeppelin airship demolished the east end of the church and killed the village blacksmith’s two daughters. Hertfordshire was not as safe as it might have seemed – searchlight batteries ringed the villages, handy targets for enemy bombs.

In the church hall, morning coffee was on the go. We were allowed a glimpse of the church’s singular treasure, kept under lock and key – an 18th-century Wedgwood font of black basaltware, one of only five in existence, rich in decorative swags and flourishes. When Richard Green of Essendon emigrated to Australia in 1880 he asked for the font, by then no longer in use, to be sent to him Down Under. It never reached him; the parishioners of Essendon were too poor to raise the price of freighting such a delicate object to the other side of the world.

There was blue sky over Backhouse Wood, and a gleam of icy blue in the splashy ruts of the byway that ran south along the valley of the Essendon Brook. Lime green lambs tails danced in the hazel branches along the way. Tiny spear-blades of dog’s mercury were beginning to push up under the trees. Hardly the call of spring, but a whisper of it hung in the air like a tentative promise.

Fieldfares stood tall in the paddocks at Warrenwood Manor, their slate grey heads raised, checking us for menace. The namesake trees of Hornbeam Lane lined its banks, their limbs silver and green in the low afternoon sun. Snowdrops drooped their heads in clumps pearled with raindrops retained from the last shower of the morning.

Hornbeam Lane gave way to Cucumber Lane. A partridge went whining off explosively, low over a field of crinkly beet leaves, making us jump and laugh as we turned for home.

Near Epping Green an ancient Dalmatian limped up and thrust its spotted body against my legs for a pat. At the walk’s end in Little Berkhamsted I found a souvenir of the dog, a clutch of white hairs embedded in the mud that I brushed from my trousers at the door of the Five Horseshoes Inn.

Start: Five Horseshoes, Little Berkhamsted, Herts SG13 8LY (OS ref TL 292078)

Getting there: Bus – 308, 380 (Hertford-Cuffley).
Road – Little Berkhamsted is signed off B158 between Essendon and Brookman’s Park (M25 Jct 24; A1000 towards Hatfield).

Walk (7¾ miles, easy but muddy, OS Explorer 182): From Five Horseshoes, cross road, down right side of cricket field (‘Epping Green’, ‘Hertfordshire Way/HW). At kissing gate, right to road (290077). Left; in 100m, right (‘Danes farm’); fork right up drive. In ½ mile descend from woods to crossing of drives by two black-and-white houses (283084), left (HW). Dogleg right round golf clubhouse (281084); up path with lake on right. At top of slope fork right by wooden fence; at road, left (276086) up School Lane to cross B158 in Essendon (275086).

Right; in 75m, fork left; left through churchyard. Path from west end of church to gate into field (273088). Left; follow yellow arrows/YA across fields to turn right along HW (273085). In 400m cross Essendon Brook (269083); on up field edge (HW). At top, at T-junction (267083), left along ‘Byway’ (red arrow), soon marked HW. In 500m fork left off Byway (267078, HW) for nearly 1 mile to cross B158 (270068).

On (‘Warrenwood Farm’) along HW (‘Hornbeam Lane’) for nearly 1 mile. At Cucumber Lane, right (281060), at Tyler’s Causeway road, left (285058). In 100m, right (fingerpost) on HW; in ¾ mile, opposite house no 79 at New Park Farm (295052), left off HW (fingerpost). North for 900m to Tyler’s Causeway (294061).

Left along road; in 100m, right up laneway. In 200m, enter 2nd field; in 200m, right through hedge (293065, YA). At road in Epping Green, left (‘Bridleway 22, Berkhamsted Lane’). In 200m, at entrance on left to Woodcock Lodge, ahead along rutted lane. In 150m keep ahead (not right) at fork (292070, blue arrow). In ½ mile, right up cricket field to Five Horseshoes.

Lunch: Five Horseshoes, Little Berkhamsted (01707-875055, chefandbrewer.com)

Accommodation: Baker Arms, Bayford SG13 8PX (01992-511235, bakerarmsbayford.co.uk)

Info: Hertford TIC (01992-584322); visitengland.com; satmap.com; ramblers.org.uk

Dunure to Maidens, Ayrshire, Scotland

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Feb 222020

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

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A couple of rows of low-standing terraced cottages and a stout little harbour defended by stone breakwater walls – that’s the sum of the tiny haven of Dunure.

Setting off south along the Ayrshire Coastal Path, we passed the jagged ruin of Dunure Castle. Desperate deeds were the order of the day at the castle in lawless times past, the most infamous of them the ill-treatment of Allan Stewart, administrator of Crossraguel Abbey in 1570. When Stewart demurred at signing over his lands to the castle’s owner, the 4th Earl of Cassilis, he had his feet basted and roasted. Unsurprisingly, the document of surrender soon acquired Stewart’s signature.

The path led over coastal pastures that dipped and rose with the undulation of the cliffs. A sharp east wind stirred the nascent bluebells in the woods and ran dimpling cat’s-paws out over the sea. Across the water lay a long green bar of land, the Isle of Arran, with its mountainous head in the clouds, and away in the south-west the thousand-foot volcanic plug of Ailsa Craig rose abruptly on the horizon like an island in a Japanese painting.

Soon the path zigzagged down the cliffs to run along the shore, a strand of dark pink sand spattered with beautifully multi-coloured pebbles. We walked it slowly, watching sanderlings patter the tideline in agitated crowds. Light-bellied brent geese sailed the shallows, fuelling up for imminent flight to their breeding grounds in the Arctic Circle, and further out a couple of mergansers cruised, looking for fish to catch and hold in their saw-edged bills.

Ahead loomed Culzean Castle, the High Baronial cliff-top mansion designed by Robert Adam for the 10th Earl of Cassilis. No tales of foot-basting here; instead, the sad legend of the piper who rashly entered the caves below the castle and was never seen (or heard) again.

We climbed the steps behind the handsome old Gas House on the shore (the 3rd Marquess didn’t hold with that new-fangled invention, electricity), and followed the Long Avenue through the wooded grounds of Culzean Castle. Another curve of tide-ribbed sand led us into the harbour town of Maidens, as sun shafts pierced the clouds and crowned distant Ailsa Craig with dramatic evening light.

Start: Dunure Harbour, near Ayr, KA7 4LN (OS ref NS 255161)

Getting there: Bus 361, Ayr-Dunure; return, bus 60/360, Maidens-Ayr.
Road – Ayr is on A77 (Glasgow-Stranraer); Dunure is signed off A719 (Ayr-Girvan).
Taxi: Jamie’s Taxis, Maidens (01655-331221; 07712-864430)

Walk (6½ miles, easy, OS Explorer 326): From Dunure Harbour follow Ayrshire Coastal Path/ACP signs and logo waymarks (green arrows). Pass Dunure Castle (252158); on through succession of gates and coastal fields. In 1¾ miles (247138), path zigzags down cliffs to Katie Gray’s Rocks. Left along shore (check tide times – see below!) Pass Isle Port rocks (245129) and chalet park beyond. Continue south for 2 miles around Culzean Bay to Gas House (classical building with tall industrial chimney – 234103). Up steps behind Gas House; follow Long Avenue (main estate road – white arrows/ACP logo waymarks). In ¾ mile, at Swan Pond, signs point right (224094), but keep ahead (‘Ardlochan Lodge’). At Lodge (221091), over stile; down to shore; left along beach to Maidens.

Conditions: At very high tides, access round Isle Port rocks near chalet park may be difficult. Check tide times at tidetimes.co.uk.

Lunch: Harbour View Café, Dunure (01292-500026); Dunure Inn (01292-500549); Wildings Hotel, Maidens (01655-331401)

Accommodation: Fairfield House Hotel, Fairfield Rd, Ayr KA7 2AS (01292-267461, fairfieldhotel.co.uk); Wildings Hotel, Maidens KA26 9NR (wildingshotel.com).

Info: visitscotland.com
Culzean Castle – nts.org.uk
visit-hampshire.co.uk; satmap.com; ramblers.org.uk

Keyhaven Marshes & Hurst Castle, Hants

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Feb 152020

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

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Keyhaven means ‘the harbour from which cows are shipped,’ and looking south from the little tidal port to the Isle of Wight you can see just how convenient it was for transporting boatloads of cattle across the Solent. The nearest point on Wight is less than a mile away, and the whole southern skyline is filled with the long, humpbacked loom of the island.

Keyhaven Marshes used to be salterns, or salt pans. There were oyster beds here, too. There’s still a flavour of former workings about this gravelly Hampshire shoreline with its black wooden stakes and marsh walls, though nowadays Keyhaven Marshes nature reserve is better known for the thousands of wildfowl and waders it hosts for feeding, breeding and winter roosting.

In a moody half light over land and sea I set off along the Brent Trail, a loop that took me east along the seawall. Something close to a hundred thousand birds see out the winter here. Today, dark-bellied brent geese creaked and grumbled as they fed along the tideline. Sandpipers and turnstones ran among them, light-footed scamperers in counterpoint to the heavy-legged plodding of the brents through the murky wavelets of the Solent.

Softly gleaming creeks threaded their way seaward through broad mudbanks coated with brilliant green algae. A pair of egrets, white as ice, landed on the mud and went stalking after crustaceans on spindly black legs, as intent and sharp-eyed as any fox after a chicken.

I turned inland between waterlogged marshes where shelduck made bold blobs of chestnut and white. Flocks of dark little teal went speeding across the grey sky. Shaggy cows grazed the bramble banks, and a pair of swans came in to land on the water with sawing noises and maximum hubbub.

The return path led back to Keyhaven car park, then on west to where a great shingle spit turned south into the Solent. This was an utterly different world, with waves splashing on the seaward margin of the spit and a view across the windy Solent to the downs of the Isle of Wight, backlit by peach-coloured light over the unseen coast of France.

Out at the end of the spit lay Hurst Castle, an uncompromising block of a fortress. Built by King Henry VIII to ward off the French, reinforced in the 19th century against the threat of the same enemy, it squats like a grey, salt-streaked toad, looking across the Solent to the great blockhouse of Fort Albert on the Wight coast.

Crunching back towards the mainland I pictured King Charles I, pacing this shingle spit daily to while away his period of incarceration at Hurst Castle in the cold Christmastide of 1648. There would be no Icarus wings for poor Charles Stuart to escape upon. The beheading block awaited him in London, and he knelt there for execution before January was out.

Start: Keyhaven car park, near Lymington SO41 0TP (OS ref SZ 307915)

Getting there: Keyhaven is signed from B3058 in Milford-on-Sea (A337, Lymington-Christchurch)

Walk (7¼ miles, easy, OS Explorer OL22): From car park, right across inlet; on far side, right through gates; follow Brent Trail (red arrows). In 1¾ miles, opposite jetty with red and yellow markers, left inland (325924); follow Brent Trail back to car park. Left along road (‘Hurst Castle Ferry’); footpath to sea wall (308913); right (‘Solent Way’) to spit (299908). Left to Hurst Castle, and return.

Lunch: Gun Inn, Keyhaven SO41 0TP (01590-642391)

Accommodation: Mayflower Inn, King’s Saltern Rd, Lymington SO41 3QD (01590-672160, themayflowerlymington.co.uk)

Info: Lymington TIC (01590-689000); visit-hampshire.co.uk; satmap.com; ramblers.org.uk

Denham & Colne Valley, Bucks

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Feb 082020

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

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A cold blue morning over South Buckinghamshire, the train rattling away from Denham station, and the path across Bucks Golf Course frosted between its wooden fences. Clever landscaping of fairways and bunkers made the surroundings look like an undulating grassland, through which the golfers trundled their carts obediently from lie to lie.

Beyond the clubhouse lay the tangle of rivers and canal that forms the backbone of the Colne Valley Country Park. We crossed the River Colne and headed north from Denham Lock up the broad, quiet waterway of the Grand Union Canal.

Walkers, runners, gongoozlers and strollers lapped up the winter sunshine like thirsty camels at an oasis well. ‘So lucky, aren’t we?’ was the greeting of the Hillingdon Heath Walkers who were stumping along thirty strong and very cheerful.

Moorhens flew across the canal, patting the dark water into sparkles with their long green toes. A swan came in from the flooded gravel pits alongside, skimming low, as white and dramatic as a Sunderland flying boat, with great clapping beats as its wingtips smacked the surface of the canal.

We passed below the flattened skew arches of Denham railway viaduct, a workaday structure, yet beautifully patterned by its Victorian designers, light brick contrasting with dark, a lip of raised beading emphasising the graceful shape of each arch.

Up at Widenwater Lock we crossed the Grand Union and set back along a parallel path beside gravel-pit lakes where a pair of great crested grebes flirted beak to beak, shaking their heads at each other in a dream of courtship still a couple of months off.

Back at Denham Lock we followed a grassy path towards Denham village. A couple of dogs dug enthusiastically for treasure in the bed of the shallow River Misbourne. In the village street, every prospect pleased. Curly Dutch gables, mellow brick walls, red pantiles, immaculate gardens – it was as though the judges for ‘Prettiest Village In Buckinghamshire’ were due at any moment.

We followed the narrow lane intriguingly named The Pyghtle back to Denham Station. Green snowdrop spears were already pushing up along the verges, and under the flaky bark of sycamores a secret world slept the winter away – tiny beetles, immovable flies, and silk purses of spider eggs in waiting.

Start: Denham station, UB9 5ES (OS ref TQ 042877) or Colne Valley Country Park, UB9 5PG (048864)

Getting there: Rail to Denham. Road: Colne Valley/Denham Country Park is signed from A40, Jct 1.

Walk (7 miles, easy, OS Explorer 172): Down steps by station ticket office; right through tunnel; in 100m ahead through kissing gate. Follow fenced path across golf course. Opposite church, left (045870) to club house (050868). Right down drive; through gates; left (049860, ‘Grand Union Canal’ fingerpost). In 400m cross footbridge (052862); left up canal for 1½ miles to Widenwater Lock (050887). Right across bridge; in 250m, right (051888, ‘Colne Valley Trail’/CVT, ‘London Loop’/LL), In 20m ignore barrier/path to right; ahead to turn right along CVT. In ¼ mile, right along road (054884); in 50m don’t fork left along LL, but follow road/CVT to right. In just over a mile, right across canal (053867); retrace steps to golf club drive near gates (049864). Ahead (‘Circular Walk’ fingerpost) past Colne Valley Country Park visitor centre, following ‘Denham Village’ and ‘South Bucks Way’ to road (043869). Right through Denham; at left bend, right (040871) along The Pyghtle to station.

Lunch/Accommodation: Falcon Inn, Denham UB9 5BE (01895-832125, falcondenham.com)

Info: Colne Valley Country Park (01895-833375, colnevalleypark.org.uk); satmap.com; ramblers.org.uk

Dorchester-on-Thames & Wittenham Clumps, Oxon

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Feb 012020

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

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A cold Oxfordshire day under a billowing sky. St Birinus looked pinched and chilly in his niche in the chapel wall at Dorchester-on-Thames. The folds of his carved stone face seemed full of disapproval as we passed him on our way down to the river.

It was Birinus, a missionary from Rome, who ducked King Cynegils of Wessex in the River Thames nearby in token of baptism in 634 AD. This act paid dividends; the newly christened king gave his baptist land on which to found a bishopric, a vast one that eventually stretched from Thames to Humber.

Beyond the neat houses and gardens of Dorchester we crossed the Dyke Hills, a curious Iron Age earthwork that raises a double seam across the fields. It was built to defend a settlement established by the river here long before the Romans came to Britain.

From Little Wittenham we climbed the short, steep path up the face of the Sinodun Hills, a double bulge of tree-topped chalk known locally as Wittenham Clumps. They draw the eye for many miles in the flat Thames-side country. On Round Hill a handy topograph picked out landmarks far and near, from the long ridge of the Chiltern Hills to Dorchester’s abbey church, the chimneys of Didcot power station, a glimpse of dreaming spires in far-off Oxford, and nearer at hand the tower and red brick frontage of Little Wittingham’s manor house below.

Among its many excellent ecological ventures, the locally based Earth Trust has established a wild flower sward on the Wittenham Clumps, and a network of permitted footpaths all round the area. We followed the paths across the hill fort ramparts on Castle Hill, then down towards Long Wittenham and the Thames through Earth Trust meadows and woodland.

The walk wheeled slowly around the fixed hub of Wittenham Clumps, away to our right across the fields. Paul Nash painted these hills again and again between the wars, trying to catch the movement of the crowning trees in the wind, the moods and changing colours of the chalk and turf.

‘A beautiful legendary country haunted by old gods long forgotten,’ was the artist’s perception of this understated but captivating corner of the Thames, and that’s as good an encapsulation as any.

Start: Bridge End car park, Dorchester-on-Thames OX10 7JT (OS ref 579940)

Getting there: Car park is signed off Henley Road by bridge at south end of town (off A4074, Wallingford-Oxford)

Walk (9 miles, easy, OS Explorer 170): Ahead past chapel; south down Wittenham Lane to Thames (578932). Right; in ¾ mile, left across 3 bridges (568935); opposite Little Wittenham church, left (566934, gate). Up hill path ahead to summit of Round Hill (566928). Around clump; on to summit of Castle Hill (569926). From poem stone on far side, descend grass path through ditch. In 150m, left (572926, gate) across valley. In 250m fork right (570928) through trees. In 250m at T-junction, left (570930); downhill to Little Wittenham. Left along road; in ¼ mile, right (564931, ‘Long Wittenham’). In 250m, left through gate; follow permitted path parallel to road for 1 mile to road in Long Wittenham (551940). Right by thatched house (‘No Through Road’). In ⅔ mile at Northfield Farm entrance (555949), left along green lane to Thames (553958). Right. In 2 miles, left across weir/Day’s Lock (568936). Half left on fenced path; cross Dyke Hills (572937); on to Dorchester.

Lunch/Accommodation: White Hart, High St, Dorchester OX10 7HN (01865-340074, white-hart-hotel-dorchester.co.uk)

Info: Wallingford TIC (01491-826972)

Earth Trust: earthtrust.org.uk; satmap.com; ramblers.org.uk

Low Bradfield & Dale Dike Reservoir, S. Yorks

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Jan 252020

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

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A still cold day in South Yorkshire, with a crack of blue over the western moors. From the graveyard of St Nicholas Church at High Bradfield we looked across the cleft of Dale Dike, up pasture slopes squared with black gritstone field walls.

Sheep cropped the churchyard grass and lay on the old inscribed gravestones that flagged the path. High on a bank stood a tall stone commemorating the deaths of James and Elizabeth Trickett and their four children on 12 March 1864. The Tricketts died, along with some 270 others, when the Dale Dike dam just up the valley burst in the middle of the night and released a roaring tsunami higher than the tallest mill building.

Gold tear-shaped leaves of silver birch lay underfoot as we followed a steep path downhill to Agden Reservoir. In the 19th century the city of Sheffield, a few miles down the dale, swelled like a frog in a fable as its steel and cutlery production rocketed. The population had quadrupled by mid-century, when a string of reservoirs was built in Bradfield Dale to cater for over 200,000 thirsty souls.

Today Agden Reservoir lay as flat and gleaming as Sheffield stainless steel, picture-pretty with hills and trees mirrored in the still water. We passed the sphagnum tuffets of Agden Bog, crossed the head of the reservoir and dropped down the fields to where Dale Dike Reservoir curved southwest among its trees.

The great sloping wall of the dam was flanked by a gracefully curved spillway, down whose steps white water came dancing. We followed a path, seamed with sinewy roots of ash and oak, along the north bank, until it turned across a footbridge at the head of the reservoir.

The homeward path ran along the southern slopes through pastures with tumbledown walls of dark gritstone. Looking down on Annet Bridge, we pictured the scene on that awful winter’s night when 700 million gallons of water came thundering through the dale.

Survivor Joseph Ibbotson of Bradfield reported: ‘It seemed as if … some unheard-of monster were rushing down the valley, lashing the hillsides with his scaly folds, crunching up buildings between his jaws, and filling all the air with his wrathful hiss. Trees snapped like pistols, mills and houses stood and staggered for a moment, and then disappeared in the boiling torrent.’

Start: Sands car park, Low Bradfield, near Sheffield S6 6LB (OS ref SK 262920)

Getting there: Bus 61, 62 from Sheffield
Road: Low Bradfield is signed off B6077 Loxley Road (A61, A6101 from Sheffield)

Walk (7¼ miles, field paths, OS Explorer OL1): From car park entrance, right along walled lane. At footbridge follow ‘High Bradfield’, keeping stream on right. At 2nd bridge, cross stream (262921); up steps, across road (264923, gate); on up (‘Sheffield Country Walk’/SCW). Through wicket gate (yellow arrow/YA); fork right on path, up to High Bradfield church (267926).

At church tower, left (west) on path with wall on right. In 200m, left downhill (265926) with wall on left to Smallfield Lane (262925). Right; in 350m, left (262928, ‘Permissive Path’/PP, ‘Run Routes’) along north bank of Agden Reservoir. In 1 mile at bench and bird feeders (250929), ahead on path (‘Windy Bank Wood’) to road at Wilkin Hill (249928). Right to Mortimer Road (245927). Left for 80m; left (‘bridleway’) down to Dale Road (247920). Right; in 100m, left (‘footpath’) on path. In 350m near dam, fork right (244919, PP); in 100m through 2 kissing gates by dam. Follow path along north bank of Dale Dike Reservoir for 1 mile.

At top of reservoir, left across footbridge (234906); left beside stream. In 150m fork right across wall stile (PP, green arrow); left along wall (SCW, stone stiles), then through plantation, for ¾ mile to Blindside Lane (244912). Left; in ¾ mile, just before Annet Bridge, right (255918, wall stile, SCW) on field path to Mill Lee Road (263916); left into Low Bradfield).

Lunch: Plough Inn, Low Bradfield (0114-285-1280, theploughinnlowbradfield.co.uk); Schoolrooms Café, Low Bradfield (0114-285-1920, theschoolrooms.co.uk)

Accommodation: Royal Hotel, Dungworth, Sheffield S6 6HF (0114-286-1213, royalhotel-dungworth.com)

Info: welcometosheffield.co.uk; satmap.com; ramblers.org.uk

Blackdown & Dolebury Warren, Somerset

Walks No Responses »

Jan 182020

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

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A perfect Somerset winter’s day of sharp blue sky. Sunlight gilded the roofs of Rowberrow, nowadays a quiet little village, but in times past a rough mining centre where men dug calamine for the brass-making industry. Martha More, visiting in 1790, judged the locals ‘savage and depraved, brutal and ferocious.’

The long shape of Blackdown, highest point of Mendip, looms on the southern skyline. Today its slopes were trickling with water. With a hollow gushing a stream tumbled into the chilly depths of Read’s Cavern, one of dozens of water-burrowed caves in Mendip’s limestone massif. When Read’s was excavated in the 1920s, a set of Iron Age slave manacles was unearthed, their story untold but ripe for imagining.

A broad track rises up the flank of Blackdown. We climbed through fox-brown bracken where cattle grazed and thirty-five semi-wild ponies snorted and cantered away in a bunch. From the ridge the view was enormous, from the Quantock Hills and Exmoor down in the southwest to the steely grey Bristol Channel with its twin islands, pudding-shaped Steep Holm and sleeping-dog Flat Holm.

Along the foot of Blackdown the muddy Limestone Link footpath took us sliding and squelching past Burrington Combe. Wild goats were grazing the grey striped cliffs of the gorge, their white coats contrasting with the scarlet berries of cotoneaster.

On the slopes opposite the combe the Reverend Dr Thomas Sedgwick Whalley, rich through a ‘good marriage’ in mid-Georgian times, developed a humble cottage into the Italianate extravaganza of Mendip Lodge, a massive country house with a state bedroom, mile-long terraces and a verandah nearly a hundred feet wide.

Mendip Lodge, like the good doctor’s wealth, eventually fell into decline. All we found of the grand design was a huddle of ruins behind an archway in Mendip Lodge Woods, beside the winding path that was once a fine carriage drive.

High above on the limestone upland of Dolebury Warren the sloping ramparts of a massive Iron Age hill fort encircle the western end of the ridge. Here we sat to catch our breath and gaze across the channel to the far-off hills of Wales.
Start: Swan Inn, Rowberrow, Winscombe, Somerset BS25 1QL (OS ref ST451583)
Parking: please ask, and give pub your custom.

Getting there: Rowberrow is signed off A38 between Churchill and Winscombe

Walk (8 miles, easy, OS Explorer 141): Left down School Lane. Just after right bend, left down track (453583); in 300m at T-junction, right (454586). In ¾ mile, right (465586, ‘Bridleway, Ride’, waymark post); in 100m, left on path through bracken. In 250m detour left to Read’s Cavern (468584). Resume bracken path, uphill to ‘Rowberrow Warren’ sign (469581); left through gate; right uphill. In 200m fork left (469579), upwards for ¾ mile to track on Blackdown ridge (477573); left to Beacon Batch trig pillar (485573). Left downhill to foot of slope; left (490577, waymark post, Limestone Link /LL) for 1¼ miles. On open ground 350m after crossing West Twin Brook, at crossing of broad grassy tracks, right downhill (473583). In 700m, near Link hamlet, left (475590, fingerpost) on path through Mendip Lodge Wood. In ⅔ mile pass Mendip Lodge ruin (466591); in 150m, left up bridleway. Pass gate/’Dolebury Warren’ sign on right; in 100m right (gate, blue arrow, ‘National Trust’) across Dolebury Warren (LL) for 1¼ miles, down to T-junction by Walnut House (446591). Left (LL) for ¾ mile; right (454586) to Rowberrow.

Conditions: Can be very muddy.

Lunch: Swan Inn, Rowberrow (01934-852371, butcombe.com)

Accommodation: Woodborough Inn, Winscombe BS25 HD (01934-844167, woodborough-inn.co.uk)

Info: mendiphillsaonb.org.uk; satmap.com; ramblers.org.uk

Lulworth Cove & Durdle Door, Dorset

Walks No Responses »

Jan 112020

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

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From a viewpoint high above Lulworth Cove we got a Jurassic Coast geology lesson in a million. To the east lay the almost-perfect circle of the cove, where the sea has broken through the hard Portland limestone and is busy nibbling away the soft chalk at the back of the bay. To the west, Stair Hole opened at our feet, the sea sloshing through rock arches to devour the clay of the cliffs and expose strata of limestone fantastically folded and contorted by subterranean convulsions hundreds of millions of years ago.

We climbed away up the stone-paved coast path to the crest of Hambury Tout and another remarkable view, west along a Dorset coast of sheer white cliffs, walls of chalk and freestone sculpted by wind, weather, frost and the sea. Beyond these the Isle of Portland lay skirted by rainstorms, a grey wedge sloping south to a jumble of white tide races off the narrow snout of Portland Bill.

The next ‘big reveal’ stayed concealed until we were almost on top of it – the great rock arch of Durdle Door, tall enough to sail a ship through. The good old Dorset word ‘durdle’ has its origin in Old English: the arch is a door that the sea has ‘thirled’ or pierced out of the Purbeck stone of the cliff.

Just to the west, the promontory of Bat’s Head is being durdled, too, the nascent arch of Bat’s Hole showing as a tiny blob of pale luminescence where the rainy light shone through.

Down in Scratchy Bottom we turned inland up a green chalk cleft. Under a twisted old elder we sat to have our picnic in a spattering shower. A solitary walker traversed the ridge across the valley beneath a slate grey sky on which a brilliant double rainbow slowly shaped itself.

Up on the ridge we followed a puddled track east, then dropped down among the thatched roofs and pale stone cottages of West Lulworth. A trudge across the hill, a steep descent on slippery steps, and we were crunching round the pebbly curve of Lulworth Cove between the wave-burrowed cliffs and the circle of sea eternally reaching for them.

Start: Lulworth Cove car park, near Wareham, BH20 5RQ (OS ref SY 820801). £8 fee for 4-6 hours.

Getting there: Bus X54 (Weymouth-Poole)
Road: Lulworth Cove is signed from A352 (Wareham-Dorchester) at Wool.

Walk (8 miles, strenuous, OS Explorer OL15): Coast Path (CP) west, passing Durdle Door (806803). In another ¼ mile, opposite ‘Scratchy Bottom’ sign, right through gate (802804); follow fence on left; in 750m, through gate, then another (806809). Half left up field; left at top (809811) through gate. Follow path for ⅔ mile; right on bridleway (800811) for ¾ mile to Daggers Gate (811814). Cross road; follow track past West Down Farm (820815); in 400m, right (824816, yellow arrow/YA) on path to West Lulworth. Left at road (825807); left at bus shelter; opposite Castle Inn, right along School Lane (827808). In 100m, right (arrow) up paddock to upper path; right for 400m to T-junction (824805). Dog left/right (‘Coast Path’); fork right (‘Lulworth Cove’); follow path east above Lulworth Cove. On far side, right (828801, ‘Fossil Forest’) down steep steps to cove; right along shore to car park.

Conditions: Lulworth Cove shore path walkable except at very high tide (tidetimes.org.uk). Some steep steps.

Lunch/accommodation: Castle Inn, West Lulworth BH20 5RN (01929-400311, castleinn-lulworth.co.uk) – cosy, characterful village inn.

Info: Lulworth Visitor Centre (01929-400587, lulworth.com);
Tide times: https://www.tideschart.com/United-Kingdom/England/Dorset/Lulworth-Cove/
satmap.com; ramblers.org.uk

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