Christopher Somerville

A sleepy noon in Coleshill, with a pure blue sky spread across this quiet corner of the Oxfordshire Cotswolds.
First published in: The Times Click here to view a map for this walk in a new window

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National Trust-maintained Coleshill couldn’t be more gorgeous if it tried, a village and church of beautiful purple-grey stone. ’We’re not in Kansas now, Toto,’ myself said to me as I passed the mellow old Radnorshire Arms, the village green and Estate Office, and set out across the green acres of Coleshill Park. Every newly planted oak boasted its own hand-built wooden cattle guard, and the cattle themselves lazily chomped under spreading trees. A couple in pot sunhats, reclining under an ancient oak with their picnic hamper, completed this Rousseau landscape of peace and plenty.

A rusty outmoded harrow like a troll’s bedsprings lay in the hedge. Old overshot hazels sprouted from their coppiced boles in the skirts of Flamborough Wood. I followed a lane rubbly with chunks of red brick and pale limestone between the pasture fields to Great Coxwell – another immaculate collection of colour-washed houses, some under thatch, along a narrow street.

Out at the edge of the village I came to the Great Barn. A name to live up to, a drum-roll of a name. The barn was built of creamy stone in the 13th century to store the produce of a grange or outlying farm of Beaulieu Abbey. I stood and watched it sail on its duckpond reflection – a ship of the harvest bulwarked with gabled doorways and spread aloft with intricate timbering that upheld a huge roof of stone.

Two buzzards went planning over the bluebell clump at the crest of Badbury Hill as I approached the old hill fort. Its ramparts have been partially ploughed in the couple of millennia since it was last inhabited, but the sections that lay in the shelter of the trees stood tall enough to distinguish. A family was picnicking in the fort, their children playing on a rope swing that whirled them away from the ramparts to fly in a circular swoop out over the ditch and back to earth again.

The dappled light under the sycamores gave way to full sunshine and a tremendous view north across the wide valley of the upper Thames. Was this the prospect that greeted King Arthur when he brought his British forces to contest mastery of the kingdom with Anglo-Saxon invaders some time around 500 AD? Some say that Badbury is the ‘Mount Badon’ of semi-legend, site of the siege at which Arthur slew 960 foes with his own sword Excalibur, securing peace in Britain for a generation.

Ahead of me a little lad went trailing his family on the path to Brimstone Farm and Coleshill. Something of the stirring old story was running in his imagination, judging by the way he swung his plastic Excalibur and laid armies of nettle-heads low in the dust.

Start & finish: Radnor Arms PH, Coleshill, Oxfordshire SN6 7PR (OS ref SU 237938)

Getting there
Bus: Service 65 (swindonbus.info), Witney-Swindon
Road: M4 (Jct 15); A419, A361 to Highworth; B4019 (signed ‘Faringdon’) to Coleshill

Walk: (6½ miles, easy, OS Explorer 170): Leaving Radnor Arms, right downhill. Left opposite church (‘village shop’); in 150 m, pass Estate Office notice; on through 2 gates (236936; yellow arrows/YA). Follow path across fields of Coleshill Park (stiles, YAs). In ¾ mile, bear left (246930; YA) along edge of Flamborough Wood. At Ashen Copse Farm cross track (250934); ahead past barn (YA). Diagonally right across 2 fields (stiles, YAs) to track (255934); follow this round right bend; on between fields. Near Great Coxwell, cross stiles (264934; YA) and on. At field end follow ‘Footpath To River’; in 30 m, left over stile to road (268933). Left up village street for nearly ½ mile; then right (269940; fingerpost) past Great Barn. Over stile; right (YA, ‘Circular Route’) round field edge. In 250 m, right through kissing gate (266941; ‘Circular Route’); follow path to cross B4019 (264945). Left on path parallel to road inside field (National Trust arrow). At field end, forward through car park (262945). Ahead through gate (‘Badbury Clump’); follow path ahead beside fort ramparts; on for ¾ mile, down slope (ahead over cross-tracks), out of trees (256951), forward to Brimstone Farm. Cross farm lane (251952; YA); take track ahead through gates past left end of cattle yard. In 30 m, left (YA) over stile, through woodland belt, then across 2 fields (YAs, stiles) and along green lane. Through end of Fern Copse (244945); on for ½ mile to road (237940). Left; fork immediately right to Radnor Arms.

Radnor Arms (237938) – path through Coleshill Park – corner of Flamborough Wood (246930). Ashen Copse Farm (250934) – path east for 1 mile to Great Coxwell (268933). Great Barn (269940) – corner of woodland (266941) – cross B4019. Badbury Hill – path through Coxwell Wood to Brimstone Farm (251952). Path SW for 1 and a quarter miles, passing end of Fern Copse (244945) to Coleshill.

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Lunch: Radnor Arms, Coleshill (01793-861575; radnorarmscoleshill.co.uk) – busy, friendly, cosy.

Great Barn: Great Coxwell (NT): Open daily (50p entrance)

Information: Faringdon TIC (01367-242191); www.visitsouthoxfordshire.co.uk

Readers’ Walks: Come and enjoy a country walk with our experts! Dates, info etc.: http://www.mytimesplus.co.uk/travel/uk/1867/times-walks. Next walks: Holy Island, Northumberland, 13 May; Tibbie Shiels Inn, Scottish Borders, 10 June; Northern Ireland, 8 July
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The Upchurch peninsula sticks up from the North Kent coast into the wide tidal basin of the Medway Estuary.
First published in: The Times Click here to view a map for this walk in a new window

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This is one of those outposts, remote and full of character, yet amazingly close to London, that one stumbles upon with a thrill of discovery – especially at this time of year when the apple orchards are in full blossom.

Under the 700-year-old roof of St Mary’s Church at Newington the damned bared their teeth in the agonies of Hell while angelic trumpet blasts summoned the righteous from their coffins – the vivid events of Judgement Day depicted by a medieval fresco painter, as admonitory as a slap on the backside. From the candy-striped flint and ragstone tower of St Mary’s we followed a path north over the green upland of Broom Down to Lower Halstow, neatly tucked along its creek beside the great marsh and mud expanse of the Medway estuary.

Black-headed gulls screeched around a brace of beautifully restored Thames barges moored at Halstow Quay. On the seaward horizon the big blue cranes on the Isle of Grain dipped with majestic slowness like giraffes stooping to graze. A wind scented with salt and mud blew stiffly inland to rustle a million pink and white apple blossoms in the orchards around Ham Green.

Up the seaward edge of the peninsula we went, past the old coasting craft-turned-houseboats lying belly down in Twinney Creek, a curl of smoke rising from a home-made tin chimney. Then inland past the orchards around Frog Farm, the tiny shoulder-high apple trees frothing with blossom and already beginning to hum with hoverflies and early bees. The tremulous, bubbling cries of a curlew came from the saltmarshes behind us as we followed the narrow lanes through Ham Green and on by the fishing lakes.

As we passed through Upchurch, the village cricket team in well-washed whites was walking out onto Hollywell Meadow. In Chaffes Lane a bunch of lads puzzled over the oily innards of an old scooter. A flat-capped man who must have seen off at least eighty winters gave us a wink as he shuffled into the side door of the Crown Inn, and in St Mary’s Church an effigy of the Green Man spewed a mouthful of flowers like a promise of spring.

Start & finish: Newington Station, Newington, Kent ME9 7LQ (OS ref TQ 859650)
Getting there: Train (www.thetrainline.com; www.railcard.co.uk) to Newington. Road: M25 (Jct 2), M2 (Jct 5); A249 towards Sittingbourne; A2 towards London for 1½ miles. Park near Newington station.

Walk (7 miles, easy, OS Explorer 148): Down Station Road; in 20m, opposite No 41, left along alleyway; left along Church Lane. Under railway; on to crossroads (861653) with Church of St Mary the Virgin to right. From crossroads, ahead (‘Lower Halstow’) down Wardwell Lane. In 200m on right bend, left (861655; footpath fingerpost); on through valley by footbridges and stiles. At foot of slope (860660), bear left up slope, aiming left of pylon; cross left-hand of two stiles. Follow path under power lines, over Broom Downs to road at Lower Halstow (859669). Left; immediately right along path with stream on left; in 300m, left across footbridge; right at end of alley to T-junction (859672), with Three Tuns PH and St Margaret’s Church to right.
Across junction by pub; pass ‘Private – No Parking’ sign, then ‘Moorings’ house to reach Halstow Wharf. Continue along Saxon Shore Way/ SShW past Halstow and Twinney Creeks for 1½ miles to Shoregate Lane (850691). Inland (SShW) for ¼ mile to Ham Green Farm (847688). Right along road; in 20 m, left (SShW) on track through orchards, past riding stables (SShW) to road (844683). Left (SShW); in 250m, right (SShW) across field; through kissing gate (843679) with lake on right. SShW bears right here, but turn left (‘public footpath’ arrow) along hedge; cross paddocks into housing estate at Upchurch. Left to T-junction; right up The Street, past The Crown PH and St Mary’s Church (844675).

Opposite Post Office, left down Chaffes Lane. In 200m, left opposite Bradshaws Close (844672). Take right-hand of two footpaths (stile, ‘footpath’ fingerpost), across paddocks by kissing gates for ⅓ mile. At far side of paddocks, right over stile (846667); bear left around paddock. On far side, left over a stile (847666, yellow arrow) down path to road (848665). Right to crossroads with Breach Lane (851663). Through a kissing gate opposite; aim for pylon, then keep same line over fields and through an orchard to its top right corner (853658). Left over stile, across field, then between paddocks to cross road (854655). Continue same line across large field; under railway (856650); ahead to A2 in Newington; left to Station Road; left to station.
One of 25 walks in Walks In The Country Near London (new edition) by Christopher Somerville, just published by New Holland.

Lunch: Three Tuns, Lower Halstow (01795-842840)
Church keyholders (NB Please contact several days in advance of your walk in order to avoid disappointment): St Mary’s Church, Newington – Rev Liz Cox (01795-844241; rev.liz.cox@btinternet.com); St Margaret’s Church, Lower Halstow, and St Mary’s Church, Upchurch – Rev Jacky Davies (01795-842557; jackytd@halstowmillhouse.eclipse.co.uk)
More info: Sittingbourne TIC (01795-417478); www.visitkent.co.uk
Readers’ Walks: Come and enjoy a country walk with our experts! Dates, info etc.: http://www.mytimesplus.co.uk/travel/uk/1867/times-walks. Next walk: Lake District, 8 April
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People have been doing the Waterfalls Walk since the days of stovepipe hats and crinolines, and this steep, tree-hung circuit of the two moorland rivers that rush together in Ingleton village to form the River Greta continues to be one of Yorkshire’s prime outdoor attractions.
First published in: The Times Click here to view a map for this walk in a new window

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I’d always assumed that any walk so popular must be a bit tame – but not at all. The twin gorges of the River Twiss and Doe may be well-trodden, but they’re far from commodified. The combination of thick woods, waterfalls, churning narrows and thread-like paths exerts as much magic on today’s walkers as it did on Victorian holidaymakers in search of swoonsome thrills.

Setting off from Ingleton along the narrow path that shadows the River Twiss, we were almost at once enclosed in the dark walls of a gorge, with the river running fast among mossy stones splashed with dipper droppings. Beside the path lay a money tree, its hide as scaly as a lizard’s with tens of thousands of copper coins hammered into the boughs for luck. The trail climbed the wall of a canyon above swirling holes where the south-going river chased round and round before escaping, sculpting semi-circular hollows in the rock walls with a continuous swallow and gurgle. Its cold breath and smell of stone and earth came up to us as we crossed the gorge on lattice footbridges under which the peat-charged water sluiced as dark and frothy as a gush of porter.

A roe deer went bounding up the bank, its white scut bobbing a warning. A long view upriver showed Pecca Falls crashing down a staircase of slippery rock steps. Beyond the cascade the trail left the trees and followed a curve of the Twiss. A wonderful view opened ahead towards Thornton Force, pride of the walk, descending a series of rapids before hurling itself in a 50- foot freefall into a smoking pool. Above this thunderous weight of water we followed a walled lane into the mist. Unseen and offstage, sheep bleated, a farmer whistled and a quad went puttering over an invisible field by Twisleton Hall.

Below the farm the River Doe echoed and hissed in its own steep walled canyon, leaping down towards Ingleton and its confluence with the Twiss through S-shaped channels carved through the shale by the force of water alone. We crossed above potholes boiling with toffee-coloured bubbles, and skirted backwaters where the surface lay marbled with scarcely moving patterns of foam. Below the white wall of Snow Falls the path snaked past another money tree and on through mossy old quarry workings, to emerge at the foot of the gorge with the church and houses of Ingleton lying beyond, as muted and dreamy looking as any faded Victorian lithograph.

Start & finish: Waterfalls Walk car park, Ingleton, N. Yorks LA6 3ET (OS ref SD 693733)
Getting there: Bus – Service 80 (Lancaster-Ingleton), 581 (Ingleton-Settle). Road – M6 Jct 34 (A683, A687) or Jct 36 (A65) to Ingleton. Waterfalls Walk is signed in village.

Walk (4½ miles, moderate/strenuous, OS Explorer OL2): From car park follow waymark arrows up River Twiss, along lane via Twisleton Hall farm (702751) and down River Doe.
Conditions: Continuous slippery paths and steps.
NB – Online map, more walks: www.christophersomerville.co.uk.

Refreshments: Frumenty & Fluffin teashop, Main Street, Ingleton (01524-241659)
Accommodation: Croft Gate, Chapel-le-Dale, Ingleton (01524-242664; www.croft-gate.co.uk) – quiet, friendly and immaculate B&B
Waterfalls Walk: Open 9 a.m. daily; £5 entrance/car park pp; £11 family; complimentary leaflet guide
More info: Ingleton TIC (01524-241049); www.visitingleton.co.uk; www.yorkshire.com
Readers’ Walks: Come and enjoy a country walk with our experts! Dates, info etc.: http://www.mytimesplus.co.uk/travel/uk/1867/times-walks. Next walk: Lake District, 8 April
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Some walks just grab you so hard that you know you’ll be back to enjoy them again, if not sooner then later.
First published in: The Times Click here to view a map for this walk in a new window

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It was a good five years since I’d last set off from Alfriston, but nothing had changed in this lovely corner of East Sussex. The same clear-cut line of the South Downs above the village, running down to their final embrace of the coastal flatland; the same eccentric old carvings in the Star Inn’s frontage; even identical late winter weather, a cold blue sky arched over Alfriston, calling me up to the hills.

A covey of partridges burst whirring out of the root crops as I went up the flinty, half-frozen path onto the roof of the downs. Views were wide and wonderful – the North Downs a grey-blue line 30 miles to the north, the green billows of the South Downs riding up and away into the west, Alfriston lying with its stumpy church spire and tiled roofs like a village in a Brian Cook book jacket, all flat angles in bright brick reds, acid greens and indigos. The cold air stung my nostrils and smoked my breath. Descending to pass below the Long Man of Wilmington, I saw that spiders had strewn the ancient chalk-cut giant with a maze of cobwebs, so that the 200-ft figure sparkled as though encased in diamonds on its steep hillside.

Frost clung in tight curls to the muddy ruts of the path that led through the woods to Folkington. Elizabeth David lies in the churchyard under a gravestone carved with aubergines, peppers and cloves of garlic. Celebrity chefs are twenty to the teaspoonful nowadays, but she was the first, a post-war culinary pioneer who introduced beige British tastebuds to snazzy foreign flavours, a shock from which we’ve never recovered.

A snaking old track brought me south to Jevington with its cheerful Eight Bells pub and thousand-year-old church tower built like a fortress against Viking marauders. A Saxon Christ adorns the wall, victorious over a puny, wriggling serpent. Crossing the downs on the homeward stretch, I marvelled at how a corner of countryside with such a vigorous and bloody history – Viking and French raids, coastguard battles with the smuggling gangs, Second World War bombs and doodlebugs – has settled to a tranquillity as smooth as the applewood smoke rising from Alfriston’s chimneys into the blue Sussex sky.

Start & finish: The Willows car park, Alfriston, East Sussex BN26 5UQ (OS ref TQ 521033)
Getting there: Train (www.thetrainline.com; www.railcard.co.uk) to Eastbourne; bus 126 to Alfriston. Road: Alfriston signed off A27 (Brighton-Eastbourne), 5½ miles after A26 Newhaven roundabout.

PLEASE NOTE: The Wealdway Path between Folkington and Jevington will be closed for six months from 1 April 2012 for work by the Water Authority

Walk (8½ miles, moderate, OS Explorer 123):
From The Willows car park (521033), follow footpath by wall on right of coach park. Cross stile; right to cross another; right along river bank; left across White Bridge (522031) to road. Cross road; take footpath on right of house. In 20 yards up steps; on up hedged path. In 100 yards, left through hedge (525031 – South Downs Way/SDW marker post); diagonally right on path across field; through hedge; across next field to cross stile onto SDW (532033).

Right to cross road; follow SDW uphill past Windover Reservoir to go through gate into Access Land (538035). SDW continues ahead, but turn left along fence over ridge; in 30 yards, right along track, through gate and on for a mile, passing Long Man of Wilmington (542034) where you join the Wealdway path. At The Holt, through gate into wood (551040); right along track for ½ mile to St Peter’s Church, Folkington (559038). Bear right (as you approach church) along Wealdway for just over a mile to T-junction of track; left (561021 – ‘Wealdway’ arrow) to road; right through Jevington, passing Eight Bells pub (563017).

Continue for 100 yards to left bend; take path on right of road to St Andrew’s Church (562015). On up SDW for 2/3 of a mile to Holt Brow (553019). SDW turns right here, but keep ahead for one and a quarter miles through Lullington Heath NNR, passing Winchester’s Pond (540020), to fork (533020). Keep ahead (‘Litlington’), down to road (523021). Left past Litlington church. Just before Plough & Harrow pub, right (523017 – ‘Vanguard Way’) to Cuckmere River; right along bank for 1 mile to Alfriston.

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Lunch: Eight Bells, Jevington (01323-484442; 8bellsonline.co.uk); Plough & Harrow, Litlington (01323-870632; www.ploughandharrowlitlington.co.uk)
More info: Eastbourne TIC (01323-415450); www.visitsussex.org
Family Support Work sponsored walk: Alfriston-Wilmington-Alfriston (7 miles), Easter Monday, 9 April – info 01273-425699; www.familysupportwork.org.uk
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In 1776, 22-year-old Thomas Coke inherited the Holkham Estate – 30,000 acres of sandy, salty, windblasted and flinty land along the North Norfolk coast.
First published in: The Times Click here to view a map for this walk in a new window

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The young owner dedicated himself with a passion to improving the agriculture of this barren countryside. By the time he died in 1842, hugely famous as a breeder of sheep and cattle, grass and turnip pioneer and all-round agricultural reformer, he was known simply and universally as ‘Coke of Norfolk’.

On a glorious sunny afternoon, the tall column of the Coke Monument glowed brilliantly in strong winter sunlight among the bare trees of Holkham Park. Guarded by stone sheep and long-horned cattle, embellished with bas-reliefs of sheep shearers, horses and dogs, diggers and planters of seed, the inscription named Thomas Coke ‘Father, Friend and Landlord’, and declared: ‘Of such a man contemporaries needed no memorial. His Deeds were before them: His Praise in their hearts.’

Grand sentiments, and a grand artificial landscape to wander through, a gentle forest of old sweet chestnuts and beeches in which a long lake lay like a dark jewel. Pink-footed geese honked and chattered as they rested on the water. On a green knoll the Church of St Withburga caught the westering sun and threw it back dazzlingly from windows and flint cobble walls. Across the lake lay the grand Palladian palace of Holkham Hall, severely built of yellow brick by Thomas Coke’s uncle, the Earl of Leicester. Fallow deer roamed its parkland, their big branchy antlers occasionally clashing as they grazed close together.

From this miniature land of content the trail extended into the southern half of Holkham Park with its more agricultural feel – big open fields of beet, carrots and winter wheat, bounded by conifer belts and pheasant coverts. Coke of Norfolk would have appreciated the Holkham of today, a subtle balance of commercial and utopian landscapes.

Thomas Coke took a barren countryside and made it tremendously productive, literally sowing the seeds of North Norfolk’s agricultural success. Human beings are not the only beneficiaries of this transformation. The pink-footed geese that come from Iceland and Greenland to winter on the Norfolk coast spend each day in the fields, feeding on sugar beet fragments, before flying seaward at dusk to roost on the marshes and mudflats. That’s where I found them towards nightfall, gabbling and jostling in their hundreds, a seething carpet of big rustling birds. I watched them from a hide, entranced, as the sky turned apple green, then gold and pink, before darkening to the indigo of night.

Start: Holkham, North Norfolk NR23 1RG (OS ref TF 892440)
Getting there: Coasthopper Bus (01553-776980; www.coasthopper.co.uk), King’s Lynn-Cromer
Road: On A149 between Brancaster and Wells-next-the-Sea

Walk directions: (6½ miles from Holkham or 8½ miles with hide extension; easy; OS Explorer 251): Up Holkham Hall drive, through gateway (892435); right, following Farm Walk (red posts) to Coke Monument (884436). Ahead to lake; right (anti-clockwise) round lake (Lake Walk, yellow posts) via St Withburga’s Church (878436). At T-junction at foot of lake (880427), left past Ice House, right along The Avenue to pass Obelisk (884420). In 300 m, left (883416; Park Walk, green posts) back to gateway at Holkham.

Hide extension: Start walk from car park at north end of Lady Anne’s Drive (891448; £5 all day, coins or card). To reach easy access bird hide (883452, signposted) turn left on forest track beyond car park.

Lunch/accommodation: Victoria Hotel, Holkham (01328-711008; www.holkham.co.uk/victoria) – superbly friendly, warm and genuinely welcoming
Tea: Rose Garden Teashop, Holkham (01328-711285)
Information: Holkham Estate (01328-710227; www.holkham.co.uk); Wells-next-the-Sea TIC (01328-710885; www.visitnorfolk.co.uk)
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