Christopher Somerville

Bats get a bad press. People find them ugly, creepy, scary. They suck your blood and give you rabies and tangle themselves in your hair, right? Well, no, actually. Bats, seen in the calm light of reason and common sense, are rather beautiful, highly specialised and delightful creatures – and extremely useful at hoovering up midges and other thundering nuisances. Sussex is a county rich in bats – in fact all seventeen of the UK’s native species are resident, and 14 of these have been found on the Petworth Estate in the western region of the county. That was where Jane and I headed, one drizzly evening towards the end of summer.

A damp, cloudy evening, steamy with moisture and the threat of rain, is just the kind of evening not to be bat-watching. But our evening rendezvous at the gates of Petworth Park had been fixed many moons ago. Crispin Scott, the National Trust’s Regional Nature Conservation Adviser, was waiting with his young son Alf to take us for a walk on the wild side of the park, superbly landscaped in the mid-18^th century by Capability Brown. ‘Bat detector,’ Crispin said, handing over a stout black box knobbly with buttons. ‘I’ll show you how it works when we’re out in the park. But let’s have a look at the tunnels first.’

In the brick-lined tunnels that connect Petworth House with its servants’ quarters, thousands of bats of seven different species hibernate the winter months away – Brandt’s bats, grey and brown long-eared bats with huge ears, Daubenton’s bats that hunt insects over water, common pipistrelles, whiskered bats and rare Bechstein’s bats. But on this late summer evening the eerie tunnels lay empty of bats.

Out in the park the light was beginning to fade. The great house stood, shadowed by rain, in a man-made landscape of subtle curves and hollows. In front of us a spinney of oak and sweet chestnut perched artfully on a scenic knoll. ‘Clumps on lumps,’ said Crispin, ‘very good for bats – the air’s still, there are plenty of insects, and it’s sheltered.’

Waiting among the trees for whatever the dusk might bring, Crispin brought us up to speed on the Petworth bats. No artificial fertilizers are used on the Estate; that encourages insects, which in turn attract the bats. Each bat species has its own preferred habitats: barbastelles, for example, like lightly wooded places, Bechstein’s prefer heavy tree cover, while Daubenton’s need water over which to hunt insects. A common pipistrelle is only as long as one’s thumb, but can easily pack away 3,000 midges in one night. Noctules are bigger than the other bats – they can tackle a cockchafer or maybug.

Bats hunt and find their way by echo-location, emitting a stream of sounds too high-pitched for human ears and measuring the returning echoes as they bounce back off objects. The echo-location is so precise that the bat can identify an insect even if it’s sitting motionless on a leaf, and pick it neatly off as it zooms by. Each species transmits at a different frequency – soprano pipistrelles at around 55kHz, common pipistrelles at 45kHz, Daubenton’s generally at 45-50kHz, noctules down at 25kHz. The bat detector reduces the transmission to a sound we can pick up – a crackle or quick vibration, which accelerates sharply to the ‘feeding buzz’, a wet squelch exactly like blowing a raspberry, when the bat closes in on an insect.

We were scarcely expecting much action on this damp evening, but as we waited in the ‘clump on the lump’, little black bullets suddenly started zipping round the glade. ‘Soprano pipistrelles,’ whispered Crispin, ‘tune your detectors to 55kHz.’ The pipistrelles streaked by in pairs, with the juveniles, learning to hunt, following their mothers in close formation like tiny fighter planes. Three or four bats soon became twenty or more, some of them flying within touching distance of us, crepitating and buzzing.

‘I’ve never seen such a good display,’ exclaimed Crispin, ‘and these are the worst conditions of any bat expedition I’ve done!’

Down by the lake there were noctules flying overhead, their echo-location translated by the bat detectors into a chop-chop-chop as of miniature helicopter blades. Daubenton’s bats hunted insects over the water, crackling like burning stubble as they darted with a flash of pale belly through the beam of Crispin’s torch. Natterers, on the wing after small moths, made bristly noises. There were quiet ploppings and quackings from out on the dark water to remind us that other denizens of the lake were about their nightly occasions.

Walking back through the park we saw the great house lost in the night. Of its scores of windows, two solitary squares shone as beacons of light and human presence. All around us the feeding frenzy of the pipistrelles continued unabated. Then Jane gave a sudden exclamation. A bat had flown so close, it had actually knocked her glasses off.

FACT FILE

Bats at Petworth: Contact Petworth House (see below) for details of guided Bat Walks.

Petworth House and Park, West Sussex (NT): tel 01798-342207 (info-line 343929); www.nationaltrust.org.uk

Further information: Petworth TIC (01798-343523; www.visitsussex.org)

Hints: Bats are most active for an hour or so around dawn/dusk. From late November to early March they hibernate. To watch bats, look for a place with still air, plenty of insects and shelter close by – on the edge of tree clumps and beside water are two good spots. Get in position by dusk, and keep quiet and still. A good bat detector (£60 upwards) is essential (see www.bats.org.uk).

Help and advice

The Wildlife Trusts (01636-677711; www.wildlifetrusts.org) can advise on locating bats across the UK; likewise Natural England (0845-600-3078; www.naturalengland.org.uk), Scottish Natural Heritage (01738-444177; www.snh.org.uk), Countryside Council for Wales (0845-130-6229; www.ccw.gov.uk) and Northern Ireland Environment Agency (www.ni-environment.gov.uk). Several National Trust properties are havens for bats, and offer guided bat walks and talks: see www.nationaltrust.org.uk

County Bat Groups: Many counties have their own Bat Groups – see http://www.uksafari.co.uk/batgroups.htm

European Bat Weekend every August: contact Bat Conservation Trust

Bat Conservation Trust (www.bats.org.uk) – all things bat-related

Bat Helpline (0845-1300-228) – information, help, practical advice

Reading: Bats by Phil Richardson (Whittet Books)

Of all the European countries blessed with sensational mountain scenery, Austria remains the walker’s favourite. There’s something about the combination of the mind-blowing drama of the Austrian landscape and the good humour and generosity of the people that’s irresistible to walkers, from absolute beginners to hardened mountain-hurdlers.

The paths that cross ridges and wind through valleys are beautifully maintained and efficiently marked. There’s a network of inexpensive, welcoming Hütten or mountain inns that British ramblers would give their eye teeth for. And from April to October the tourist information centres deal out walking maps, information, contact details for mountain guides and tips as though every other customer was a hiker in search of a good walk – which in the case of the Vorarlberg and Tirol regions of western Austria is not far from the truth.

You don’t have to be a hairy-chested peak buster to enjoy walking in Austria. From the highest Tirolean alp to the gentlest Vorarlberg path, there is something for everyone.

Vorarlberg: Bregenzerwald

The Bregenzerwald, a seductive area of undulating pastures and wooded hill ranges, lies in the north of the Vorarlberg, the region that occupies the north-west tip of Austria. My wife, Jane, and daughter, Mary, were accompanying me on this, their first Austrian adventure, and the Hotel Krone in the Bregenzerwald village of Hittisau – recently refurbished by its owners Helene and Dietmar Nussbaumer, using local craftsmen working in local wood – proved the perfect base for expeditions into the fields, wood and hills nearby.

On our first day we just strolled around Hittisau, pursuing the ''Wood Trail’’ from one beautifully made wooden house to the next, visiting the village cooper and beekeeper Peter Lässer in his resin-scented workshop, stopping in at the Women’s Museum with its startling and challenging modern sculpture displays – not what you’d expect to find in a sleepy hill village, and all the better for that. Next day we followed the newly waymarked Wasserwanderweg along the jade-green Bolgenach river at the feet of Hittisau, looking for dippers and dragonflies. We passed a group of nuns, out for a walk in full habit, who all chorused ''Grüss Gott!’’ and grinned shyly at us; then came up from the river through the yard of a flower-bedecked old watermill, up to an inn on a crossroads where we drank coffee in the seductive scent of wood smoke.

It was the time of year when the Bregenzerwald cows all walk down from the high summer pastures to spend the winter in their home villages in the valley. Hittisau’s neighbouring village of Schwarzenberg held a festival day, and we went along to see the cows, their coats shining like velvet from the rich summer grass, paraded through the streets with much clonking of neck bells and clinking of wine glasses. It made us keen to see an alpine pasture ourselves. Luckily the Schwarz family’s Helmingenalpe, up in the mountains beyond Hittisau, proved to be hanging onto its cattle for a few days more. Walks leader Christoph Oberhauser took us there by winding paths, past the Lecknersee and up through delectable flowery meadows thick with crocuses, scabious and royal blue gentians. Marianne Schwarz showed us her vast copper milk cauldron, her cool dairy and subterranean cheese store filled with big fragrant rounds of cheese. We sat at a long table by the window, the wooden platters in front of us piled with slabs of cheese – salty, sweet, new, mature, studded with chives – tasting and talking and sipping strong, clear perry from a wooden barrel. Now that’s a civilised way to walk.

Hittisau walks

''Wood Trail’’ (one hour – easy): Stroll around the village admiring the old, carved, wooden buildings and architect-designed new ones; visit Peter Lässer the village carpenter (0043 5513 2966), and the Women’s Museum (5513 620930; www.frauenmuseum.com).

Wasserwanderweg (two hours – easy): A waymarked trail with information boards along Bolgenach River.

Lecknersee and Helmingenalpe (four hours with farm stop – easy/moderate): From Kälberweidealpen car park by Lecknersee and Gästhof Höfle to Helmingenalpe alpine farm (5513 6117 – open May to September for cheese, but check first!), returning via Äuelealpe.

Staying, eating: Hotel Krone, Am Platz, 6952 Hittisau, 5513 6201; www.krone-hittisau.at – warm, friendly, stylish, comfortable.

More info: Hittisau Tourist Office (5513 620950); http://homes.tiscover.com/vbgtour/pdf_files/2005/Wanderlust_E_05.pdf contains excellent walks in the locality.

Vorarlberg: Lech

Remembering a splendid hike I’d enjoyed a few years before around Lech, a short way south-east of the Bregenzerwald, I left Jane and Mary to wander about Hittisau and its green plateau, and took myself off for a day to revisit some old stamping grounds in the east of the Vorarlberg.

The Kalbelesee lake was full and shining, the path through the beautiful green Auenfelder meadows as lovely with buttercups and cyclamen as I’d remembered. I stopped at the tiled old farmstead to drink sharp buttermilk, and tackled the steep path up out of Lech towards the Stierloch Joch and the Ravensburghütte mountain inn with a smile on my face, looking forward to dark beetroot soup, a buzz of talk and rumble of singing. If there’s a better definition of mountain bliss, I’ve never found it.

A three-day hutting hike around Lech:

Day 1 – Path 10 Lech-Zug, Path 55 Zug-Ravensburghütte (about three hours; moderate); Day 2 – Path 61 Ravensburghütte-Spuller See, Path 601 Spuller See-Freiburgerhütte (about six hours; hard); Day 3 – Path 62 and Path 10 to Lech (about four hours; moderate). Path 601 is a Höhenweg, for experienced walkers only, not recommended in bad weather.

Map: 1:50,000 Lech Wanderkarte.

Mountain guides, map, info: Lech Tourismus, A-6764 Lech am Arlberg (0043 5583 21610; www.lech-zuers.at.

South Tirol

The deep green valley of the Zillertal, tucked down in the beautiful south Tirol region near the Italian border, has just about everything a walking family could hope for: a network of strolling routes at low level in the bottom of the valley, a multitude of cable-cars and chairlifts rising to stations up the mountainsides, and a chain of well-marked mountain footpaths ranging from easy high-level circuits to serious peak-scrambling for those with confidence and energy to burn.

Rain and mist had cut off the high peaks, but our guide Walter Ludl knew plenty of other delights. The first day saw us exploring far up the Zillergrund, a narrow and dramatic side valley off the Zillertal. We found a track running along the shores of the Stausee lake reservoir, and followed it under tall slopes to the farm and alpine inn at the lake head.

Here, idling outside the wooden hut over a glass of beer at a table among cheery walkers, we appreciated how the farm’s mountainous situation, and the zen-like docility of its resident pigs, cows and hens, have earned it the appropriate nickname of ''Little Tibet’’.

Next morning we swung by cableway and chairlift up to the Penken alp. Here we wandered along the ridge paths in the cold mountain air, winding in and out of the Knorren, a set of jagged teeth of naked grey limestone, to reach the Penkenjoch café and its mugs of hot chocolate.

Then it was down a snaky path through pine trees to the Penkenbahn station and an eagle’s-view swoop back into the valley, where a few hours later we were throwing Seventies disco shapes in the bar of the Hotel Strass to the cheesy sounds of DJ Stocky.

On our last day we travelled north up the Zillertal to the village of Fügen, collected a map from the tourist office, and took off along a path, looking over old houses with flowery balconies and ground levels packed with wood for winter.

Zillertal walks

Fügen village circuit (one hour – easy): Through the old village to join Beleuchteter Panoramaweg; north to waterfalls, loop back on higher path to Marienbergkirche. Map from Fügen tourist office (5288 62262).

Zillergrund (three hours there and back – easy): From Adlerblick restaurant (0664 200 0332) on Speicher Zillergrund reservoir dam, along north bank to ''Little Tibet’’ alpine farm at head of reservoir, then back to Adlerblick.

Penkenalp (three hours – moderate): Penkenbahn cable-car station to Penkenjoch pass, descending to Lanersbach.

Staying: Hotel Strass, Hauptstrasse 470, 6290 Mayrhofen, (5285 6705; www.hotelstrass.com). Long-established, welcoming resort hotel with enjoyable nightlife.

Eating: Der Metzergerwirt, Finsing 16, 6271 Udens, (5288 62559; www.dermetzgerwirt.at). Hannes and Alexandra Hell’s haven of good food and ambience where locals and gourmets rub shoulders.

More information: Mayrhofen TIC, Europahaus, Mayrhofen, (5285 6760; www.mayrhofen.at).

North Tirol

Returning to the Tirol on a solo walking trip, I decided to head north to try out a section of the recently established Adlerweg, the 175-mile Eagle’s Way route that crosses north Tirol from east to west. It offers the grandest possible Alpine scenery to any hill walker with plenty of stamina, decent balance and a head for heights.

From the Karwendel valley, a nature reserve about 10 miles north of Innsbruck across the mountains, I struck out eastwards into the valley of the Filztal, walking easily and taking time to look around. The view ahead was sensational, a dozen miles of jagged overbearing mountains as perpendicular as cliffs, their feet spreading through last winter’s unmelted snow patches and vast fans of scree.

A serpentine path led across the loose pebbly slopes of the Kaltwasserkar, the Cold Water Screes, an obstacle course of tree roots and slippery rocks. I could see the Falkenhütte coming a long way off, and was ready for a good night’s kip by the time I had climbed up to the 6,000ft saddle where the wood-walled hut perched under the giant grey cliffs of the Laliderer Spitze. Cheese dumpling soup and cloudy Weissbier seemed ambrosial in a room full of the stories and laughter of mountaineers.

At dawn I watched the sun smack the sombre bluffs of the Laliderer Spitze with blinding colours. Before 8am I was off along the immense scree slopes fanning like skirts from the mountain walls that towered 3,000 feet. The Adlerweg rose to a pass under the sphinxlike outcrop of The Devil’s Head, then fell away into the deep valley of the Eng, loud with cow bells. A refreshing glass of buttermilk at an alpine farm far below, and then it was on and up in beautiful clear sunshine to the Lamsenjochhütte, another wood-panelled mountain inn on a green saddle under great rock walls. A quick bite to eat, and I was slipping and sliding in zigzags down the mountain to journey’s end in Pertisau on the shores of the Achensee 3,000ft below.

Two days on the Adlerweg

Day 1 – Karwendelhaus to Falkenhütte, (allow about four hours; moderate); Day 2 – Falkenhütte to Lamsenjochhütte (five hours; moderate/hard); Lamsenjochhütte to Pertisau (two hours; moderate).

Map: Freytag & Berndt 1:50,000 WK323 ''Karwendel–Mittelwald’’. Available from Stanfords (www.stanfords.co.uk); widely available locally.

Mountain guides, info: Tirol Tourist Board (www.tyrol.com); mountain guide Mike Rutter (664 262 3692; michael.rutter@tirolwerbung.at).

The huts

There are more than 1,000 Hütten scattered about the mountains, most within half a day’s hike of the next, open from June to September. The Hütte offers a tasty hot meal, a shower, an evening’s yarning over beer, wine and schnapps, and a comfortable bed in a dormitory or (for a supplement) a private room. Prices are very reasonable, and members of the Austrian Alpine Club (www.aacuk.org.uk) get a discount.

Reading

Walking Austria’s Alps, Hut to Hut by Jonathan Hurdle is published by Cordee (01455 611185; www.cordee.co.uk) and costs £9.95.

Eating

Don’t look at the scales! Austrian mountain food is long on calories, for warmth and energy. Try Krapfen (cheese, potato, onion, fried in rye batter); Bauernschmaus (Farmer’s Stew – smoked meat, dumplings, potatoes and gravy); Schliachtrnudln (noodles, cheese, cream); Kasspatzlang (noodles, onions, cheese); Schoderblatlang (sweet bread pudding); Graukas (blue cheese from the mountains). Cheese from alpine farms is wonderful.

Introduction

I have been inspired by writers, painters, musicians, poets; by naturalists, birdwatchers and wildflower experts; by conservationists and their vitally important work. And I have been galvanised by the wildly changing weather of these islands, the beautiful and absorbing manifestations of our four distinct seasons, the splendour and variety of our landscapes, and the company of countless workers, idlers and walkers I have met along the way and what they’ve had to say about a thousand things.

Christopher Somerville’s 100 Best Walks is designed to grab you by the ear and tug you outdoors. Meanwhile, here is a personal Six of the Best …

Aldbury and Ashridge, Chiltern Hills, Herts/Bucks (July 1998)

Up in the beechwoods on the Ashridge slopes above Aldbury, a softly fluting thrush was chief herald of a dawn that had hardly broken yet. I had yawned my way out of bed at two o'clock this morning to enjoy the moment so often read about, so seldom experienced, when the first birds crack the silence of night before traffic roar intrudes to spoil things. To have the whole of the Chiltern ridge entirely to myself, to be able to walk the chalk tracks through the trees without seeing another soul, was a pleasure so intoxicating that I found myself striding along through the half light more like a race walker than a man with time to dawdle and linger.

I turned off the path and sat down on a fallen tree to luxuriate in this unaccustomed sense of time in hand. Light was beginning to touch the beech trunks and leaves, and there was a pearly pink look to the sky in the east. Drifts of mist curled between the trees, and the air in the woods was cold enough to nip my fingers white.

In the treetops the dawn chorus was in full swing. Blackbirds, thrushes, chaffinches; a chiff-chaff repeating its name over and over again; a blackcap bubble-and-squeaking; wrens reeling out chattering streams of notes. From overhead came the chak-chak of rooks passing, and under everything lay a soft foundation of wood pigeons’ throaty cooing. A glorious row, that had me spellbound for half an hour as the daylight slowly broadened.

Barnsley and Bibury, Gloucestershire (January 2001)

The old ridge track, probably a prehistoric route in its origins, lay puddled and rutted. I followed it for a mile or so, head down, buffeted sideways by gusts that leaped with a shriek out of a dramatically darkening sky. Time to get off the ridge, down to more sheltered ground. I made it into St Mary's Church at Bibury just as the storm broke in earnest.

St Mary's is a good place to sit out a rainstorm. There is Saxon, Norman and Early English work to admire, and a fine display of beautifully carved stone foliage. I idled dreamily in a pew until the rain ceased crashing on the windows.

Bibury gleamed as I walked its higgledy-piggledy courts and streets. The Cotswold stone houses shone in a glaze of sunlit rainwater. The River Coln sluiced viciously under the arches of the little stone footbridge that led to the crooked 17th-century weavers' cottages of Arlington Row. The green acres of Rack Isle, where the weavers once hung their wool to dry, lay drowned under four feet of water. 'No-one in the village has ever seen it like this,' said the man laying sandbags on his doorstep. 'Just have to hope for a change in the weather, won't we?'

As I climbed the trickling track of Hay Lane, the western sky was all a purple bruise. One chink of lemon yellow sun broke through, running an electric wire of gold along the upper rim of the cloud bank – a sight I would have braved a dozen rainstorms to witness.

Worm’s Head, Gower, South Wales (June 2000)

Taking the two-mile scramble to the tip of dragon-shaped Worm’s Head is not as easy as it looks. You have to read your tides right. Currents are fierce here in the widening throat of the Bristol Channel, and many a careless venturer down the centuries has been swept away to death as the rising tides come swirling together.

The rocks of the causeway lay coated with millions of mussel shells that were themselves encrusted with a camel-brown layer of barnacles. In the rock pools blennies flicked from sunlight into the shelter of weed and anemone fringes, and hermit crabs went tip-toeing hastily from one dark crevice to the next as my shadow barred the water round them.

As the falling tide seethed back from the northern and southern edges of the causeway, the pattern of the rocks of Worm’s Head became clear. Hundreds of close-packed parallel lines of strata lay upended in the floor of the sea, ground down flat on the margins of the shore, rising to show through the meagre turf of the Inner Head’s nape like cranium skin peeking between the lines of a comb dragged through thinning hair.

I crunched on over carpets of broken mussel shells, passing a big rusted ship’s anchor lying tines up, and clambered up from the causeway on to the slope of the Inner Head. A strange name, since this 150ft lozenge of grass-grown rock is so obviously the body of the twin-humped promontory that Norse sea-rovers named Wurm or ‘dragon’. I checked my watch as I came ashore. Better be back here in a couple of hour’s time …

Hathersage and Stanage Edge, Peak District, Derbyshire (February 2008)

Stanage Edge, the rocky rim of what was once a gigantic dome of millstone grit, is climbers’ and boulderers’ heaven. The grey adhesive rock, fractured into steps, cracks and layers, offers challenges to test the virgin tyro as well as the complete and utter expert. Famous names from that introverted, macho and phenomenally athletic world, the hardest of the ‘hard man’ school – Don Whillans, Nat Allen, Joe Brown and their ilk – cut their climbing teeth along these modest-looking crags. They and their successors dubbed every climbable crack and interstice with names superbly curt and clipped: Goliath’s Groove, Agony Crack, The Unconquerables, The Vice, Blockhead Direct, Queersville, The Eliminator.

I strode the flat, tricky gritstone pavement along the Edge, face to the cold wind, in a kind of high-level ecstasy. Climbers crouched and sprawled in impossibly heroic poses on every crag, and beyond them a most enormous view opened to the south and west across the frosted fields and shadowy moors and edges of the Dark Peak. To the left ran cream and purple moors, the wind streaming their pale grasses so that the whole wide upland appeared to be in motion, racing north into Yorkshire.

Higger Tor and Carl Wark lay ahead, flat-topped tors like castles. I stormed their walls in an outpouring of supercharged energy. Then, breathless and buffeted, I dropped down through tumbled meadows around Mitchell Field Farm and the mock-baronial miniature fortress of Scraperlow House; down towards Hathersage, the warmth and light of the Scotsman’s Pack inn, and the grey church spire that marks where Little John lies sleeping until Robin’s horn wakes him for one last chase through the glades of the eternal Forest.

Poetry Path, Kirkby Stephen, Cumbria (September 2005)

It was a filthy, gale-torn day, with the rain-swollen River Eden crashing majestically through the woods and milky curtains of wind-rippled rain parting and closing on the Cumbrian fells. But Meg Peacocke was happy to brave the elements with me. It was Meg who created the twelve poems that were carved by sculptor Pip Hall into stones along the Poetry Path.

‘I found it very interesting and challenging,’ Meg told me as we walked the muddy river bank on a carpet of leaves whipped from the trees by the gale. ‘I wanted the poems to communicate themselves to anyone, non-poets really, and in particular these local farmers and farming people whom they celebrate.’

The poems are subtly located – January in an angle of bank by the Swingy Bridge, February on a pile of blocks opposite a lovely old stone barn, March in a pool below a natural spillway of tiny waterfalls. The carved cameos include April lambs butting milk from their mother’s udder, July haymakers hefting a bale, brawny farmers inspecting sheep at an October sale.

In Kirkby Stephen this afternoon the local farmers would still be hanging over the pen gates at the mart, or driving the Swaledales they’d chosen in the auction ring back up to the fellside farms. Down here in the valley I ran my hand over Pip Hall’s sculpture of sheep in a pen, and savoured Meg Peacocke’s words:

‘Penned in a huddle, the great tups

are clints of panting stone. The shepherd lifts

a sideways glance from the labour

of dagging tails. His hands are seamed with muck

and the sweat runs into his eyes.

Above us, a silent plane has needled

the clear blue. Paling behind it

a crimped double strand of wool unravels.’

Glen Esk, Angus, Scotland (May 2005)

The world of science lost a great botanist when music sank its fatal talons into Dave Richardson. I would have seen nothing on the ascent from Glen Esk if it hadn’t been for my sharp-eyed friend. ‘Broad buckler fern under the rock here,’ mused Dave, his restless curiosity all fired up, ‘and, let me see … yes, green spleenwort. Yellow mountain saxifrage, not really open yet of course – and purple saxifrage … hmm, cloudberry, Rubus chamaemorus, yes …’ The bare rocks seemed to flower as he pointed out their spring glories.

Up in the broad glen of upper Glen Unich we picnicked, dangling our legs from the footbridge upstream of the Falls of Damff. Tracks, rocks and open patches of moorland glittered with mica in the weak sunshine of early spring. Away to the north the three thousand foot crest of Mount Keen rose above all its sister peaks. Scuds of cloud swept up and across the steady blue field of the sky. This was spring in Angus as I had imagined it while coming north through grey weather from a stale southern city – cold, clean and entirely captivating.

We licked the last of the Arbroath smokie pâté from our fingers, swigged the remnants of the tea, and made off along the Water of Unich among stubbly peat hags and the black channels of hill burns. Mountain hares in snow-white coats went bouncing away over the dark heather as we descended to Inchgrundle farmhouse. A scimitar-winged shape skimmed close over the waters of Loch Lee – the first swallow of spring. I made up my mind that tonight I would get out the melodeon and persuade Dave to help me nail for good and all that tricky turn in ‘Out On The Ocean’.

Ice cream kiosks, bronzed life guards, a nice seafood restaurant and plenty of parking – that’s exactly what my favourite British beaches are not all about. It’s the beach you can’t easily reach that appeals to me, the lonely seabird refuge where you must watch the tides, the secret crescent of sand with the steep steps down to it that the Health & Safety Police should have closed long ago. Here is a selection of the UK beaches I’d take to my Desert Island, along with my copy of Robinson Crusoe and my very loudest set of bagpipes. I won’t let on exactly where they are; go and find them, and you’ll be in for some salty delights.

Cornwall

• Below St Levan’s holy well lies the tiny, sandy crescent of Porthchapel

East Anglia

• The weird and wonderful shingle spit of Orford Ness holds seabirds, rare plants and some truly extraordinary Cold War history

Wales

• On Caldey Island’s cliff-backed beaches the grey seal cows give birth to their pups in autumn

East Yorkshire

• Storm waves pound lonely Ulrome Sands, where the houses slide down the cliffs and the sea is an all-powerful enemy

North-West

• Get out to Piel Island, by boat or on foot; you can drink with a King, have yourself knighted, and stroll a beautiful empty beach

North-East

• Once blighted and scarred by coal mine waste, Hawthorn Hive is a miracle of regeneration

Scotland

• Only otter tracks and gull prints mark the creamy sands of Kervaig, a sublime walker’s beach out near Cape Wrath

It’s no surprise to discover that the Cotswolds are the favourite destination of foreign visitors to the south of England. Lying as they do across the beautiful county of Gloucestershire, only an hour from London and very handy for Shakespeare Country, Bath and Cheltenham, the Cotswolds would have to be plug-ugly and as dull as ditchwater not to be the focus of a huge amount of tourist interest. And given their manifold attractions – the villages stone-built in hues of honey and silver, the gabled towns with their ancient market houses, upmarket delicatessens and creakily characterful hotels, the footpaths and bridleways through beechwoods and hidden valleys, the seductively undulating landscape, the rich orange soil, the meadows full of race horses and well-scrubbed sheep – one can only marvel that the hills have not been thoroughly, irretrievably spoiled.

Money has played a huge part in the survival of the Cotswolds as a rural, easy-on-the-eye, timeless piece of Old England. The Romans poured out money on building villas like the splendid specimen at Chedworth, and long, straight roads such as the Fosse Way which connected (and still connects) the Roman towns of Bath and Cirencester with the north Cotswolds. It was money in the form of wool wealth, untold millions of it, that built the golden towns and wonderful churches, the market houses and great field barns of the north Cotswolds in late medieval and Elizabethan days, when Cotswold sheep carried the riches of England around on their backs. And the handsome Palladian mansions that grace the south Gloucestershire hills were built for mill owners with money earned from the spinning mills in the steep valleys below, clothing the workers of the Industrial Revolution at home and abroad.

It is the southernmost sector of the Cotswolds that holds most surprises for visitors. There are few golden stone villages here. The limestone is hard and white, the landscape far steeper and deeper than the rolling countryside usually associated with the Cotswolds. Head east from the M5 at Junctions 14 or 13, and you’ll find yourself deep in proper south Cotswold country. Along the nape of the hills runs the Cotswold Way long-distance path, a superb grandstand from which to see and get to know the area. The vast Iron Age hill fort of Uley Bury crowns its hilltop, and nearby you’ll discover secret valleys where wonderful old houses lie – the delectable silver stone Tudor manor house of Owlpen, the eerie abandoned shell of the huge Gothic pile of Woodchester Mansion. Rivers rush through the narrow valleys, and it was the power of these swift streams to turn waterwheels and power looms that saw great mills, palaces of industry, sited in the Golden Valley and other clefts near the industrial centre of Stroud. Some of the mills, such as Longford’s Mill off the Avening-Minchinhampton road, have been converted at vast expense into complexes of houses and flats; others stand magnificent and empty among the ferns and mosses of their damp, dark valleys.

Up above these hidden valleys the rich brown fields of the south Cotswold landscape can appear almost flat. Here stands the market town of Tetbury, one of the true gems of the area, its wheel of streets revolving around the hub of the old Market House. Long Street in particular is a delight, lined with crooked, honey-coloured buildings such as Porch House with its goblin gables and leaning walls. North of Tetbury, the narrow streets of the hilltop village of Minchinhampton lead to a triangular market square and a church with a curious waisted spire. The late 17^th-century Market Hall and the dignified old merchants’ houses bear witness to how wool brought prosperity to south Cotswold villages. Social cachet is not the sole preserve of the north Cotswolds: both Prince Charles’s Highgrove House and Princess Anne’s Gatcombe Park lie here in the south of the region.

This area is a celebrated centre for the breeding and training of race horses. Kim Bailey, trainer of Cheltenham Gold Cup, Grand National and Champion Hurdle winners, runs his training stable at Thorndale Farm near Andoversford. ‘I love showing people around here,’ he declares, ‘it’s just so bloody beautiful.’ What is the magical attraction of racing, in a nutshell? ‘Oh, it’s very addictive. You’ve got to have a dream in life, and this is it. The Gold Cup is the pinnacle. Winning it with Master Oats in 1995 was one of the greatest moments of my life, something that no-one can ever take away from me. Quite honestly, if I dropped dead in the winner’s enclosure, I’d die a happy man.’

The A40 separates the south Cotswolds neatly from their northern neighbours. The north Cotswold landscape opens out; the land lightens in colour, widens and develops an ocean-like swell. Hundreds of miles of drystone walls divide the Cotswold fields and line the streets of towns and villages, all needing maintenance, too many of them neglected these days. The craft of stone-walling is still alive and well, though. Keep your eyes open and you’ll see wallers at work, craftspeople such as John Nicholson of the ‘Traditional Boundaries’ company. ‘We give the wall a batter,’ says John, ‘an inward slope towards the top, to let the rain slide off. The walls we build might last for hundreds of years – they’ve found Roman ones down at Chedworth Villa, 2,000 years old.’ Another local waller, Chris Ingles, enjoys coming across odd items left in old sections of wall by previous workers. ‘In one wall we kept finding little round snuff tins every metre or so, about as much as a waller would do in a day, and every sixth or seventh tin would be twice the size – pay day!’

Among the sheep farms and horse paddocks live some of the richest and most famous men and women on earth, secluded among the folded hills and steep little dells of the north Cotswolds. In honeystone villages such as Stanton and Stanway, Snowshill and Broadway, the Guitings and the Slaughters, the lovely old manor houses and the thatched cottages and tithe barns are kept in apple-pie order. Garden trees are topiarised, verges clipped, hedges immaculately laid. Much of the north Cotswold countryside is private park and estate land, very carefully and lovingly maintained. This is the Jilly Cooper face of the Cotswolds (though she, like the Royals, prefers to live in the south Cotswolds), the ‘Rutshire’ region where people are pictured floating in Versace and Aquascutum from one hunt ball and cocktail party to the next, pausing only to ride each other’s horses and partners. Chipping Campden is the archetypal north Cotswolds market town, where deep gold houses crouch under their thatched roofs, dormer windows with stone mullions peeping out like sleepy eyes under straw fringes, the High Street lined with little old shops, steep gables, pillars and porticos.

In the village of Dorn out at the northern edge of the Cotswolds, beyond the town of Moreton-in-Marsh with its wide sheep-straggle street, Sarah and Simon Righton run their exemplary Old Farm, a welcoming place of Gloucester Old Spot pigs and big sleepy Charolais cows, of lambs and dogs, with a thriving B&B business and a farm shop stuffed with their own free-range produce. ‘There’s a satisfaction to doing it the proper way,’ notes Sarah, ‘selling what we’ve produced ourselves to people who like to see where it came from.’ And Simon concurs: ‘My family have had this farm since the 1930s. My children can run about in the open air and socialise with our guests. The Cotswolds may be about tourism, and we benefit from that ourselves. But this area’s not all about tourism. We belong here – and we wouldn’t live and work anywhere else.’

Tucked down in a hidden valley south of Stroud, Woodchester Mansion is eerie and magical. This never-completed masterpiece of Victorian extravagance features stairs that go nowhere, doors that lead to nothing, and a wealth of ornamental stone carving. For details of open days, visit www.the-mansion.co.uk.

The Rollright Stones lie near Long Compton at the north-east edge of the Cotswolds. Legends say of the 4,500-year-old stone circle and the even more ancient tomb nearby that they are knights enchanted by a witch. Don’t visit at midnight if you value your life and your sanity … !

Britain’s most famous river starts life as a trickle, its source marked by an inscribed marble slab in a field near the Thames Head Inn on the Fosse Way between Cirencester and Tetbury. Gazing at the spring, it’s hard to imagine the mighty tideway that surges through London to the North Sea nearly 200 hundred miles away.

‘We’re very old-fashioned,’ twinkles brewery manager Valentine Teal, ‘and we like it that way.’ Donnington Brewery (www.donnington-brewery.com) with its swan-haunted pond is picture-perfect, and its superb bitter is drunk only locally – its 15 pubs are sited where a horse-drawn dray could reach them and return to the brewery in one day.

A tangle of lanes north of the Cheltenham to Stow-on-the-Wold road leads eventually to Guiting (pronounced ‘Gigh-ting’) Power. The houses of Guiting Power are of deep gold stone. The Norman church of St Michael sits on the ridge, while the houses dip to the village square with its post office-cum-teashop and village bakery – a rarity these days. Guiting Power boasts two pubs, the Farmer’s Arms (Donnington’s ales; see Secret Cotswolds) and the Hollow Bottom, a characterful horse-racing mecca.

Three miles south of Broadway lies one of the north Cotswolds’ most beautiful villages, Snowshill. The village street dips steeply downhill beside a stepped wall into the valley bottom, where the Snowshill Arms (another Donnington’s pub) welcomes all comers. In the heart of the village stands Snowshill Manor (www.nationaltrust.org.uk/snowshillmanor), an Elizabethan manor house in lovely gardens laid out in the 1920s. Just east of the village the hilltop is purple and fragrant in summer with lavender, grown in ridge-and-furrow fields.

The South Cotswold village of Bisley, hidden away in its valley just north of the A419 Stroud-Cirencester road, forms a tight huddle of beautiful stone houses under the guardian eye of the church of All Saints with its high rocket of a spire. The village school thrives, as do the village’s two pubs – the Stirrup Cup (dogs and walkers welcome), and the cosy Bear Inn with its asymmetrical rooms and log fire. Near the Bear stands the old village lock-up, just in case anyone has one over the eight.

23, Long Street, Tetbury, Glos GL8 8AA

From £69 double B&B

Tel: 01666-505690

www.theormond.co.uk

The Ormond at Tetbury sits snug and discreet in the town’s most charming, be-gabled street, right opposite Prince Charles’s Highgrove shop. A very pleasing sense of quiet, relaxed style pervades the whole hotel. Rooms are done out individually, and range from a four-poster with traditional ruched curtains to a more modern Scandinavian-style simplicity. The Ormond has recently picked up a Cotswold Life Food & Drinks Award 2008, and this seal of approval by local judges tells you all you need to know about the catering standards here. The menu is long on beef from the Prince’s Duchy organic farm via the local butcher, local duck and game, Cotswold cheeses, and bread made with locally ground organic flour. Cream teas await hungry walkers in mid-afternoon. Add pleasant, polite staff and a good range of locally brewed beers, and you’d search in vain to find a better Cotswold bolt-hole.

Camping Field,

Old Farm, Dorn, Moreton-in-Marsh, Glos GL56 9NS

From £7 a night, caravan or tent

Tel: 01608-650394

www.oldfarmdorn.co.uk

Canvas and caravans are both welcome; you can cook up a storm, too, with the Farm Shop’s own home-produced meat and other very local produce.

Lords of the Manor,

Upper Slaughter, near Bourton-on-the-Water, Glos GL54 2JD

From £191 double B&B

Tel: 01451-820243

www.lordsofthemanor.com

No piped music, no sharp edges to life in this former Rectory: just peace, quiet, luxury and escapism.

If you only do one thing …

• … watch the lambs being born at Cotswold Farm Park (www.cotswoldfarmpark.co.uk) near Stow-on-the-Wold. See the ewes give birth, bottle-feed and cuddle lambs – irresistible!
• … take a stroll along the Cotswold Way in Cranham Wood (off A46, 7 miles south of Cheltenham) – one of the best bluebell woods in the Cotswolds.
• … enjoy one of the special Events Days at the National Aboretum, Westonbirt (www.forestry.gov.uk/westonbirt), near Tetbury – a wonderful display of spring flowers and blossom.
• … buy fresh local produce at Tetbury Farmer’s Market in the 17^th-century Market House (9-1, first Friday every month), and local crafts and organic produce at the Highgrove shop in Long Street (www.highgroveshop.com).
• … go racing. The Cheltenham Festival (www.cheltenhamfestival2009.co.uk; 10-13 March 2009) is the biggest event in the British horse racing calendar, with the Cheltenham Gold Cup the pinnacle of the sport. If you just have to have a race horse yourself, contact Kim Bailey Racing (www.kimbaileyracing.com).
• … make a splash at the Cotswold Water Park (www.waterpark.org.uk) as you fish, sail, watch birds, canoe, go wakeboarding and water skiing, and much more.