Christopher Somerville

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

Facebook Link:

In Pilgrim’s Progress, John Bunyan modelled his sinner-snaring ‘Slough of Despond’ on the Bedfordshire morass of Marston Vale. All through the 20th century the Vale was still a waste landscape, though of an industrial nature – its sticky clay expanses encompassed the world’s most active brickfields, and thousands of acres were stripped and dug for the raw material of brickmaking. Since the 2008 closure of the Stewartby brickworks, though, a green transformation has been wrought in these unpromising flatlands.

We set off from Marston Vale Forest Centre, at 9 am already lively with youngsters gathering for a wet and mucky day out. The Centre is the hub of the Forest of Marston Vale, a community forest that has already seen a million trees planted across the old brickmaking wasteland. There are lakes, ponds, trails and woods where the clay was dug, and fantastic enthusiasm for their use among local people.

The 13-mile Marston Vale Timberland Trail leads across enormous cornfields towards the undulating greensand ridge that Bunyan used as the template for his ‘Delectable Hills’. The path switchbacked through the woods on the ridge slope. From behind a leylandii screen rose ominous noises – howls, screeches, rumblings and whinings fit for one of Bunyan’s demons. They came from experimental vehicles speeding up the gradients and round the circuits of Millbrook’s huge proving ground, tucked away from prying eyes among the trees.

Up on the open heights of Ampthill Park stands a memorial cross to Katherine of Aragon, wronged wife of King Henry VIII – she was incarcerated here while Henry wrangled to divorce her. We stood looking out north across many sunlit miles of the Bedfordshire plain, before skirting the tall and haunted ruin of Houghton House – Bunyan’s ‘House Beautiful’. From here the cornfield paths returned us to the model village of Stewartby, flagged by the four mighty chimneys that remain at its redundant brickworks.

In their 1930s heyday the works produced 500 million bricks a year for the London Brick Company. Now the grey brickfields are going back to green once more, and Stewartby’s chimneys stand smokeless and gaunt over a beautiful lake where the giant clay pits once lay in all their desolation.
Start: Marston Vale Forest Centre, Marston Moretaine, Beds MK43 0PR (OS ref TL 004418)

Getting there: Train to Millbrook or Stewartby (1 mile on foot). Bus 68 from Bedford.
Road: M1 Jct 13; A421 towards Bedford. In 5 miles, ‘Marston Moretaine, Sports Centre’ signed to right. At T-junction in Marston, left; right at Co-op and follow ‘Forest Centre.’

Walk (12½ miles, easy but long; OS Explorers 192, 193, 208. NB: Online maps, more walks at christophersomerville.co.uk): Outside Forest Centre, fingerpost points to Marston Vale Timberland Trail (TT). Follow excellently waymarked TT for 5½ miles to Katherine’s Cross, Ampthill Park (025384). To visit Ampthill village, continue on TT. To bypass village – 250m past cross, fork left off TT by dog bin (028385). Follow Greensand Ridge Way through Laurel Wood to B530 (032387). Left for 100m; right (cross with care!) on farm track, passing top of drive to Houghton House ruin (040393). Continue to gates of Houghton Park House; right over stile; footpath down 3 fields to plank footbridge (039401). Don’t cross; turn left on TT and follow it for 4¼ miles back to Forest Centre.

NB sticky clay underfoot – mucky after rain.

Lunch: picnic; café at Forest Centre

Accommodation: Black Horse, Ireland, Shefford, Beds SG17 5QL (01462-811398; blackhorseireland.com) – excellent restaurant with rooms

Info: Forest Centre, Marston Moretaine (01234-767037; marstonvale.org); experiencebedfordshire.co.uk

satmap.com; ramblers.org.uk; visitengland.com

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

Facebook Link:

Sherborne, one of Dorset’s most beautiful towns, is full of buildings made of that very distinctive, iron-rich golden limestone called ‘hamstone’. Medieval masons worked it to sublime effect in the delicately constructed chapels and lacy fan vaulting of the abbey church that stands at the heart of the town.

From the slopes of Sherborne Park I looked across the meadows to Sherborne’s twin castles – an old Norman stronghold in picturesque ruin beyond the trees, its Tudor counterpart beside the long lake. The original lodge, built in brick by Sir Walter Raleigh in 1594 after Queen Elizabeth I had gifted him the land, was enfolded by grand wings added later. Lit by today’s strong sunshine and framed in fat white cumulus clouds, it looked altogether splendid in its setting of broad parkland studded with magnificent specimen oaks. I imagined Raleigh’s ghost sitting smoking, as it is apparently in the habit of doing, in the stone seat that Sir Walter installed by the lake, puffing out an extra cloud of Virginia-scented satisfaction on this lovely morning.

Two young women walked ahead on the broad path through the park, their babies on their backs. I followed them over the heathy common where homeless Poles were housed after the Second World War as Displaced Persons in the cramped, cold and very basic Nissen huts of a former field hospital. ‘People were all in the same circumstances,’ writes Teresa Stolarczyk-Marshall, who lived there as a child (website – see below), ‘in a strange country where they could not speak the language. So they rallied round helping one another. People were very patriotic, observing their traditions and bringing their children up in a Polish spirit. Haydon Park become Little Poland.’
I turned north through the parkland trees, looking over the cottage at Pinfold Farm towards the green cap of Crackmore Wood. A quiet moment in a golden stone chancel by the roaring A30, all that’s left of the 16th-century Church of St Cuthbert (one of the very last churches built before the Reformation); and then a saunter through Oborne village between hedges netted with pungent-smelling hop bines. The old green road of Underdown Lane dropped me back into the outskirts of Sherborne, and a path through the sunlit meadows by the River Yeo led easily back to the station once more.

Start & finish: Sherborne railway station DT9 3NB (OS ref ST 641162)
Getting there: Train to Sherborne; Bus 57, 58 from Yeovil. Road: A30 from Yeovil or Shaftesbury; park at railway station.

Walk (6 miles, easy grade, OS Explorer 129): Cross railway; at T-junction, cross B3145; through kissing gate opposite; left on path/track through Sherborne Park. From thatched lodge in 1¼ miles (660161), follow yellow arrows/YAs to pass The Camp depot (665161). In another 400m, at YA (669160), left across field to stile (668162, YA). Through Deer Park wood and on (YAs) to track at Pinford Farm (664172). Left (YA); in 150m, right (YA) to go between ornate gateposts (662173). In 15m, left (YA) into wood. In 30m, right (YA), north inside wood edge. In 300m, left to leave wood through kissing gate (661176); across 3 fields (YAs), under railway (654178) to St Cuthbert’s Church chancel (653178). Cross A30 (take care!); up road to Oborne. In 600m, left (655185) past Oborne church; on along green lane, then Underdown Lane for nearly a mile to cross A30 (647174). Keep ahead (‘Bridleway’) to farmyard and road (646170). Ahead to crossroads; right along B3145; in 300m, left (644168, ‘Dorchester, Blandford’) along New Road. Cross railway and river; right (645166, fingerpost) on field path to station.

Lunch: Oliver’s Coffee House, Cheap Street, Sherborne (01935-815005); or the excellent Station Café (01935-814111) – fry-up heaven!

Haydon Park Polish camp: www.polishresettlementcampsintheuk.co.uk/haydonpark1.htm

More info: Sherborne TIC (01935-815341)

satmap.com; ramblers.org.uk;

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

Facebook Link:

A sunny morning, windy along the south coast, still and warm here in the Hawkley valley under the great hangers of East Hampshire. Those hangers – steep-sided slopes of chalk and greensand covered in thick woodland – have enchanted poets and artists, writers and walkers since people first began to look on the landscape as something wonderful and uplifting, rather than as an adversary to be wrestled with and overcome.

The sun cast long black shadows from the woods clinging to the scarp of Hawkley Hanger. Raspberries and blackberries hung in the margins of the field paths we walked, along with ropes of heart-shaped bryony leaves, and umbellifer heads full of seed ready to be scattered at the brush of a hare’s flanks or a walker’s trouser leg. Hollow old Standfast Lane snaked deeply sunk in the greensand, overhung with coppiced hazel sprays and floored with flinty cobbles of malmstone. Hazelnuts had already fallen and lay scattered along the laneways and the road through Empshott Green where we picked up the long-distance Hangers Way.

The Way wound southward through the skirts of Hawkley Hanger. We walked in and out of shadows and sunsplashes, the deep pink shade of a grove of old yews, a translucent green window of beech leaves giving a glimpse of the tower of Hawkley church with its cap like a jousting helmet rising from trees. We turned through the outskirts of the village into a tangle of greenery around the multiple threads of the Oakshott Stream, then a stony lane that climbed steeply up from Middle Oakshott. A cherry plum tree overhung the path; we scooped up a few of the plump wine-coloured windfalls and sucked the sweet flesh from the bitter skins as we went on steadily up to the crest of the hanger at the Shoulder of Mutton.

Edward Thomas, early 20th-century poet and mighty walker, lived in Steep village at the foot of the Shoulder of Mutton. These were the views he loved – south over Steep to the rising country beyond, north to Hawkley’s church and houses in a slanting patchwork of corn and pasture, woods and hanger slopes. We stared our fill, then went slipping and sliding down an ancient flinty holloway on the homeward stretch to Hawkley.
Start: Hawkley Inn, near Petersfield, Hants GU33 6NE (OS ref SU 747291)

Getting there:
A3 (Petersfield-Haslemere); B3006 to Liss; Hawkley is signed from Spread Eagle PH in West Liss.

Walk (8½ miles, moderate, OS Explorer 133): Leaving Hawkley Inn, left (east) up road. Across T-junction (749291) on fenced footpath (yellow arrow/YA). Left at lane (752294) past Uplands Farm; at next left bend, right (750295, Bridleway fingerpost, anticlockwise round field edge. In far right corner (751299, fingerpost) right down lane. At Mabbotts house (752300), take middle of 3 tracks (‘Byway’). In 600m, leave trees and follow field edge; in 100m, left (755305, kissing gate), and fork right on path along bottom edge of wood. In 450m, just after crossing stile and before reaching a house (750306), YA on telegraph pole points right over stile, across footbridge and up to Mill Lane (750307).

Right; in 100m, left up sunken wooded lane to road at Quarry House (746310). Left; in 300m on right bend, left over stile (743310; ‘Hangers Way’/HW). Follow HW across fields; at lane, left (740308); past Vann House and pond, right (stile, HW) up hedge. Anti-clockwise round 2nd field; on south (738302, HW) in tunnel of trees. In 1 mile, left out of trees (741290, HW) along field edge into Hawkley.

Left at road (745290); fork right at village green; right again along Cheesecombe Farm Lane (HW). In 200m, fork right up ramp (746288, HW, ‘Steep’). Fork left by gate (HW). In 200m, cross stile (747286); bear right (HW fingerpost by fence on left, 30m down) round slope of field, keeping lower edge of wood on right. In 200m, right across stile (746285); follow path round to left (HW) and on. Cross Oakshott Stream by footbridges (742283, HW). At Middle Oakshott cross road (741279, HW) and on up stony lane. In 150m, left over stile by house (740277, HW); follow path, steeply up through Access Land (740275); over stile, through wood and on up to wood at crest (739271).

Right along Old Litten Lane (HW); in 150m, left (738270, ‘Shoulder of Mutton’) to bench and viewpoint. Return to Ashford Hangers NNR notice; right along woodland path. In 150m, just before wooden barrier, fork left (740270) and follow red horseshoe waymarks up to Old Litten Lane (742272) Left for 100m; just beyond ‘car and motorcycle’ sign, right (741272) down stony lane for ⅔ mile. At road (745278), ahead; in 100m, left along stony lane for 1 mile back to Hawkley.

Conditions: Some steep slopes; holloways can be sticky and slippery after rain.

Refreshments/Accommodation: Hawkley Inn (01730-827205; hawkleyinn.co.uk) – a lovely welcoming country pub; great beer choice!

Info: Petersfield TIC (01730-268829); visit-hampshire.co.uk
satmap.com; ramblers.org.uk;

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

Facebook Link:

Out in the remote north-west corner of the Isle of Anglesey, the shingle bank of Esgair Gemlyn runs west in a shapely curve, guarding a brackish lagoon where hundreds of sandwich terns raise their young each year. Under our boots crunched smooth flat pebbles – grey and crimson, jade-green, apricot and snow white, enough shapes and colours to gladden the heart of any princess who might peep over the castle-like walls of Bryn Aber.

Bryn Aber lies low beyond the beach, a house in a brambly demesne surrounded by sturdy double walls of sun-paled brick. The walls were built in the 1930s by Captain Vivian Hewitt, flying ace (he made a pioneering flight from Anglesey to Dublin in 1912) and passionate ornithologist. Hewitt planned to conceal himself in the space between the walls, to observe without scaring the terns, gulls and waders breeding in the lagoon he created for their benefit and his own pleasure.

Sea kale’s leathery pale leaves and the big crinkled flowers of yellow-horned poppy shivered in the breeze along the shingle. The slim shapes of grey mullet flickered through the gaps of the causeway below Bryn Aber. We crossed the inlet and made west along the coast path, looking forward to the prominent seamarks of the White Ladies on Carmel Head and the squat red and white lighthouse out on the long reef of the Skerries a couple of miles offshore.

Up close the White Ladies proved an angular pair, tall and thin, their triangular buttresses like grey cloaks held out to catch the wind. Below them the point of Carmel Head was a jumble of quartz and rusty iron rock, and of ancient gneiss pushed up and over the underlying rocks – the oldest exposed rock in Wales. Out at sea a pair of porpoises were hunting the agitated waters of the tide-ripped sound, and we sat to watch their curving backs and thorn-shaped fins breaking the sea.

On past a series of deep, dark coves, the path narrow and vertiginous round their unguarded edges. By the rock stack islet of Ynys y Fydlyn with its black wave-cut arches we turned inland between fields of sheep and cattle, a landscape rolling south to the crumpled peak of Mynydd y Garn. Over the pastures to Tyn Llan and its little chapel tucked behind a field wall, and down again to Bryn Aber and the bird cries in Captain Hewitt’s lagoon.

Start: Cemlyn Bay car park (east side), near Cemaes, Anglesey, LL67 0DY approx. (OS ref 336932)

Getting there: Cemlyn is signed from A5025 Holyhead-Cemaes road between Llanrhyddlad and Tregele.

Walk (9½ miles, moderate, OS Explorer 262. NB: online maps, more walks at christophersomerville.co.uk): Walk Esgair Gemlyn shingle bank to west end at Bryn Aber (329936); follow coast path for 4 miles via Carmel Head to beach at Ynys y Fydlyn (292917). NB closures – see below. From beach, head inland (yellow arrow) with trees on left; over open land for ½ mile to car park (303914). Left along road. In ½ mile, at right bend (308918), keep ahead (‘Mynachdy, Private Road’). At Mynachdy, through gate (309923); right along wall by barns; on along stony track, past derelict lodge on left, to gate/stile (314925). Ahead to gate into road (317926). Immediately left through iron kissing gate (‘NT’); path to coast (319929). Right on coast path round Hen Borth, through gate at far end and on to next gate (321931). Half right to gate near chapel (322932); across field to kissing gate to left of Tyn Llan farmhouse (323933). Ahead down lane; in 500m, left (328932) across causeway and past Bryn Aber; across Esgair Gemlyn to car park.

Conditions: Esgair Gemlyn shingle bank, April-August – please walk seaward of wooden posts to avoid disturbing nesting birds.
NB Coast Path immediately north of Ynys y Fydlyn is narrow, slippery and vertiginous, with sheer drops. Walk this section at your own risk. It is a permissive path, courtesy of the landowner, and is closed between September 15 and 31 January. Alternative return route from Carmel Head – footpath SE to Mynachdy; then as detailed above.

Lunch: Picnic

Accommodation: Harbour Hotel, Cemaes Bay LL67 0LN (01407-710273, angleseyharbour.co.uk)

Info: Llandudno TIC (01492-577577)
satmap.com; ramblers.org.uk; visitwales.com

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

Facebook Link:

A gloriously sunny morning in late June, with the low-rolling cornlands of north Essex looking an absolute picture. Just the day for 18-month-old Bertie to bring his dad Justin and his granny Patsie (long-term friend of Jane and me) out for a walk.

A mighty prospect into Cambridgeshire opened ahead as we walked the field path from Chrishall to Elmdon, a gradual landscape quilted in black and cream under the sun. This is wheat and horse country, the cornfields just flushing from pale green to pale gold. A pair of beautiful chestnut colts, skittish as schoolchildren, teased each other in a paddock under the red brick garden wall at Lofts Hall.

The hedges hung heavy with hard green fruit – plump bullace and sloes, vestigial cherries and hazelnuts. ‘Aaaaahh!’ said Bertie in his buggy, by way of approval. On the well-mown lawn of the Hamlet Church at Duddenhoe End we let him out to teeter across the grass. This thatch-roofed church is a modest wonder, a barn converted to a chapel by a mid-Victorian squire parson, Rev Robert Wilkes of Lofts Hall. Simple beams, an alabaster font, sturdy pews of oak and pine, the whole atmosphere very peaceful and still in the midday sunshine.

Bertie collected all the coins we had and clattered them into the offertory box. He ate our lunch for us, redistributed a couple of molehills, and gave the church wall mosses a thorough scrub before being removed by dad to enjoy a well-earned nap. Patsie, Jane and I went through the ripening wheat, and turned along the old Roman road now known as Beard’s Lane between hedges of frothy meadowsweet. The level sunlight had reduced all far-off things to a simple palette of colours – milky green corn, green-black woods, burnt orange pantile roofs, washed blue sky, tarnished silver clouds – the unemphatic beauty of an English summer’s day.

In a puddled dip we left the old lane and turned north again along field paths, past Chiswick Hall where the driveway lay lined with big blue heads of scabious, yellow and purple vetches and hard-packed globular seedheads of wild alium. Chrishall’s isolated Holy Trinity Church stood ahead on a ridge, knapped flints in its walls, chequerboard flushwork round its tower top. We sat a while in the cool of the church porch, looking forward to a cup of tea, yet reluctant to close the circle of this lovely walk through the Essex cornfields.

Start: Red Cow PH, Chrishall, Essex SG8 8RN (OS ref TL 446393)

Getting there: Buses from Cambridge, Saffron Walden, Bishops Stortford, Royston – see chrishallpc.org.uk
Road – Chrishall is signed off B1039 Wendens Ambo to Royston road (M11, Jct 9)

Walk (9½ miles, easy, OS Explorer 194):

Right to crossroads; down Loveday Close (‘Icknield Way’/IW, yellow arrow/YA). Pass Marchpayne House on right, turn right (IW, YA) down alley, and follow footpath east through fields for ½ mile into wood (454397). At multiple arrow post, right; at T-junction (455395), left to road (458397); right into Elmdon. Follow village street south (‘Wendens Ambo’); right through gate (462392, ‘footpath’/FP) along side of recreation field. On south (YAs) for ½ mile to B1039 (462379). Dogleg right/left; on in tunnel of trees (FP) to cross School Lane (463372 – NB Hamlet Church is 100m to right). On south for 600m to road at Duddenhoe End (463367).

Left and over crossroad (‘Bridleway’). In 100m, just beyond house on right, bear left (465367, blue arrow/BA) between paddocks. In 250m, ahead through hedge (467367), right along hedge for 300m to road (470364). Left to T-junction; right along lane. In 500m, at Cooper’s End (465360), ahead (‘Cosh Farm Only’). In ½ mile, at drive to Cosh Farm (461354), keep ahead (‘Byway’, red arrow/RA). In another 300m, pass footpath on left (459351, arrow). Keep ahead (RA); in another 50m, turn right along hedge (YA), following Harcamlow Way (unmarked on ground, marked on Explorer map). In 600m, at crossing of hedges (452350), bear right (YA) round hedge end, left through hedge gap, and right (YA) with hedge on right for 500m to road in Langley (448353).

Left for 100m; right past ‘The Gables’ along right side of village green. In top right corner of green, bear right along green lane (446353). In 20m fork left (YA) and on along field edges. In 500m, at three-arrow post, right (443356) along field edge, following YAs. In 500m, bear right through thicket (443362, YA – ignore ‘CLA Welcome’ arrow pointing ahead here). Head NNE for almost 1 mile to Chiswick Hall (450375). Dogleg left/right round house (YAs); follow path between paddock fence and hedge, then on down drive to B1039 (451382). Left for 20m; right across footbridge (FP), up field path to church gate (452386). Diagonally across churchyard; through kissing gate by tower; on to cross Bury Lane (450387). On (FP) between paddocks and on, following field edge path (YAs) to cross Chalky Lane (448389). On (FP) along field edge. In 400m, at top left/NW corner (446391), right through hedge (FP) along lane to road at Red Cow PH.

Lunch: Red Cow PH, Chrishall (01763-838792, theredcow.com). NB Closed Mondays

Accommodation: Crown House, Great Chesterford, Saffron Walden (01799-530515, crownhousehotel.com)

Info: Saffron Walden TIC (01799-524002)

satmap.com; ramblers.org.uk; visitengland.com