Christopher Somerville

A mile or so out of Longformacus, the bare-chested man up the ladder at Rawburn farm looked happy enough as he painted his gable in the sunshine.
First published in: The Times Click here to view a map for this walk in a new window

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‘Morning! Beautiful day!’ he called to us as we went by, with all the joyful emphasis of an outdoors man freed at last from a week’s rain-induced incarceration. The Lammermuir Hills sparkled in sunlight today, washed clean of the summer’s dust, a multicoloured Brian Cook landscape of squares, rectangles and rhombus shapes in green and mauve, gold, black and brown. Grouse shooting is a staple economy hereabouts in the Scottish Borders, and the grouse need heather in every stage of growth from tender green edible shoots to tough old bushes for cover. Hence the patchwork quilt aspect of these low-rolling hills.

‘See the hooks on these water avens fruit?’ enquired our long-term chum Dave Richardson, musician and naturalist, bending low over a clump of nodding, bell-shaped flowers. ‘They’ll hitch a ride on some animal, spread the seeds more widely.’ The roadside verges were thick with summer flowers, the hedges bright with great purple bursts of wood cranesbill.

Up by Watch Water reservoir we sat laughing over old times and watching sand martins flickering over the water from their holes in the sandy banks of the lake. Canada geese crouched on the brink, cuffing the water over themselves with stiff jerks of their wings. A pair of lapwings took off to dive-bomb a marauding black-backed gull. From the open moor beyond there were huge views all round the patchwork hills – long empty skylines of the kind a walker craves as soul food. With a strategically hunched shoulder I found I could even blot out the distracting whirl of the inevitable wind farm.

The Dye Water winds down to Longformacus through a valley so beautiful you’d hesitate to put it on a chocolate box for fear of being thought fanciful. High over the river stands the ancient promontory fort of Wrunklaw. We climbed to the medieval farm ruins inside the horseshoe-shaped earthen ramparts and stood there, sniffing the breeze and taking in incomparable views around the rolling Lammermuirs. A last stretch climbing and descending along the snaking Dye Water and we were heading down into Longformacus, with the tall cone of Dirrington Great Law, quilted in green and purple, a beacon to guide us back into the village.

Start & finish: Longformacus, Duns, Berwickshire, TD11 3PG (OS ref NT692572)
Getting there: Longformacus is signposted on a minor road between Duns (A6105) and Gifford (B6355)
Walk (8½ miles, easy/moderate grade, OS Explorer 345. NB: Online map, more walks: christophersomerville.co.uk): From Longformacus bridge follow Southern Upland Way/SUW up signposted road to Watch Water reservoir. On past Scarlaw farm (653565). In ⅓ mile, right off SUW at fingerpost (647561; ‘Dye Cottage’) on track over moor, down to cross Dye Water (650581). Right through gate past Dunside Cottage; follow track along left (north) river bank. In 300m through gate; follow base of cliff. In 300 m, aim up slope, through gate. Follow fence on cliff edge for 2 fields; descend to riverside and on, following occasional blue Scotways/SW arrows. (Detour – steep scramble up to Wrunklaw fort.) Just beyond Wrunklaw, up bank and through gate (SW) and on with fence on left. Follow path into dip and up shoulder of Sinclair’s Hill. At telegraph pole with SW, bear right with plantation on left; follow SW down to Manse Road; left into Longformacus.

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Lunch: Picnic
More info: Eyemouth TIC (01890-750678); visitscottishborders.com; surprise.visitscotland.com
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A cool misty Lancashire day, with the sky as close-fitting as a grey cloth cap over Rossendale and its tributary valleys. First published in: The Times Click here to view a map for this walk in a new window


A cheery milkman met us on the lane from Lumb to the moors, chinking two bottles in his hand. ‘G’morning – y’all right?’

The Pennine Bridleway ran as a hedged lane, winding and twisting past farmhouses and isolated cottages, all the buildings and field walls of the same dark sandy stone blotched with the green lichen so characteristic of these moors. Over the uplands a silence lay, broken by a crow call, a faint whistle of wind in the sedges, and the expressive fluting of a blackbird in the valley far below. As always when looking down from these moors, it was hard to relate today’s smokeless factory chimneys, silent mills and empty terraced streets to the roar and rattle, smog and human movement of half a century ago in these once-industrial valleys.

The bridleway led on through deeply hollowed miniature canyons worn down by centuries of boots, hooves and farm wheels. Many old tracks tangle and ramify across the moors – limers’ gaits along which laden carts jolted to bring lime fertilizer to the acid fields, packhorse routes and colliers’ trods, a superb network for riders and walkers exploring the Rossendale uplands. At an old stone cross we swung west, crossing the sedgy moorland fields with glimpses north to the steely waters of Clowbridge Reservoir and the slopes of Nutshaw Hill.

Down at Goodshaw we found Kathy Fishwick – an old acquaintance and a key-holder of the remarkable Goodshaw Chapel. This ancient Baptist foundation looks like a house, and in fact it is one – a house of the Lord. Every square inch inside is crammed with high-sided box pews with hard benches and a good view of the minister’s desk. Goodshaw Chapel could easily hold a congregation of three or four hundred. It frequently did so in times past, when the faith followed the wool and cotton trade. In 1760 the chapel-goers came singing over the hills, bearing these pews on their backs to furnish their new prayer house, which formed the heart of the community for the next two hundred years.

We bade Kathy goodbye and went on up steep-sided Folly Clough with its old millrace relics, out and over Swinshaw Moor where larks laid claim to each sedge clump in song and the black peaty pools reflected the racing sky.

START: Millennium Green, Lumb, Lancs, BB4 (OS ref SD 838250)

GETTING THERE: Bus 273 (Burnley-Bolton), 482, 483 (Burnley-Bury) – rossendalebus.co.uk
Road: M66 to Rawtenstall; A681 (‘Bacup’); in Waterfoot, left on B6238 (‘Burnley’); in 2¼ miles, park at Lumb Millennium Green.

WALK (6 miles, moderate, OS Explorer OL21. Online maps, more walks: christophersomerville.co.uk):
Follow Pennine Bridleway/PBW north. In 1¼ miles Rossendale Way/RW joins PBW beyond Near Pastures (840268). In 500 m PBW turns right (841273), but keep ahead. At stone cross (838276) RW turns left across moor for 1⅔ miles, descending to road in Goodshaw Chapel (815267). Left to pass chapel on left (815263). Ignore footpath fingerpost beside chapel; in another 70 m, left up tarred path, through gateway (815262). Diagonally right on path; through gate by wood (816261); down through squeeze stile; on down walled lane (yellow arrow/YA). At bottom (816259), left past metal barrier, up grassy track in steep-sided valley on left bank of beck (YAs). In 400 m cross beck; in 200 m bear right up steps (820261), past farm at top. Right through kissing gate (822261); ahead down farm drive. In 350 m, left through stone kissing gate (820259; YA). Follow path up gully, past trees onto moor. In ½ mile, at edge of Swinshaw Moor Access Land (827256), YA points diagonally left; but keep ahead beside wall, then fence. Cross stile; on to waymark post with 3 YAs (832254). Ahead with wall on right past wind generator; then with wall on left. Through metal gate; skirt cottages (835252); down farm drive to Lumb.

NB: Very muddy in parts; steep, awkward path beside beck (816259 – 820261); some sheep-wire hopping may be necessary.

REFRESHMENTS: Picnic; or Hargreaves Arms, Lumb (01706-215523; thehargreavesarms.co.uk)

ACCOMMODATION: Ye Olde Boot & Shoe, Millar Barn Lane, Waterfoot, BB4 7AU (01706-213828; yeoldebootandshoe.co.uk) – very cheerful, helpful, walker-friendly inn.

INFORMATION: Rawtenstall TIC (01706-226590); visitlancashire.com

Extract from the diary of William Frank Bramhill (1913-1997), courtesy of his son Will Bramhill:

‘I experienced many happy days there too… I can remember going with  Uncle Walter over the moors, and the long and enjoyable climb up from the Rossendale valley and down into Edenfield. Sometimes he would take his son Jim and I just to the top of the moor and we would sit for hours looking down into the valley towards Rawtenstall or northward towards Crawshawbooth. I got to love that valley… after all I had spent best part of my young years in it. The abject poverty of it all was hidden from the top of the moor… one could only see the smoking chimneys of the various cotton mills and from that height you could not see the pollution on the small stream that a little further down the valley became the Irwell.

Being in the valley and in the mills was different however… there was no beauty there… only constantly roaring machinery, the click clack of the looms and the swishing of countless leather straps over huge wheels… to a little boy all very frightening… what stayed in my memory most was the grey faces of the workers… pinched faces… no smiles… clogs, shawls, a seven day week for thirty bob (£1.50)… or a workhouse… the houses consisted of small cottages… one up and one down… if you can think of the latest television play ‘Sam‘ you get the true atmosphere… pint mugs… well scrubbed deal topped tables, rocking chairs and the kitchen range with its water boiler at the side from which you drew your hot water for washing… outside toilets… which were nothing better than a huge bucket slung under a well scrubbed wooden seat… the buckets emptied once weekly when a special horse drawn vehicle would come around the houses during the small hours to empty what became known as the ‘midnight soil‘. At such times the smell was appalling and lingers over fifty years in the memory.

In 1959 when visiting the valley one sensed but little change. I visited Edna, she was Walter‘s sister… older now of course but with the same pinched haggard face. I do not think I would have liked to have been an adult in those years… life must have been very hard… and we were supposedly a great Empire… the richest nation in the world… at £1.50 per week one couldn‘t say they were rich could they? Crawshawbooth had changed very little… unless it was that one noticed the absence of clogs which used to be worn by both male and female… now shoes were worn… once such luxuries were only for wedding days and funerals… the black shawls had gone but the faces were the same.’

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On one of those peerless late summer afternoons we left our table by the stream in the garden of the Queen’s Head at Fyfield, full of potted shrimps. First published in: The Times Click here to view a map for this walk in a new window

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Hath Essex anything to show more fair? White clouds rolled evenly across the gently swelling countryside of bean fields and pastures where small black cattle grazed intently. The path ran above ditches full of fluffy pink hemp agrimony, where comma butterflies displayed their tiger-striped wings with deeply scalloped edges. Lampett’s Farm lay backed in among its trees with red tiled roof, tall chimneys and whitewashed walls, a rural picture of perfection. The barley fields rustled in a rising wind, and pigeons scooted like Spitfires at unaccustomed speed before it.

In a tunnel of trees we found the Three Forests Way, an old green lane running broad and direct through the cornfields, past the weatherboarded barns at Green’s Farm and on by ploughlands where starlings and seagulls rose in their segregated flocks and wheeled, brightly lit by the sun against slate-grey rainclouds that were quickly running up on us from the west.

We hustled on into the shelter of Butthatch Wood and the path to St Botolph’s, the church in the fields. Branches weighed down with wild plums and bullace hung by the way, and we pulled handfuls of the sharp and succulent little fruits, yellow, scarlet and purple.

St Botolph’s stands solitary in the fields, sole marker of the original site of Beauchamp Roding village. How strange it is to find a large flint-built parish church, solid and stately, footed in the beanfields all alone. Inside, the massive old rood beam still spans the chancel arch, resting on two corbels with carved figures – one an angel with widespread wings, the other a jolly, if demonic, porcine lion (or leonine pig) with a squashed-in snout, some medieval mason’s bit of fun.

We moved on through cornfields edged with mauve drifts of mallows. In the hedges, blackberries hung intertwined with wild hops whose leaves and buds were sticky to the touch, pungent in the nostrils. At Shellow we passed fishing lakes where a young boy was in the act of landing a carp, his upper body strained tensely backward in counterbalance to the bow of his rod as the big fish flapped and splashed just out of reach of the landing net.

A last stretch beside the snaking River Roding, half choked with spikes of purple loosestrife, and a glimpse of a children’s tea party laid on a blue and white check cloth under a tree at Miller’s Green.

Start: Queen’s Head PH, Fyfield, Essex CM5 0RY (OS ref TL 570069)

Getting there: Bus 46 and 146 (Chipping Ongar – Fyfield) – harlowride.co.uk
Road: M11 Jct 27, A414 to Chipping Ongar, B184 to Fyfield.

WALK (7½ miles, easy, Explorer 183)
From Queen’s Head, right along B184 (‘Dunmow’). In 30 m, left (fingerpost/FP), diagonally left across field; left through hedge gap (569072; green arrow ‘Epping Forest Countrycare’/EFC). Keep hedge on right for 4 fields (stile, yellow arrow/YA) to reach a cross path by stile. Right (565072; EFC); then bear left through jungly bit to meet gravel byway (565075; ‘Three Forest Way’ on map, unmarked on ground). Left (red arrow), following byway for ¾ mile past Malting Farm and Green’s Farm to road at Claydon’s Green (566086). Dogleg left and right across road and on (FP) along hedge. Through next hedge gap; left, with hedge on left, aiming for right side of Butthatch Wood. In 150 m ignore YA pointing right; in another 50 m, right (567090, YA) to wood (569093); follow its nearer edge (YAs). At top end of wood, left (YA); in 50 m, right (570096) across 2 fields. Halfway across 2nd one, 100 m before barn, turn right (570100) on path; through hedge and on (YA) to B184 (574099). Left for 200 m; opposite end of road (‘Woodend’), turn right (576100, ‘St Botolph’s Church’) down stony lane to church (578097).

Return up lane. 150 m from church, right (578099; YA) towards pink house. At road, right (581099); in 50 m, left (FP) and follow field edge with hedge on left. In 500 m, at field end with footbridge on left, bear right (587098) across field, then on with hedge on left, aiming for 5 tall poplars in far hedge, with house on their right. Aim left of poplars, ignoring kissing gate on left, to YA post in far corner (589092). Pass it, and turn right along lake; through car park, past ‘Birds Green Fishery’ notice; follow drive to road (589089). Left to cross Shellow Bridge; immediately right (FP) along field edge with River Roding on right. Along right edge of copse (588088; YA); bear half left and follow posts and YAs for ⅔ mile across fields to road at Miller’s Green (589078).

Right for 200 m; at sharp right bend, ahead down drive (588077; FP). Keep right of house, with hedge between you and it, across grass, past YA and on. Bear round right side of field (Essex Way/EW); in 50 m, right across bridge (588075). Cross field to post; left to road (EW, YA). Left, round sharp left bend; right (586071, EW) across fields for 700 m to road (580068). Left for 50 m; right (FP), keeping left of house and following grassy path. In ¼ mile, dogleg right and then left (576070) through hedge (YAs). Pass some weatherboarded houses; cross EFC path (green arrow) and continue across River Roding (573070). On far side, 2 YAs; follow left-hand one, with hedge soon on your right. At road (571071), left to pub.

LUNCH: Queen’s Head, Fyfield (01277-899231; thequeensheadfyfield.co.uk) – deservedly popular village watering hole

INFO: Chelmsford TIC (01245-283400); visitessex.com
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If you are going to be a champion of this country’s heritage and the survival of all that’s best about it, Kent seems the ideal place to have as your bedrock.
First published in: The Times Click here to view a map for this walk in a new window

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Two contrasting but quintessentially English fighters for freedoms are celebrated on this walk through the Garden of England: Octavia Hill, one of the founders and pioneering visionaries of the National Trust, and Sir Winston Churchill – now, what did he ever do for us?

Octavia Hill’s large, calm eyes, generous mouth and determined chin show to advantage in the portrait that features in the National Trust’s leaflet guide to the Centenary Trail they have set up in her honour. We picked up the leaflet from the Toy’s Hill car park dispenser and set off through the bluebell woods on a misty day, with the Weald of Kent lying veiled in thick dove-grey air. Octavia Hill lived locally in Crockham Hill, and her gift of property at Toy’s Hill in 1898 was one of the first made to the infant NT. Since then a big swathe of these lovely wooded hills has been acquired by the Trust, a slice of England to be safeguarded for ever by the organisation that most of us take for granted and for whose existence all of us should thank our lucky stars.

Twisty old beech pollards, warty and knobbled, stood in the mossy banks of the bridleway, their multiple smooth-skinned arms shooting skywards. Tiny hornbeam and ash suckers grew among them, rooted in rotting tree debris still evincing the terrible destruction of 1987’s Great Storm over southern England.

On Toy’s Hill village notice board a poster in a child’s huge wobbly writing advertised ‘Purfyoom For Sale’. We followed Puddledock Lane, a deep holloway in the soft greensand with sublime misted views out across the woods and fields of the Weald, past fields of fat white lambs and a cow pasture where a fox went slinking across the grass between utterly oblivious cattle. Chartwell was a huddle of red tiled roofs and white-capped oasts sailing in a frothy pink sea of apple blossom. Here in the big red Victorian house Winston Churchill painted his depressions away, walked the gardens, lived surprisingly modestly, and looked out on a view of meadows and wooded ridges as supremely English as any call-to-arms wartime leader could desire in the way of inspiration.

Beyond Chartwell we followed a mesh of beech-shaded country lanes to Crockham Hill, where Octavia Hill lies under a yew tree in the churchyard. On through buttercup meadows to high-perched Froghole Farm, all half-timbering, red tiles and oast caps, and then a final bluebell path over Mariners Hill to descend to Toy’s Hill once more.

START & FINISH: Toy’s Hill NT car park, Chart Lane, Toy’s Hill, near Westerham, Kent TN16 1QG (OS ref TQ 469517).

GETTING THERE:
M25 Jcts 6 or 5; A25 Sevenoaks-Westerham; turn off in Brasted on minor road through Brasted Chart; car park on right, just before Toy’s Hill.

WALK (6 miles, moderate, OS Explorer 147):

Go up steps behind information board; follow Olivia Hill Centenary/OHC waymarks through woods. In 300 m at junction, turn left (468514/OHC); at lawn area below (469513) bear left down tunnel of hollies to road (470513). Right past phone box along Puddledock Lane. In ⅔ mile pass foot of lane by ‘Windswept’ house (462509); in 100 m, right over stile (fingerpost, OHC) on fenced path to Chartwell. Pass oasts and Herdsman’s Cottage; up lane to road (453513). Left; in 50 m, right up Mariners drive (fingerpost). In 200 m at sharp right bend, ahead through gate (453510, OHC); in 275 m, at 3-way fingerpost, bear left down lane and on down green lane. At crossroads near Coachmans bear right (451507, OHC) on lane for ½ mile to Crockham Hill.

At B2026 (442506; Royal Oak PH on your left), turn right; in 50 m, right past school and church. Go through gate (444507, OHC); on across fields for ⅓ mile to Froghole; at top of long flight of steps, left (449509) along lane past Froghole Farm to B2026 (448513). Right here up steps (OHC) and follow OHC through woods and over Mariners Hill for ½ mile. In trees again near road at Chartwell, watch for left turn uphill (453514, OHC) on path. In ¼ mile, descend to cross road at Chartwell entrance gates (453519).

Ahead along bridleway (OHC). In ¼ mile cross road (456522, OHC) and on for ⅔ mile to French Street. At road, right (459527, OHC) along road for ½ mile past Frenchstreet Farm. At a fork, left uphill (463521, OHC) into Toy’s Hill Woods. Follow track (ignore side turns) and OHC past site of Weardale House (468518). In 100 m, fork left; in another 20 m, right (OHC) to car park.

LUNCH: Royal Oak, Crockham Hill (01732-866335, westerhambrewery.co.uk); NT Restaurant at Chartwell (01732-863087).

ACCOMMODATION: King’s Arms, Westerham, Kent TN16 1AN (01959-562990; oldenglishinns.co.uk/westerham)

Chartwell (NT): 01732-868381; nationaltrust.org.uk/chartwell/

Octavia Hill Centenary Trail: Leaflets at Chartwell and Toy’s Hill car park.

NT Octavia Hill photo competition to celebrate her love of green places (closes 31 August) – nationaltrust.org.uk/yourspace.
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Olympic fever grips Great Britain – but truth be told, here in windy London it’s Sunday morning and everyone’s yawning. First published in: The Times Click here to view a map for this walk in a new window

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Where can Games-goers in need of a few hours’ escape find a decent walk in varied surroundings that’s only a hop, skip and jump away from Olympic Park? Opting for the bustle of markets and the open atmosphere of London’s waterways, we set off in search of breakfast at a market stall, a chat with the animals in the city farm and some quality idling by canal and river.

A bracing wind blows as we leave Liverpool Street Station. The huge blankness of the city’s plate-glass canyons is given a human face by the busker on the forecourt steps, who causes an eddy in the tide of heedless passers-by as he belts out a hoary old Quo number. We mosey round the earring and shawl stalls in the covered shed of Old Spitalfields Market to a gentle blur of reggae, buying nothing, slowly waking up.

On a Sunday you can smell Brick Lane long before you get there – curry, chilli, salsa, roasting beef and goat. The street market assaults the eyeballs with titfers and tomatoes, fish and fascinators, bread and chairs, sandwiches, socks and sun-specs in more colours than the good Lord ever made. A young girl stands, passionately and wildly singing ‘St James’s Infirmary’. How the staff at Beigel Bake pack so much salt beef into their fresh bagels is a minor miracle, but it makes the kind of breakfast you know is going to last you till sundown.

Beyond in the city farm I have a great old time hanging over the palings with a stick, scratching the scurfy back of a Tamworth Ginger sow. ‘Eee-eee,’ says the lady, ‘eee, don’t stop.’ Her friend lies spark-out on a pile of straw, a giant slab of blubber in a fuzz of red hair.

Regent’s Canal’s towpath takes us lazily towards the Thames in company with tinies in pushchairs, runners, strollers and dogs mad to get into the swim. Water tumbles over weirs and spurts with a sleepy hiss through rotted lock-gates. Among the towers of Tower Hamlets lie the waterside cottages of Hackney Village, all white-painted windowsills and cascades of aubretia. A pair of swans harvests reeds for a mid-canal nest off Mile End Park.

Approaching the river, the colossi of Canary Wharf and the space-rocket nose of the Gherkin rise pale and ghostly. There is the smack of tidal waves, a stiffening of the breeze and a tang of the sea. It’s wonderful to swap the stillness of the canal for the salty vigour of the Thames, to push upriver into the wind towards the cosmopolitan heart of the city once again, and to recall that never-to-be-forgotten Diamond Jubilee armada of boats filling Old Father Thames from shore to shore.

Start & finish: Liverpool Street Station
Getting there: Central, Circle, Hammersmith, Metropolitan tubes
Walk (8 miles, easy, OS Explorer 173, London A-Z pp 40-2, 54-6. NB – Online map, more walks: christophersomerville.co.uk):
Liverpool Street Station – Bishopsgate – Brushfield Street – Old Spitalfields Market. Commercial Street – Hanbury Street – Brick Lane. Bethnal Green Road – Squirries Street – Warner Place – Hackney Road. City Farm – Haggerston Park – Audrey Street – Goldsmith Row. Regent’s Canal to Limehouse Basin. Thames Path to St Katharine Docks. Mansell Street – Whitechapel High Street – Commercial Road – Old Spitalfields Market – Liverpool Street.

Food: Beigel Bake, Brick Lane (0207-729-0616) – salt beef, cream cheese, fish: you name it, it’s here in a fresh-baked bagel
More info: Old Spitalfields Market www.visitspitalfields.com; Brick Lane Market www.visitbricklane.org; Regent’s Canal http://www.bertuchi.co.uk/regentscanal.php; Thames Path www.walklondon.org.uk
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