Christopher Somerville

Aldeburgh & Thorpeness, Suffolk

Jun 012013

Screeching of seagulls over the fishermen’s sheds, faint hiss and suck of the North Sea at the pebbly Suffolk shore, church bells pealing out, and the chirrup of well-bred voices talking over last night’s music at Snape Maltings – where else but Aldeburgh’s seafront on Sunday morning?
First published in: The Times Click here to view a map for this walk in a new window

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We’d been to that concert – Benjamin Britten’s ‘Canticles’ – and had been spellbound. So although you couldn’t really say it was whistleable music, we too had Britten on the tip of our tongues as we passed the modest, sea-facing Crag House where the locally-born composer lived with the tenor Peter Pears from 1947-57, and the churchyard hung with cherry blossom where the two musicians and life-long partners now lie side by side.

Out on the old railway line running parallel with the sea up to Thorpeness, an Irish wolfhound the size of a small pony went loping by on springs. The path snaked along the ruler-straight trackbed between banks of stitchwort, yellow archangel and sky-blue flowers of green alkanet. Skylarks sang over the freshwater meadows beside the line. We pulled up at the big reedy inlet of The Fens, struck still by the spectacle of two marsh harriers quartering the reed beds, gliding, swooping and pouncing, their big pale dark-tipped wings manipulating the air with economical power.

Thorpeness is a curiosity. When Stuart Ogilvie determined in 1910 to create a holiday haven on the Suffolk coast in memory of his mother, he didn’t do things by halves. Stuart and his son Sholto magicked the vernacular dream of Thorpeness around a lake they dug and christened The Meare. Half timbered mini-manors and clapboard cottages form the backdrop to The House In The Clouds, a fabulous water tower disguised as a fairy-tale chalet perched atop a 5-storey house.

We sat over a drink beside The Meare, people-watching, and then took the sandy byway across gorse-strewn Thorpeness Common, where the delicate flowers so aptly named ‘spring beauty’ formed china-white drops on round, saucer-like leaves. Down on the crumbly flint-and-clay cliffs of the coast we turned south for Aldeburgh. The town’s church bells were still ringing out over red roofs, lapwing-haunted marshes, and the long grey strand where a million million pebbles made the endless sea music that Benjamin Britten took for his own.

Start: Moot Hall, Aldeburgh, Suffolk, IP15 5DS (OS ref TM 466569).

Getting there: Bus (firstgroup.com/ukbus/suffolk_norfolk) – 64 or 165 (Aldeburgh-Ipswich), 521 (Aldeburgh-Halesworth Station)
Road: A1094 from A12 between Saxmundham and Wickham Market.

Walk (8 miles, easy, OS Explorer 212. NB: online maps, more walks at christophersomerville.co.uk): From Moot Hall, up Victoria Road and across High Street. In 150m, right through graveyard (464568, fingerpost). Through gate; on up path. In ¼ mile cross roadway (463573); half left through caravan site (yellow arrow) to old railway path (460575, ‘Permissive Path’). Right along railway path for 1½ miles. At Ward Hill, opposite North Warren nature reserve sign, right (462598, fingerpost) past golf course to road in Thorpeness (471598). Right to The Meare (shop, café). Opposite The Meare, left up The Sanctuary (472596) past gatehouse tower to cross road (473599). Half left along gravel road; follow ‘Byway’ and ‘Suffolk Coast Path’ for 1½ miles to coast near the Dower House (476617). Right for 3½ miles to Aldeburgh.

Lunch: The Meare Shop and Tearoom, Thorpeness (01728-452156); The Regatta, Aldeburgh (01728-452011; regattaaldeburgh.com)

Accommodation: Cross Keys Inn, Crabbe Street, Aldeburgh (01728-452637; aldeburgh-crosskeys.co.uk) – pub with rooms

Aldeburgh Festival: 7-23 June (aldeburgh.co.uk)
Britten Centenary: Until November 2013 (brittenaldeburgh.co.uk)
Snape Maltings: snapemaltings.co.uk
Benjamin Britten Trail around Aldeburgh: brittentrail.org
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Greta Bridge and the River Greta, Co. Durham

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May 182013

A sunny day, clear and cold, had settled over Teesdale.
First published in: The Times Click here to view a map for this walk in a new window

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The leaves of the beech trees along the River Greta shone a sharp acid green as they filtered the morning sunshine. We followed a field path up the noisy Greta from Greta Bridge, walking against the flow of the river that sparkled over its bed of rocky slabs in the narrow west-east dale it has carved for itself.

A brief climb to the lip of the dale – seas of yellow rape rolling away to pale purple moors on the northern skyline – and then we were dipping down into the wooded cleft where the ruin of St Mary’s Church lay in its walled graveyard. A wonderful peaceful spot to idle and wander among the old slanting gravestones, unsteadily lettered by local masons – ‘Christopher Thwaites Postmaster of Greata Bridge 1693’, ‘Julian & Jane Sutton Bless ye The Lord Praise Him & Magnifie Him’, and a low stone for a child, simply inscribed ‘EH 1699’.

The path wound on, increasingly narrow and crumbly, through Tebb Wood, a world of white, blue and green with bluebells and wild garlic, bugle and wood anemones. Neither of us could remember any riverside walk so bright with wild flowers – the dusky purple nodding bells of water avens, false oxlips with multiple primrose heads on cowslip-like stalks, bold pink campion, white stars of stitchwort, early purple orchids. Blackcaps burbled musically in the scrub hawthorns, and wrens chattered. The sun poured over everything like a warm bath for the senses, just edged enough with cold fingers of breeze to remind us that we were in the Durham dales in springtime.

Down by stone-built Brignall Mill we crossed the Greta, splodged through the muddy caterpillar tracks of a logging operation, and turned back along the south bank of the river. What a contrast! These north-facing slopes of the gorge were at least a month behind those facing south only just across the river, with bluebells not yet bloomed and celandines and delicate white wood sorrel still out in glory.

The path climbed to a precipitous ledge above the Greta, then turned south through the woods high over Gill Beck. At Gillbeck Bridge we took to a silent country lane and field paths through open uplands where young calves kicked and capered in the meadows. A stretch of road with far moorland views and then the homeward path through Mill Woods and by the water-sculpted churn holes of the Greta’s gorge.
Start & finish: Morritt Hotel, Greta Bridge, Co. Durham, DL12 9SE (OS ref NZ 085133)

Getting there: Greta Bridge is signposted off A66 between Scotch Corner (A1) and Bowes. Park near Morritt Hotel – please ask permission, and give hotel your custom!

Walk (9½ miles, moderate, OS Explorer OL30): Leaving Morritt Hotel, turn right along road. Just before bridge, right over wall (fingerpost) follow riverside path towards Brignall Mill. In 2 miles you pass opposite the confluence of Gill Beck (062113). In another ⅔ mile path rises to go through gate (051112; yellow arrow/YA); in 150m fork right over cattle grid and down to Brignall Mill (047112).

Follow YAs around mill and across footbridge; dogleg right and left along higher track; in 100m bear left down to path downstream beside River Greta. In ⅓ mile cross footbridge at Hening Scar (051111) and continue beside Greta. In another ⅓ mile on Bleak Scar, path climbs high above river. Near top it forks (057112); don’t go right uphill to gate, but keep ahead along fence and above river. In ¼ mile, at post with 2 YAs (061112), keep ahead (not left), to bend sharply right along gorge of Gill Beck. Continue for ½ mile, crossing 3 footbridges, to reach Gillbeck Bridge (062105).

Left up Cowclose Lane. In ¾ mile, at end of Primrose Gill Plantation, left (072101; ‘Byway’ fingerpost) along stony lane. Pass limekiln (073104); in 300m, left through gate (075106, blue arrow) up fields to Crook’s House (075115). Ahead down left side of barn; right across farmyard; along drive to Wilson House farm (083118). Ahead along road; in ½ mile, left (085125, fingerpost) over stile; right through Mill Wood. Over meadow to Greta Bridge; through gate and farmyard (087131) to road; left to Morritt Hotel.

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Conditions: For surefooted walkers – riverside paths are narrow, slippery and eroded in places

Lunch: Picnic

Accommodation: Morritt Hotel, Greta Bridge (01833-627232; themorritt.co.uk) – family-run, very friendly, helpful and well-kept

More Info: Durham walks/accommodation – thisisdurham.com
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Moel Famau & the Clwydian Hills, North East Wales

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May 112013

Rain and gales over north-east Wales, with the Clwydian Hills bathed one moment in brilliant sunshine, the next in grey showers chased northwards by the wind. First published in: The Times Click here to view a map for this walk in a new window

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We watched the squalls marching through the Vale of Clwyd far below as we followed the broad stony track of Offa’s Dyke Path north along the ridge.

The Clwydian Hills make a hugely popular day out for local walkers; and Moel Famau, at 554m the summit of the 20-mile range, is the natural target with the stump of its ruined Jubilee Tower as an aiming point. Hikers, runners, strollers, dog-walkers, all were out striding the path in the buffeting wind, children running and tumbling in the heather, their parents crunching across the snow banks of last month’s unseasonable blizzards.

The Jubilee Tower was erected in 1810 for King George III’s Golden Jubilee and blown down in a storm in 1862. Its blockhouse foundations sit across the peak of Moel Famau like a double-crowned cardinal’s hat. Up on its walls we found we couldn’t keep our feet – the wind literally pushed us off that hilltop, tears in our eyes, the breath rammed back in our throats. There was time for a glimpse of the snow-streaked crests of the Berwyn Hills in the south, and then we had left the Offa’s Dyke Path and the wind-blasted ridge, and were skeltering down a green hillside into the calm airs of the Vale of Clwyd.

A string of small sheep farms runs north to south in the shelter of the Clwydian Hills. Above Tyn-y-celyn we crossed a fast-running hill torrent, ice-cold from snowmelt, and turned back along a path through sheep pastures. Ewes issued their throaty, peremptory calls to the lambs who came in pairs to look us over, their large ears sticking out and filtering the sun into a pink glow. We crossed a patch of unmelted snow, stamping our boots into the icy crust to get a grip, and went on south above the slate-roofed farms that crouched among shelter trees – Tyddyn Norbury, Bron-y-felin, Fron Goch, Fron Ganol, Fron Bellaf, ringing names to a Saesneg ear.

At Fron Bellaf we crossed a stream where daffodils were still in bud, and took the old green road up over the shoulder of the hill, climbing back towards Offa’s Dyke Path once more. The gale came rushing to meet us, the sky raced from peak to peak, and an old crow’s nest rocked in the fork of a weather-skinned thorn tree, seething to itself in the wind.

Start: Bwylch Penbarras car park, Llanbedr-Dyffryn-Clwyd, LL15 1US approx. (OS ref SJ 161606).

Getting there: Bus – Free shuttle bus from Loggerheads (denbighshirecounytryside.co.uk) in summer
Road – A494 from Mold towards Ruthin. In Llanbedr-Dyffryn-Clwyd, just before church, right up Lôn Cae Glas. Bear left along Lôn y Mynydd to Bwylch Penbarras car park at top of road.

WALK (5 miles, moderate, OS Explorer 265):

From car park follow Offa’s Dyke Path/ODP to Moel Famau tower (162626) and on. In ⅓ mile cross side track in dip (156628); in next dip, left off ODP (152630, fingerpost, yellow arrow/YA). Descend slope, looking to left for marker posts on a clear downward track. Follow it down. At bottom, cross stream (143628); in 200m, above Tyn-y-Celyn farm, sharp left (142627, waymark post) back along wall. Recross stream; on beside wall/fence. In ⅓ mile, YA points ahead (144622), but you hairpin right to cross stile; ahead along drive. At entrance to Bron-y-felin farmyard (144620), left through gate; bear right above and round farm; ahead through field gate and on with hedge on right. Keep same contour above Fron Goch (144616, stile, YA). At Fron Bellaf cross stream; left to cross stile (YA); climb bank ahead. Ignore first green track you cross, and YA pointing right; keep climbing to fence (147612). Turn left here, following fence on green track. In 200m cross stile; up slope for 50m, then left on grassy track, climbing for ½ mile. At top, ignore first stile on right (154609); ahead with fence on right for 200m to cross next stile. Ahead to join ODP (157608); right to car park.

Lunch: Griffin Inn, Llanbedr-Dyffryn-Clwyd (1824-702792; griffinllanbedr.co.uk) – cosy and friendly

Moel Famau Country Park: moelfamau.co.uk

Information: Ruthin TIC (01824-703992); visitwales.co.uk;
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Canvey Island, Essex

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May 042013

Before I ever set foot on Canvey Island I’d thoroughly explored this dead flat offshoot of the Thames Estuary’s Essex shore in my imagination – washed up there on the tides of Wilko Johnson’s gritty lyrics and Lee Brilleaux’s gravelly bark.
First published in: The Times Click here to view a map for this walk in a new window

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If the tough-looking, fist-punching Brilleaux was the voice and face of Dr Feelgood, Canvey Island’s crunchy home-grown R&B band, guitarist Johnson was its heart and soul, with a unique song-writing talent for depicting the mean streets and hard men and women of a place he called ‘Oil City’. It wasn’t the real Canvey Island, but it was a real enough place to me and thousands more fans of the ‘greatest local band in the world’.

Setting out across Benfleet Creek to walk a circuit of the Canvey seawalls, I found myself immediately in acres of green marshes where piebald horses grazed and skylarks sang overhead. This western sector of the island houses one of the most diverse bird reserves in Britain – marsh harriers over the reedbeds, lapwings in the fields, curlews on the muddy foreshore – more RSPB than R&B.

Where was the Feelgoods’ Oil City? I looked ahead and saw the burning flare stacks and mad scientist’s geometry set of Shell Haven oil refinery across the creek. Further round the island a giant black jetty, remnant of a never-built refinery on Canvey itself, rose out of the fields and hurdled the mud flats of Hole Haven to curve into the River Thames. ‘I’ve been searching, all thru’ the city,’ growled Brilleaux on Dr Feelgood’s debut album, ‘see you in the morning, down by the jetty.’ Here it was, as skeletal and ominous as I’d always imagined.

Now the Thames lay in full view, nearly two miles wide, the green and yellow escarpment of the North Kent shore rising on the southern skyline. A great concrete sea wall fifteen feet high keeps the tides out of Canvey these days – it was built after the East Coast flood disaster of 1953 when the island, lying below sea level, was inundated and 58 people lost their lives.

I followed the sea wall under the jetty and on above the white weatherboarded Lobster Smack pub, a notorious haunt of smugglers back in the day, where Charles Dickens had Pip and Magwitch hiding out in Great Expectations. On along the Thames shore among sunbathing Canveyites; past the Art Deco cylinder of the Labworth Café; round the eastern point of the island, a maze of ramshackle wooden jetties with a glimpse of Southend Pier far ahead.

The northern side of Canvey is all saltmarshes and creeks. I strolled the seawall path and hummed the tunes that brought the ‘Canvey Delta’ to life in my imagination, back when the Feelgoods ruled the world.

NB Please retain all this information!

START: Benfleet station, South Benfleet, Essex (OS ref TQ 778859).

GETTING THERE:
Train (www.thetrainline.com) to Benfleet
Road: M25 Jct 29; A127, A130 to Waterside Farm roundabout on Canvey Island; left on B1014 to Benfleet.

WALK (14 miles, easy, OS Explorer 175):
From Benfleet station turn left along B1014 onto Canvey Island; turn right (west) along the sea wall and follow it, and the outer edge of the island, anti-clockwise all the way round.

LUNCH: Lobster Smack PH, Haven Road (01268-514297; thelobstersmackcanveyisland.co.uk)

ACCOMMODATION: Oysterfleet Hotel, Knightswick Road, Canvey Island (01268-510111; oysterfleethotel.com) – friendly, welcoming and very helpful.

Dr Feelgood Exhibition: 10-29 May; Canvey Club, 162 High Street; free entry. Free guided walks: 10, 17, 24 May; 10.30, Lobster Smack Inn, Haven Road

Visitor Information: Southend-on-Sea TIC (01702-215620); www.visitessex.com.
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Chipping, Parlick and Wolf Fell, Forest of Bowland, Lancs

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Apr 272013

The Gibbon Bridge Hotel and the nearby village of Chipping cater enthusiastically for walkers these days. First published in: The Times Click here to view a map for this walk in a new window

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But before the Countryside & Rights of Way Act became law in 2000, most of the neighbouring Forest of Bowland was closed to the public. Nowadays, however, this great tract of upland moors with its encircling ribbon of villages is Lancashire’s prime walking location, a vast swathe of Access Land criss-crossed by hundreds of walker-friendly paths and tracks.

Daffodils and primulas were putting their heads out cautiously in Chipping’s window boxes as a fine strong wind came roaring in from the sea 20 miles westward. Cloud shadows and sunlight raced across the slopes of Wolf Fell and Parlick as we crossed the sedgy fields around Fish House and Windy Harbour. A big hare with dull orange pelt and black-tipped ears sprang up from a sedge clump and dashed away, and a lapwing went tumbling overhead across the gale in an ecstatic mating display. Two oystercatchers chased each other round the windy sky with piercing piping calls, and we could hear the bubbling cry of curlews in the wet fields – all signs of onrushing spring.

It was a stiff, steady climb up the steep grassy breast of Parlick, the wind shoving from the west, the path slippery underfoot. At the summit, a view in a million – back across the field and farms below the moors to witchy Pendle Hill grey and ship-shaped in the east, and forward to an enormous curve of moorland – Blindhurst Fell, Fair Snape Fell, Wolf Fell, Saddle Fell, Burnslack Fell, rounded flanks of oatmeal, olive and burnt orange dipping south, a great ridge of peat hags connecting them like waves in a sluggish rust-brown sea far back up the northern skyline.

We followed a guiding fence and a whistling gritstone wall that filtered the wind into a high-pitched keening. At the crest of Wolf Fell we left the fence and plunged among fantastically eroded peat hags, then down the long green snout of Saddle Fell into the wind, with the Bowland valley spread before us. Ewes came bleating at Saddle End Farm as the farmer and his dogs herded them up the fellside, and down by Dobson’s Brook the week-old lambs bounced away as though each fat white leg were made of springs.

Start: Car park, Chipping, Lancs, PR3 2QH (OS ref SD 621433).

Getting there: Bus (lancashire.gov.uk): 5, 5A (Chipping-Clitheroe), 5B (Clitheroe-Garstang), 35 (Chipping-Blackburn)
Road: Chipping is signed from Longridge on B6243 Preston-Clitheroe road (M6, Jct 31a).

Walk (7½ miles, hard, OS Explorer OL 41. NB Online maps, more walks at christophersomerville.co.uk):

From car park, to road; left toward church; first left. In 300m, lane curves left (620435). Follow it past Old Hive. At gateway to Quiet Lane, left down Springs House drive (616436, fingerpost). In 350m, at left bend, right (612436, stile, yellow arrow/YA) across field; next stile (YA); stone stile by barn; cross stream (611437). Ahead (YA), bearing half-right to track to Fish House farm (610441). Left along Fish House Lane; in 30m, right (stile, fingerpost). Cross fields (stiles, YAs), aiming for left corner of trees ahead at foot of Parlick. Cross drive (603444, YA); on through kissing gate/KG by Wildcock House ruin (602446); left to Fell Foot house (599445). Turn right up steep pitched path to climb Parlick.

From summit cairn (596450) follow fence (keeping it on your left) for 1½ miles. Roughly opposite Paddy’s Pole cairn on left, fence bends half-right (595469). Soon it bends half-right again at a junction of fences, with 2 stiles on either side of a gate. Keep following it to summit of Wolf Fell (598472), another junction for fences with a pitched path going away north. Here 2 stony tracks, close together, lead off to right. Take 2nd one, a clear track heading east through peat hags. In ¾ mile, go through KG in fence (609470); bear right on grassy track parallel to descending fence, then trending away to left. Follow it south down Saddle Fell for 1¼ miles (YAs) to Saddle End farm (614451). Through farmyard; down drive to cross road (616448, fingerpost). On along track, across Dobson’s Brook (618446) to farmhouse. Through gate (619446, YAs); immediately right through gate (‘Chipping’); descend bank to cross brook (620445). Follow path (YAs) through fields, parallel to brook, down to lane by reservoir (619437). Left into Chipping.
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Conditions: Steep climb up Parlick; some moor paths obscure; a walk for confident fell walkers, properly shod and equipped.

Lunch: plenty of pubs, cafés in Chipping

Accommodation: Gibbon Bridge Hotel, near Chipping (01995-61456; gibbon-bridge.co.uk) – characterful, enthusiastic, extremely friendly

Forest of Bowland: forestofbowland.com

Clitheroe TIC: 01200-425566; visitengland.com
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Morchard Road and Zeal Monachorum, Devon

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Apr 202013

A fresh cold day with a dilute blue sky over the mid-Devon woods and fields. First published in: The Times Click here to view a map for this walk in a new window

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The little Tarka Line train rattled away north from Morchard Road station into Henry Williamson country. I was glad to swap the rush of lorries on the Barnstaple road for the call and response of ewes and their new-born lambs in the steep green fields. The farmer had been deep ploughing around Oakview; I stumbled among the ruts, and came down to Middle Yeo Farm with boots as heavy as the Emperor of China’s famed iron shoes.
Beyond Old Mill I threaded a resinous pine plantation and took the stony lane up to Zeal Monachorum, where a feeble spring sun was shining on the thatched roofs and thick cob walls. The village lay tightly stretched along its ridge-top, the sloping lanes full of sparrow twitter and the cooing of ring doves. In the rough lane down to Tucking Mill Bridge, a robin gripped a hawthorn twig six feet away in the hedge and sang quite unafraid into my face. The old tucking or cloth-fulling mill lay among daffodils. and periwinkles just above the two-arched bridge, its tin roof and timbers sliding into a green ruin, the double hoop of the mill wheel still attached to the outside wall.
In the fields at Oak Tree Farm two black-faced lambs bounded for safety in the hedge, their mother’s cracked bellow of a call as throaty and querulous as a gin-soaked duchess. ‘Come hyyyaaaah!’ The farmer at Lower Thorne found me fumbling with a tricky horse-proof gate. ‘Pull it up! If you were a proper walker,’ he teased in a gentle Devon burr, ‘you’d have known that!’ How long had he lived here? ‘Oh, about seventy years. See that old house?’ He pointed at a beautiful thatched cottage across the fields. ‘Lammacott – I was born in that house, so I haven’t travelled far.’
Up at Down St Mary, another ridge-top village, I admired the tympanum carved over the south door of St Mary’s Church, a calmly smiling figure assailed by demonic beasts with palm-frond tails. Seven hundred years old? Eight hundred? The drama, the vigour and humour of the work shine through, now as then – a contact with the medieval stonemason as warm and direct as a handshake across the centuries.

Start: Morchard Road station, EX17 5LR (OS ref SS 750051)
Getting there: Rail (thetrainline.com; railcard.co.uk) to Morchard Road.
Road: Morchard Road station is between Copplestone and Lapford on A377 Crediton-Barnstaple road.
Walk: (6½ miles, moderate, OS Explorer 113): From station cross A377; take B3220 (‘Winkleigh’). In 300m, left through gate (747051, yellow arrow/YA) up Ellicombe Farm drive. Don’t fork left to Ellicombe House. By entrance pillars to red brick house, left through gate (745050, YA); follow fence round to right. Pass house; continue along hedge; through kissing gate to right of tin shed (744050). Right through metal gate (YA); immediately left through another metal gate (YA). Pass a tree (ignore gate on skyline to right here); keep ahead up bottom of shallow valley, rising to go through gate at far end (741049). Left (YA); over stile into lane.
Left for 200m; right up steps, over stile (742047). Down left-hand hedge; cross stile and turn left (741047, YA) along hedge. At end of field through gate (741045); right (YA) along irregular edge of field for 400m, with Oakview house on your left. At end of field, right over stile (737045, YA) over stream and stile beyond. Half left across field to cross 2 stiles in far top left corner (737046, YAs). In 30m, left over stile (YA); follow hedge to Middle Yeo Farm lane (733046). Left to road (733045). Right downhill. Just before bridge at The Old Mill, left through gate (732044, fingerpost), and follow YAs and stiles with river on right for ½ mile. At end of plantation, turn right across river by tall footbridge (726039); follow stony lane opposite uphill to road in Zeal Monachorum (721041).
Left; at phone box by church, left downhill (720040, ‘Bow’). At foot of slope left along ‘No Through Road’ (720038; ‘The Waie Inn’) past Waie Inn and on downhill to cross Tucking Mill Bridge (724035). Right (‘Bridleway’). At cottage, left (YA); in 20m, left up track. In 100m at field entrance, bear left and follow inside edge of wood to cross stile (725034, YA). Cross field; through gates; follow hedge on your right. In 200m, at bottom of dip, right over stile and through gate (729034, YAs); left along hedge, cross stream and go through gate (731033, fingerpost). Cross field, aiming for left-hand of 2 trees ahead. Through gate into lane (733033).
Ignore footpath fingerpost pointing right along lane; go through gate to right of Merrifield drive; diagonally right across field; through gate on far side (735031, YA). Left with hedge on left; at far end of field, descend to go through kissing gate (YA) and cross stream in dell (738032). Keep hedge on right to reach gate into lane at Lower Thorne (741032). Left; in 20m, sharp right (fingerpost) through several gates and farmyard. Continue on path across fields (YAs). In dip, through wood (744032), crossing stream and bearing left downhill to stile. Cross field to bridleway by cottage (736033). Left for ½ mile to road (741040); right uphill through Down St Mary.
Pass church (743045) and on (‘Morchard Road’). In 150m, left over stile (744046, YA, fingerpost). Follow right-hand hedge, then centre of long field downhill to two neighbouring metal and wooden gates. Turn right through wooden gate (744050); retrace steps to Morchard Road station.
Lunch/accommodation: Waie Inn, Zeal Monachorum (01363-82348; waieinn.co.uk); Devonshire Dumpling, Morchard Road (01363-85102; devonshiredumpling.com)
‘Tarka Line Walks’ by Peter Craske (Crimson Publishing) – 60 walks in the locality.
Exmoor Walking Festival: 27 April-6 May (exmoorwalkingfestival.co.uk)
Info: Exeter TIC (01392-665700)
visitdevon.co.uk vistengland.com www.ramblers.org.uk www.satmap.com www.LogMyTrip.co.uk
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High Halstow and the Thames shore, Isle of Grain, Kent

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Apr 062013

The nightingale sang as though its heart would break. The infinitely slow and sweet contralto warbling filled the scrubby wood at the RSPB’s High Halstow reserve, an operatic aria against the plainer chorus of blue tits, chiffchaffs and wrens, and the stage-hand knocking and hammering of great and lesser spotted woodpeckers.
First published in: The Times Click here to view a map for this walk in a new window

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There can’t be a more poignant or a richer bird song anywhere in England on a misty spring morning, and it held us enchanted on our way down the Isle of Grain’s escarpment to the moody Kentish shore of the River Thames.

We followed a path out of the woods through green wheatfields and a blue haze of linseed towards the first glimpse of the Thames – a broad leaden tideway rolling seaward, the tall spindly stacks of an oil refinery on the Essex shore misted out into grey and white spires like a city in a dream.

A rough old lane led north between vigorous young elm hedges, a puddled track under a thick grey sky that brought us through the dead flat grazing meadows of Halstow Marshes to Egypt Bay in a crook of the sea wall that rims the Isle of Grain.

Yellow cockle shell sands lay at the feet of low black cliffs, leading out to a wide sheet of bird-haunted tidal mud, slippery and glutinous. In Egypt Bay the overarching imagination of Charles Dickens tethered the dreaded prison hulk from which the convict Magwitch escaped to terrorise young Pip in Great Expectations. There really were hulks in Egypt Bay in Dickens’s day – stinking, superannuated men-of-war in which convicts were incarcerated to rot away in hellish isolation.

Nowadays Egypt Bay and neighbouring St Mary’s Bay hold nothing more threatening than oystercatchers, avocets, curlew and brent geese. They are beautiful, sombre, wild places, destined to be overwhelmed if ‘Boris Island’, the monstrous Thames Estuary airport now under consideration, ever comes to pass – because it would be built right here.

A herd of bullocks paced the sea wall, evenly spaced one behind the next like the wagons of a slow-moving goods train. We left them to it, took a last lungful of salty estuary air, and made inland for the pretty duckpond hamlet of St Mary Hoo and the homeward path.

START& FINISH: RSPB car park, Woodside, High Halstow, Kent ME3 8TQ (OS ref TQ 781757).

GETTING THERE: From M2 Jct 1, A289, A228 towards Grain. At roundabout on outskirts of Hoo St Werburgh, left down Dux Court Road (‘Deangate Ridge’). At High Halstow church, right along The Street past school. Left into Harrison Drive; 2nd left into Northwood Avenue; immediately left down Woodlands to RSPB car park.

WALK: (8 miles, easy, OS Explorer 163):
From car park, don’t take the path with several arrows, but the other path through a swing gate with ‘No Fouling’ notice. In 150 m, left (‘Toddler Trail’); in 100 m, right, in 150 m, right again (‘Heron Trail’) up slope. At top, at T-junction, left; in 250 m, ‘Woodland Trail’ points ahead but turn right here up steps. In 100 m, with stile on right, turn left; in 50 m, right on Saxon Shore Way/SSW (782761). Leave wood; bear left along edge of picnic field, through hedge (785761) and on over field. In 200 m, left along field edge (787762; yellow arrow/YA). At top of field dogleg right and left (787764, YA) and on through scrub wood to road (787766). Left past Decoy Farm to Swigshole (788776). Over stile (YA; ‘Curlews, Convicts & Contraband’/CCC). In 100 m at fork, keep ahead (CCC) on Manor Way track for ¾ mile to end of track (783786). Left over stile (CCC) and next one; bear left along flood bank. Soon you cross stile with 2 YAs; bear right up onto flood bank at Egypt Bay (778790).

Right over stile (YA; CCC) and follow sea wall for 1½ miles. At south-east corner of St Mary’s Bay, right over stile (796788); head inland along green lane. In ½ mile, cross stile (796779; YA); ahead past sheepfold (797776; CCC); up slope to cross stile (798772; YA) and follow track to gate and stile into lane (801769; CCC). Follow lane round Ross Farm buildings to road in St Mary Hoo (803766). Ahead to visit church and pond. Retrace steps; at right bend (803766) keep ahead down stony lane (fingerpost, YA), through fields to pass Newlands Farm. Up steps by corrugated barn (797763; YA); on across field. At path crossing rejoin SSW (792763); ahead to road. Ahead round next bend; left (789762, SSW) to where SSW enters Northward Hill Wood (783761). Bear left on wide grass path across picnic field to gate and road (782759). Right (YA); in 250 m, right (RSPB sign) down Woodside to car park.

LUNCH: Red Dog, High Halstow (01634-253001; reddogpub.co.uk)

RSPB: Northward Hill and High Halstow Reserves: 01634-222480; rspb.org.uk

INFORMATION: Medway Visitor Centre, Rochester (01634-843666); visitkent.co.uk
www.ramblers.org.uk www.satmap.com www.LogMyTrip.co.uk
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Meltham and Marsden Clough, West Yorkshire

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Mar 302013

Snow flurries were scudding across the sedgy fell sides above Meltham as we started up Royd Lane towards the open moor.First published in: The Times Click here to view a map for this walk in a new window

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This part of West Yorkshire, the very northernmost tip of the Peak District National Park, is centred in ‘Last of the Summer Wine’ country; but if Compo, Clegg and Foggy had been out and about today, they’d have needed their caps and comforters. This was the Yorkshire Moors at winter’s end – bleak, harsh and compelling.

Royd Lane gave way to Magdalen Road, a noble name for a rugged old horse track that hurdles the low hill between Meltham and the twin reservoirs of Marsden Clough. Moor farms stood hunched along the lane, their windowless backs to the weather – Fox Royd, Upper Royd, Ash Royd. A ‘royd’ is a piece of land cleared of its roots, stones and trees for agriculture, but a lot of the royd land on these hills is going back out of keeping. One by one the hill farms are being abandoned in the face of pickings too slim to survive on.

Curls of snow still lay in the lee of the stone walls. A stray bullock was wandering in the lane, but when he caught sight of us he plunged with a twang straight through a barbed wire fence and cantered off to join his chums.

Beyond the Holmfirth road we dropped into Marsden Clough by way of Springs Road, a walled track whose beautifully cut sandstone paving-slabs had been grooved to guide the wheels of quarry wagons. Down along Nether Lane the stone-built farmhouse stood empty, solid old dwellings each in its own strip of fields – Goodbent, Bartin and Greaves Head.

Our ancestors did not always build solidly and well. Before climbing out of Marsden Clough and on back to Meltham, we leaned on the wall and looked down over the twin waters of Bilberry and Digley Reservoirs. When the poorly constructed embankment of Bilberry Reservoir collapsed in February 1852, a fifteen-foot-high wall of water rushed down the valley and devastated Holmfirth, ‘throwing a four storey mill down like a thing of nought, tossing boilers about like feathers, and carrying amongst the wreck of houses, mills and other buildings, men, women and children.’

Rural tradition says that the cries of plovers are the lamentations of lost souls. The upper air was full of them today, wailing and piping us away from the lakes and that dark old tragedy.

START: Royd Road, off Holmfirth Road, Meltham HD9 4BE approx. (OS ref SE 104102)

GETTING THERE: Bus 335 (stottscoaches.co.uk, Holmfirth-Meltham), 911 (wymetro.com, Honley rail station-Meltham) to Royd Road bus stop (at foot of Royd Road)
Road – Royd Road is off B6107 Meltham-Holmfirth road on southern edge of Meltham.

WALK (6 miles, moderate, OS Explorer OL1, 288): Walk up Royd Road. In ½ mile pass Fox Royd; in 200m fork right (100094, ‘bridleway’ fingerpost), past Royd Farm and on for 1 mile to A635 (094078). Right; in 50m, left through gate, down track (Springs Road) for ⅔ mile. At gate with ladder stile (086073), don’t cross, but swing left along Nether Lane; follow it for ¾ mile past Goodbent Lodge and Bartin to Greaves Head farmhouse (098074). In another ½ mile, turn left (106075) up grassy lane, over stile by gate (yellow waymark). On up between walls to road (106077); left to cross A635 (103080); ahead for 1¾ miles along Harden Moss Road (track), then Royd Road to B6107.

LUNCH: Plenty of pubs/cafés in Meltham

ACCOMMODATION: Durker Roods Hotel, Meltham HD9 4JA (01484-851413; durkerroodshotel.co.uk)

INFO: Holmfirth TIC (01484-222444); yorkshire.com
www.ramblers.org.uk www.satmap.com www.LogMyTrip.co.uk
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Walesby and the Lincolnshire Wolds, Lincs

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Mar 232013

A blustery cold day at the start of spring, with bursts of snow racing across the Lincolnshire Wolds. First published in: The Times Click here to view a map for this walk in a new window

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Seen from afar as a modest green bar on the horizon, the Wolds loomed, close-to, as a considerable wall. This long whaleback of limestone and ironstone rises some 300 feet above the Lincolnshire plains, a height lent grandeur by the flatness of the surrounding landscape.

‘Tealby, Claxby, Normanby, Otby, Walesby, Risby’ said the map. So many ‘-by’s in this part of the world – the Norse word for a farmstead, denoting where 9th century Danish invaders settled and beat their swords into ploughshares (to some extent). Outside Tealby the Viking Way long-distance path handed me over to a footpath at the feet of the Wolds, running through Walesby and on through the wind-whistle fields. From Claxby I went steeply up the grassy escarpment, picturing the village’s founder, one Klakkr – rather a fierce fighter, I guessed, carrying the smack and clatter of swords in his name. Up in the wind on the wold top at Normanby, I rejoined the Viking Way and followed its horned helmet symbols down to lonely Otby on its ridge, then back to Walesby tucked into the valley below.

Walesby folk have not always dwelt in the vale. In the Middle Ages the village lay high on the Wolds, but when the Black Death arrived in 1348 the inhabitants fled their plague-blasted settlement and its church. I found snowdrops and daffodils growing on the ancient foundations of houses and fields around St Andrew’s – known to generations as the ‘Ramblers Church’. It became the focus of local walkers’ expeditions in the 1930s, when it stood in romantic ruins. Nowadays there’s a most beautiful stained glass window depicting a red-robed Christ beckoning across a cornfield to a trio of clean-limbed young ramblers of the old school, while a brace of 1950s cyclists waits to attract his attention.

Medieval masons carved a jostle of cheeky, coarse-featured faces among the stone foliage of the nave pillars. I took some snaps and had a chuckle, then followed the Viking Way on along the ridge. Near Walesby Top a herd of 40 red deer watched me pass. The flock of pedigree Lincoln long-wool sheep at Risby – hefty beasts with a llama-like hauteur – stared through their floppy fringes as if mesmerised. And I stared back beyond them, out west to the edge of sight, where an apocalyptic sunburst sent Blakean shafts from blackening clouds to pick out the two towers of Lincoln cathedral on their ridge some twenty miles away.
Start & finish: King’s Head, Tealby, Lincolnshire LN8 3YA (OS ref TF 156905)

Getting there: Tealby is on B1203 near Market Rasen (A46, Lincoln-Caistor)

Walk: (10 miles, moderate, OS Explorer 282): From King’s Head, left to T-junction; right up street. In 200m (156907), up Church Lane to B1203. Left for 50m; right on Viking Way/VW (fingerpost). In 2nd field, fork left (152911; fingerpost) across fields to Catskin Lane (142917). Forward for ⅓ mile; right (136919) on footpath (fingerpost) into Walesby. Follow VW out of village; right (130924; ‘Mill House Farm’). Left at fork (129926; ‘Byway’); in ⅓ mile, left off VW (127931); follow ‘Byway’ for 1¼ miles to road (113942) into Claxby. Right up Normanby Rise; in ⅓ mile, right by reservoir (118948; footpath fingerpost), up side of wood, through 3 gates to road (123949). Right past Normanby church; follow VW. After 3 fields, leave VW (125936); ahead (fingerposts, yellow arrows) to valley bottom. Left (130930; fingerpost) to end of paddock (133933); uphill to Otby House drive (139935). Right to road; right into Walesby. From crossroads by village hall (134924) follow VW for 1¾ miles past Ramblers Church (138924), Risby Manor and Castle Farm to Tealby.

Lunch: King’s Head, Tealby (01673-838347; thekingsheadtealby.co.uk)

Accommodation: Advocate Arms, Queen Street, Market Rasen (01673-842364; advocatearms.co.uk) – stylish and very welcoming

Info: Lincoln TIC (01522-873256); visitlincolnshire.com
www.ramblers.org.uk www.satmap.com www.LogMyTrip.co.uk
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Friston Forest and the Seven Sisters, East Sussex

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Mar 162013

It’s a rare pleasure to find a place as well set up for four-seasons walking as East Dean. First published in: The Times Click here to view a map for this walk in a new window

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The immaculately kept East Sussex village lies just inland of the Seven Sisters cliffs at the heart of superb coast-and-countryside landscape. Walkers know they’ll be welcome at the cosy old Tiger Inn and the Hiker’s Rest teashop on the village green, the hub of a network of footpaths. I chose a circuit that would thread woodland, downs and cliffs together, and set out early from the Tiger into a red dawn.

‘Morning!’ said a woman by Friston duckpond, her breath smoking in the cold air. ‘Saw you yesterday up on the downs, didn’t I? Hope you enjoy your walk.’ Down in the valley below, ancient Friston Place lay low, pink-faced and many-gabled among beech trees where rooks were cawing lustily. Building low, I noticed, portent of a rainy summer.

Friston Forest sighed gently in the morning wind. A great spotted woodpecker rattled a hollow tree, a pair of racehorses went drumming by like ghosts in the mist on Friston Hill. Sunk in the woods, the medieval rectory and church at West Dean gleamed in dew-wet flint. A long flight of steps, the crest of a hill, and I was looking down over one of England’s classic views – the extravagant snake bends of the Cuckmere River sinuating its way seaward through a dead flat littoral between great curves of downland. Coastguard cottages stood isolated at the brink of the Cuckmere Haven cliffs, their tall chimneys silhouetted against a pale wintry sea.

Foxhole Farm, all flint walls and brick-red roofs, lay tucked into a fold of the downs. Beyond the farm the South Downs Way ribboned east along the furrowed brows of the Seven Sisters. Far ahead, the promontory cliff of Belle Tout displayed an elliptical grimace of white chalk like the baleen plates in the mouth of a right whale. At the feet of the cliffs fresh falls of chalk lay scattered, staining the shallows a milky white.

It was hard to tear myself away from this captivating stretch of coast, but my way lay inland, funnelling up Gap Bottom past the old farming hamlet of Crowlink. A last trudge over the downs through a stolid crowd of curly-faced sheep, and I was dipping down the steep slope towards East Dean with a pint of Tiger’s Claw in my sights and a head full of wonders to sort through.

Start: Tiger Inn, East Dean, near Eastbourne, East Sussex BN20 0DA (OS ref TV 556978).

Getting there: Bus 12, 12A (buses.co.uk), Eastbourne-Brighton.
Road: East Dean village is signposted off A259 Eastbourne-Seaford.

Walk (8 miles, easy/moderate, OS Explorer 123):
From Tiger Inn, right up side of village green; cross road, up path opposite (556979, fingerpost). At Friston church (551982) cross A259; take path just to left of Jevington road (yellow arrow); cross stile; right (‘footpath’ post) along woodland edge. Cross field (551985); cross lane by stile and gate (550987); cross next field, into woodland (550989). Left on path parallel to lane (‘West Dean’ post). Follow lane where it bends left around Friston Place (548990). In 100m, opposite entrance to Friston Place, right (547989; blue arrow; ‘West Dean’) on bridleway through woods. Keep straight ahead, following red arrow posts for a while, then cycleway signs, but always in same direction, ignoring all side tracks. In just over a mile, cycleway turns left (531996), but keep ahead down slope, past white house and on to West Dean. Right past church (525997) to T-junction; left along South Downs Way (SDW), over track, up 200+ steps to cross wall stile at top (521996; superb view over Cuckmere Haven!). Follow SDW down to cross A259 by Visitor Centre (520995).

Through gate (SDW); bear left up slope through another gate (SDW). Follow SDW for 2½ miles along cliffs. By National Trust sign ‘Crowlink’ (538968) bear inland to pass Crowlink hamlet. Opposite laneway on left, go right through open gateway (545975). Up to cross stile; keep same line up to brow of hill; pass clump of thorn trees, then on (car park 200m on your left) to go through kissing gate (551976). Aim down right side of triangular woodland; keep ahead (not right!) across stone wall stile (554977); down field slope to path by wall; left down to field; right through gate by NT ‘Crowlink’ sign into East Dean.

Lunch: Tiger Inn, East Dean; Golden Galleon, Exceat (01323-892247)

Accommodation: Tiger Inn B&B, (01323-423209; beachyhead.org.uk) or Beachy Head Cottages (01323-423878; beachyhead.org.uk). Superb country pub; classy self-catering

Information: Eastbourne TIC (01323-415450); visitsussex.org
www.ramblers.org.uk www.satmap.com www.LogMyTrip.co.uk
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