Christopher Somerville

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

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Business-like bunches of walkers were assembling in Pateley Bridge car park in a clatter of boots and sticks. Nidderdale is a favourite spot for walkers in North Yorkshire, and everyone wants to grab hold of a day like this, with enormous white clouds slowly drifting in a blue sky across the dale. We lost sight of everyone as soon as we’d left the little market town. This sort of steep, rolling country has a mysterious way of swallowing its walkers, and true to form we scarcely saw another soul all day.

The spring wind came down from the moors, full of the baby cries of new-born lambs and cold enough to prickle the nose. We followed the waymarked Nidderdale Way west along a narrow farm road between carefully maintained stone walls that sparkled with minute, intense winks of sunlight. Farms lay along the higher contours of the green inbye land. The steep fields were striped with walls that wriggled like snakes up the undulations of the daleside and vanished over the top into sombre-coloured moorland, where heather-burning operations were sending up slowly curling towers of oily-coloured smoke.

We sat to eat our snack on a fallen stone lintel opposite the bankside cottage of Throstle Nest. A gang of ewes still heavy with unborn lambs came up bleating for crisps. They soon settled to cropping the grass with short, decisive jerks of their greenish teeth – gentle company, and a peaceful sound to picnic by.

We followed the lane down to Ashfold Side Beck through a tremendous slump of old lead mine workings. Below the ashen tips a cluster of tumbledown buildings and a great rusty cogwheel and shaft showed where 19th-century miners had processed the precious and poisonous ore. Cornishmen, Irishmen, Scots and Welsh all laboured here for the Prosperous and Providence Lead Mining Company, working the Wonderful and Perseverance Levels – names that say everything about the triumph of hope over experience.

Back along the beck and up over the fields to Stripe Head Farm, where the farmer in cap and gumboots was helping a ewe newly delivered of twins. ‘I’m out at eleven at night to check on them this time of year,’ he said, ‘and out at 5.30 am, too.’ The newborn lambs staggered about and cried until they found what they were looking for under their mother’s shaggy pelmet of wool stained dark by the winter. Then you couldn’t hear a sound out of them.
Start: Showground car park, Pateley Bridge HG3 5HW (OS ref SE 157654)

Getting there: Bus – 24 from Harrogate
Road – Pateley Bridge is on B6265 between Grassington and Ripon.

Walk (7 miles, easy/moderate, OS Explorer 298): From car park, left along B6265. Pass turning to Ramsgill; in 50m, right (fingerpost, yellow arrow) up laneway to road (155654). Dogleg right/left (‘Ladies Rigg’), and follow path through fields past Eagle Hall, following left-hand hedge/fence to meet Nidderdale Way/NiW at corner of wood (147655). Turn right along road, following NiW.

In 1 mile, fork right at Hillend along lower lane (131653, ‘Ashfold Side, Cockhill’; NiW). In 700m cross Brandstone Dub Bridge (124655); follow stony lane to left. In ½ mile follow path down through ruin of Providence Lead Mine workings to cross Ashfold Side Beck (119611). Follow NiW downstream for 1¼ miles. Beyond Low Wood, left off lane (138664, NiW, ‘Heathfield’). Up field edge, through Spring House farmyard (138665); half right across next field to gate; on along track by wall. In 500m pass Highfield Farm; on down to Heathfield and Grange Lane (138673).

Left along road. In 250m, 100m before Pie Gill drive, right through gate (137676, fingerpost). Follow left-hand wall; cross stile; half right between garage and wall. Keep wall on left till it bends left; aim half right for gate below (139679). Down track to Stripe Head Farm; through gate to right of buildings; down to road (141680). Right; in 500m, left (‘Wath’) across bridge (145677); right on NiW along River Nidd for 1¾ miles to Pateley Bridge.

Lunch: Sportsman’s Arms, Wath (01423-711306; sportsmans-arms.co.uk)

Accommodation: High Green Farm, Wath, Pateley bridge HG3 5PJ (01423-715958; highgreen-nidderdale.co.uk) – first class B&B or self-catering.

Info: Pateley Bridge Museum, King Street, Pateley Bridge (01423-711255; nidderdalemuseum.com); Pateley Bridge TIC (01423-711147); visitharrogate.co.uk; nidderdaleaonb.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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Big waves, driven in by a strong west wind, were smashing on the rocks all along the North Cornwall coast. From Steeple Point high over Duckpool’s sandy scrap of beach we watched thirty jackdaws wheeling in a tight bunch on the buffeting wind, chakking excitedly to one another. White teeth of surf glinted far below in the mouth of the Duckpool valley.

The waves made wrinkled lines in the grey-brown Atlantic as far out as the eye could see. They moved ponderously inshore, topped with quiffs of spray, to crash among the black stumps of rocks and reefs with a dull thunder that made the air quiver. Under a mackerel sky the deep Duckpool valley ran back inland, its massed oaks murmurous with the half-gale. It was all we’d hoped for on a Cornish coast walk in midwinter – sound, fury, drama, and the elation of a stiff wind to beat our cheeks red and shove us along the cliff path.

Down on Wren Beach the sea surged across the shallows in delicate pulses, like a fine lace shawl swept rhythmically to and fro. The stark white dishes and domes of a GCHQ tracking station came peeking up over a rise of ground like an exhibition of Bauhaus architecture. Then they fell away behind as we dipped down into the cleft of Stanbury Mouth. A seat on a tuffet of sea pink leaves gave us a grandstand view of the waves running in, bursting on the rocks of Rane Point and flinging up lazy tails of spray with a hiss you could feel, rather than hear.

A boggy green lane led inland from Stanbury Mouth. If the flowers along here could be believed, spring was already nudging winter out of bed – primroses, campion, tender young nettles, alexanders and a brace of half-emerged dandelions.

Out across sedgy upland fields where starlings flocked fifty strong in a skeleton oak tree. By a lovely old wall of cob and slate at Eastaway Manor a bunch of sheep trotted away like affronted dowagers bundled into fur coats. We followed an old green lane down the slope of the fields and onto the homeward path through Hollygrove Wood. The sense of peace was profound down here – just the low roar of wind in the oak tops, and the throaty chuckle of the stream meandering down to Duckpool.

Start: Duckpool car park, Coombe, near Kilkhampton EX23 9JN approx. (OS ref SS 202117)

Getting there: A39 to Kilkhampton; minor road to Stibb; follow ‘Coombe’; at Coombe, follow ‘Duckpool’ to car park.

Walk (5¼ miles, moderate, OS Explorer 126): Follow South West Coast Path north for 1¾ miles. At Stanbury Mouth (200135) follow path, then green lane, inland (yellow arrows/YA). In 500m lane bends left (206135); ahead through kissing gate/KG (YA). Path across slopes (KG, YA); in 200m, right across footbridge (208136) and stile. Cross 2 fields (stiles, YAs) to cross road (212138). Green lane (YA) past Eastaway Manor; on across field to double stile (215136, YA).

Half left across field; over stile (YA); follow right-hand hedge. In 200m, right through hedge (218136, YA). Don’t go through metal gate ahead, but turn left along path to road in Woodford (219135). Right; in 100m, right down lane. Pass Shears Farm; in 100m, right at top of rise (218133, YA, green dot) down stony lane. In 500m go through gate across track (217129); bear left down grassy track (YA) into wood. In 200m, hairpin right (YA) to bottom of wood (216128); left across footbridge and following stile. Right along track for ¾ mile to road (210118). Ahead downhill across ford; in 200m left, then right (208117, ‘Duckpool’) to car park.

Conditions: Windy on cliffs (unguarded edges); muddy in lanes and fields

Lunch: Picnic

Accommodation: Several Landmark Trust properties at Coombe (01628-825925; landmarktrust.org.uk) – unfussy, beautifully maintained cottages in a quiet dell

Info: Bude TIC (01288-354240)
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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The sweet, rich scent of log fires came wafting from the Rising Sun as we set off from the green at Witheridge Hill. A cold and sunny afternoon lay across the south-eastern corner of Oxfordshire where the Chiltern Hills make their last southward dip towards the River Thames.

It’s all about the woods here, and we were soon in among them – Holly Grove Wood where the sun silvered the oak trunks, Padnell’s Wood where the first bluebell leaves, ridiculously early, were poking their green spearheads up among the beech roots. This is well-kept, well-walked country, the woodland tracks carpeted with leaves blackened and trodden flat, the field paths sticky with mud where flint chips and water-smoothed glacial pebbles rolled under our boots.

We threaded the village greens of Shepherd’s Green and Grey’s Green, delectable villages of mellow brick and flint. Volunteers from the admirable Chiltern Society have built kissing gates and waymarked the paths, and have also compiled a new book, ’50 Great Walks in the Chilterns’. Its instructions led us unerringly to Grey’s Court and the remarkable old house there, where the rather naughty Knollys family held sway and misbehaved in Tudor and Jacobean times.

Adultery, multiple illegitimacies, and rumours of murder swirled around Grey’s Court and its inhabitants. Sir William Knollys’s sister-in-law Frances Howard was clapped into the Tower of London in 1615 for poisoning a friend of her husband’s. But the most outré stories concern the previous occupants of the great house, the Lovell family. One Lovell lady, playing hide-and-seek at her marriage celebration, locked herself by mistake into a trunk and was discovered there years later, a skeleton in a wedding dress.

Heads a-buzz with these macabre tales, we took the homeward path through the woods. Red kites swung and swept over the meadows, the rooks of Tartary Wood cawed the day to a close, Be-aaar! Be-aaar!, and a pearlescent cloud crept slowly west to blur the sunset in scarlet and gold.

Start: Rising Sun PH, Witheridge Hill, Highmoor Cross, near Henley-on-Thames, Oxon RG9 5PF (OS ref SU 697841)

Getting there: Rising Sun is signposted off B481 just south of Highmoor Cross

Walk (8 miles, easy, OS Explorer 171): From Rising Sun, right through car park; path through trees to road. Path beside house opposite (fingerpost/FP). Up field edge (kissing gate/KG, yellow arrow/YA), then track. At left bend (700841), ahead (KG/YA) past shed end and on along field edge. Half left across sports field to cross B481 (703840, KG, FP) onto path through trees. In 200m pass waymark post; in another 100m, right (705842, YA) into field. Take right fork across field to cross Rocky Lane (707840, FP) and on through Padnell’s Wood.

In 200m, left (707838, YA) out of wood (KG). Across pasture, through another wood, on along field edges (KG, YA) for ½ mile. Along left edge of village green at Shepherd’s Green; on (KG) along fenced path. Entering Sam’s Wood (716832), take right fork along wood edge, then left edge of village green at Grey’s Green. Pass pavilion and bear left (720830, ‘Chiltern Way Extension’/CW) into trees, with wall, then laurel hedge on right. Through wood; down across valley (CW) and across road (723832) into Grey’s Court estate.

Follow roadway for 400m past house to entrance kiosk (727834). Half left (YA) along edge of car park; in 100m, through gate; on with iron fence on left. Through Johnnie’s Gate (named); in 40m, left through gate; across footbridge, and left (728837, YA) through trees, across pasture and driveway (729839, CW, KG) into Famous Copse (728841). Bear left (red arrow/RA) and follow RAs and white arrows on trees through wood. In a little over ½ mile, RA route turns left through gate (720839); but keep ahead downhill (blue arrow/BA). At foot of slope, right (BA) on fenced bridleway. In 300m, left (719841, YA) within edge of Tartary Wood.

In ½ mile cross stile to leave wood (711845, YA). Cross field with deep hollow on right, then cross drive into wood (711846, KG, YA). Bear left on path. In 400m, at path crossing (707847), YA points ahead; but turn right here on bridleway. In 350m pass cottage on left; in 100m, at crossroads (704851), keep ahead on tarmac driveway which curves to right through Highmoor Common Wood. In ½ mile cross B481 (702857) into Deadman’s Lane (‘Nuffield 3’, ‘Merrimoles Farm’). In 50m, with gates on right, keep ahead on bridleway along edge of trees (BAs). In ⅔ mile, left (693860) along tarmac lane up Devil’s Hill. In 500m, left at T-junction (690856) on track through Notts Wood (BAs). In ½ mile, out of wood (691850) and on along lane for 600m, descending to road at Newnhamhill Bottom (690843). Left; in 400m, at crossroads, left (693842, ‘Witheridge Hill’) to Rising Sun.

Conditions: Can be very muddy in fields and woods

Lunch: Rising Sun, Witheridge Hill (01491-640856, risingsunwitheridgehill.com) – cosy, welcoming village pub

Accommodation: Cherry Tree Inn, Stoke Row, Oxon RG9 5QA (01491-680430, thecherrytreeinn.co.uk)

50 Great Walks in the Chilterns (£14.95, Chiltern Society, 01494-771250, chilternsociety.org.uk) features this walk with full directions.
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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A church bell was ringing nine in the morning as we set out from Winchcombe, one of Gloucestershire’s nicest towns to linger in with its chic little shops and golden houses of oolitic Cotswold limestone. It’s a good place to walk out of, too, dropping down between the pretty estate cottages of Vineyard Street with a green ridge of hills in prospect to the south.

We passed the tall gatehouse of Sudeley Castle and struck out across squelchy fields of medieval ridge-and-furrow, the mud under our boots as pale and thick as batter. The view eastward opened over the deep valley where Sudeley Castle lay set with towers like a cathedral among well-kept pastures and woods of pale wintry mauve and brown.

The sun was a greasy button of silver in a thick grey cloak of cloud as we passed Wadfield Farm, whose hedge of holly and beech whistled in the wind. A track flecked with dull gold stone led up past Humblebee Cottage, and from the road above we followed the well-trodden path up to Belas Knap at the crown of the hill.

Belas Knap is truly impressive, a magnificent long barrow nearly 200 feet in length, lying north-south along its ridge. Its northern portal, deliberately blocked with an enormous chockstone, lies between walls that curve outwards like the flippers of a giant turtle. What those who built the great tomb some 5,000 years ago intended when they constructed the dummy entrance is unclear – perhaps to deter robbers, or maybe as a spirit door to allow the dead free passage.

We walked a circuit of Belas Knap. Then it was back down to Humblebee Cottage and a slippery grass track to Newmeadow Farm where they were shifting loads of dung and straw from the cattle shed to the steaming muck heap in the yard.

A muddy path led on north past the intriguingly named wood of No Man’s Patch towards the broad green parkland around Sudeley Castle. King Henry VIII’s sixth and final wife, Katherine Parr, remarried and lived here after his death. Sometimes she’s seen at one of the castle windows, a wan figure in a green dress, gazing out and watching the world go by.

Start: Back Lane car park, Winchcombe, GL20 5RX (OS ref SP 024284)

Getting there: Bus 606 or W1 from Cheltenham
Road – M5 Jct 11, A40 to Cheltenham, B4632 via Prestbury and Cleeve Hill to Winchcombe.

Walk (6 miles, easy, OS Explorer OL45): Follow ‘Town Centre’ to High Street. Right; in 150m, left down Vineyard Street (‘Sudeley Castle’). Follow road past castle gates and on; in 300m, right (025278, ‘Winchcombe Way’/WcW) off road. Follow WcW across fields (kissing gates/KG, footbridge, yellow arrows/YA) for 1¼ miles, up past Wadfield Farm (026264) and Humblebee Cottages (023259) to road. Right for 600m; at car park left (020262, ‘Belas Knap’) on well-trodden path for ½ mile to Belas Knap long barrow (021255).

Return to Humblebee Cottages. Just below cottages, right (waymark post with YA on left) past cottages. In 300m, through gate and turn left (025257, ‘Gustav Holst Way’/GHW) along fence, down to Newmeadow Farm (029261). Right along track (YA, GHW); in 700m, left at fingerpost (035259, ‘Windrush Way’/WdW). Follow WdW north through succession of gates/stiles, some unwaymarked. In 600m, at north end of No Man’s Patch wood (032265), half right across two fields (directional posts). At WW fingerpost just short of a road, right (031271) across brook; at far side, left (KG), then half right up grass slope past post. Aim left of Sudeley Castle. Opposite castle, through double gates (030276); bear half left (not ahead, as KG and YA suggest!) past playground to drive (028278). Left to gatehouse, return to Winchcombe.

Conditions: Can be very wet and muddy in fields

Lunch: Plaisterer’s Arms, Abbey Terrace, Winchcombe (01242-602358, plaisterersarms.co.uk) – friendly pub

Sudeley Castle: 01242-604357, sudeleycastle.co.uk. Open early March – end Oct

Info: Cheltenham TIC (01242-522878)
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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The black-backed gull was having a real struggle with its breakfast down on the muddy banks of Blakeney Quay. We stopped to watch it battle a flapping flatfish that kept writhing out of its beak like a monstrous silver tongue. Eventually gull had fish subdued, and we turned our steps seaward along the mile-long creek that nowadays connects Blakeney with the North Sea.

Looking back from the shingly shore at the distant red roofs and flint-and-brick walls of Blakeney, it seemed incredible that the town was once abutted by the sea. The enormous apron of salt and freshwater marshes that has grown through silt deposition along the North Norfolk coast has cut Blakeney off from the sea, but it has also made the former port a wonderful place for birdwatchers and walkers.

Redshank piped nervously among the marsh pools. A flock of dark-bellied brent geese, newly arrived for the winter from northern Russia, scoured the grassy marshes for food. Wigeon in twos and threes went hurrying across the sky with fast wingbeats. Canada and greylag geese sailed in company on a fleet of water. The more we looked, it seemed, the more there was to see.

We turned the corner by the sea, and made for the white cap and sails of the great coastal windmill at Cley-next-the-Sea. Like neighbouring Blakeney, Cley is now separated from the sea by a long mile of marshes. It, too, is entirely charming, a Londoner’s weekend dream with its flint walls, red roofs and narrow, curving street round whose blind corners bus drivers and pedestrians dice with one another. You can get home-made lavender bread and spinach-and-ricotta filo parcels in Cley’s picnic shop – not exactly traditional Norfolk fare, but a good indicator of the change that has come to these delectably pretty villages of the marshes.

We passed under the sails of the windmill and went seaward along the floodwall towards journey’s end at Salthouse. Samphire grew scarlet, green and yellow along the marsh edge. A black brant goose, a rarity in from America, bobbed its white shirt-tail. Pinkfooted geese in long skeins passed across the cloudy sky, and a grey seal swam off the shingle beach with a powerful breaststroke while he checked us over.

Beach pebbles laid a carpet of many colours along the strand: black, white, amber, grey, ochre and jade. Goldfinches jockeyed among yellow-horned poppies whose long seedpods quivered in the wind off the sea. Hundreds of golden plover stood huddled by a pool, close-packed like one wind-ruffled organism. All nature seemed intent on its own business in the marshes, indifferent as to whether we were walking there or not.

Start: Blakeney Quay car park, NR25 7ND (OS ref TG 028441)

Getting there: Coasthopper Bus (Hunstanton-Cromer) – coasthopper.co.uk.
Road – A149 from Hunstanton.

Walk (6½ miles, easy, OS Explorer 251. Online map, more walks at christophersomerville.co.uk): From car park, climb steps and walk seaward along flood bank (‘Norfolk Coast Path’/NCP), following path for 2¾ miles to Cley-next-the-Sea. Follow road through village (take care! Narrow, sharp, blind corners!). In 500m, left (045439, signed) to Cley Windmill. Follow NCP seaward along floodwall to Cley Beach for 1 mile, then right (east) along shingle bank for nearly 2 miles. Opposite Salthouse Church, inland (078444, yellow arrow) to A149 (076437). Left to bus stop/right to Dun Cow PH. Return to Blakeney by Coasthopper Bus.

Lunch: Dun Cow PH, Salthouse (01263-740467, salthouseduncow.com)

Accommodation: Blakeney Hotel, Blakeney Quay, NR25 7NE (01263-740797, blakeney-hotel.co.uk) – really comfortable, classy and obliging.

Info: Wells-next-the-Sea TIC (01328-710885)
visitengland.com; satmap.com; ramblers.org.uk