Christopher Somerville

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


A cold and blowy midwinter’s morning over the chalk downs where Oxfordshire meets Berkshire. The racehorses exercising near Sparsholt Firs blew steamy breaths, and a brisk south-westerly wind shook the hawthorns and shivered the puddles along the upland tracks.

We squelched through mud as pale and glutinous as pancake batter to reach the grassy track of the ancient Ridgeway across Hackpen Hill. Long views opened across downland fields clipped and stubbled for winter, with leafless beech spinneys, rounded by the wind, standing along the ridges.

A redwing flew up into a bush and then straight and level across the stubble, displaying a dusky red flash along its flanks. Berries not yet plucked by the birds hung wrinkling in the thorn trees through which the strong breeze came whistling.

The roll of the land hid the depths of the dry chalk valley to the north. Down there at Childrey Warren archaeologists recently made an extraordinary discovery. Among the remains of 26 people, buried some two thousand years ago, they found the skeleton of a woman placed in a bizarre ritual position, legs splayed, hands on head, feet amputated and placed beside her. Beneath her body lay another, that of a new-born baby.

We walked on along the Ridgeway, speculating on all the births, deaths and ceremonies this 5,000-year-old track must have seen. Bygone travellers took their lives in their hands when they set out in winter along the Ridgeway, where after prolonged rain the mud could lie deep enough to trap or even drown the unwary. Today a spattered trouser leg was the worst inconvenience we faced.

Down in the vale the clustered houses of Letcombe Bassett lay below chalk slopes corrugated and hollowed by the storms and floods of millennia. The Ridgeway dipped and rose, a broad green ribbon, to reach Gramp’s Hill. Here we turned down a farm road, southward into a sheltered valley where the wind dropped to a gentle sigh in the sycamores.

A flock of fieldfares, slim grey cousins of the redwings, flew purposefully across the way with cackling cries. Beside the path pale green catkins jigged on hazel twigs and dried heads of cow parsley nodded stiffly, animated by the wind.

The rutted track snaked up again to pass the rusty barns and sheds at Stancombe Farm. Opposite, by contrast, lay the organically farmed, immaculately kept domain of Sheepdrove Farm – a dewpond with a duck house, tree plantations with permissive paths, new hedges, wildlife corridors. An agricultural landscape ahead of the curve, as wildlife-friendly farming begins its journey to becoming the norm across our countryside.

We turned for home through the Sheepdrove fields. Jackdaws congregated raucously in the trees, and half a dozen red kites went sideslipping over a beanfield, their chestnut backs glowing in the low winter sun.

How hard is it? 6½ miles; easy; clear downland tracks

Start: Sparsholt Firs car park, near Lambourn, OX12 9XB (OS ref SU 344851)

Getting there: Sparsholt Firs is on B4001 between Lambourn and Wantage

Walk (OS Explorer 170): Walk east along Ridgeway. In 1¾ miles on Gramp’s Hill, right along road (370840). Beyond Parsonage Hill Barn keep ahead on grassy track (367834). In ¼ mile, at ‘Ridgeway closed to motor vehicles’ sign, fork right (367830). In nearly 1 mile pass Stancombe Farm entrance on right (356820); in ½ mile at red barn, right (349816, ‘Byway, No Through Road’). In 700m by houses (346823), keep left on grassy byway; in 1½ miles at B4001 (341845), right to car park.

Lunch/Accommodation: Greyhound Inn, Letcombe Regis, Wantage OX12 9JL (01235-771969, thegreyhoundletcombe.co.uk

Info: nationaltrail.co.uk, sheepdrove.com

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


Above the thatched cottages of Selworthy, the whitewashed tower of All Saints Church looked out across a wide green valley to the high undulating skyline of the Exmoor hills. A perfect view for a perfect winter’s day of blue sky and brisk wind.

A buzz like that of an angry wasp showed where someone was busy cutting wood in Selworthy Combe. The path rose through the trees between banks of tiny trumpet-shaped mosses. A robin perched on a post, puffing out his red breast and trilling a silvery call, quite unafraid as we passed within touching distance.

A brook came rustling down over neat little log spillways, its soft rich chuckle accompanying us all the way up through the oak and holly groves to the moor above. A contrast as abrupt as a knife cut, abandoning the shelter of the woods for the open moor where a biting wind ruffled the seas of heather and gorse running away to the horizon.

The National Trust and Holnicote Estate take great care and trouble over these 12,000 acres of upland, moor and combes. The woods are sensitively managed, the farms well run, and the hundreds of miles of footpath properly signposted.

We followed a broad bridleway through the gorse to the cairn on Selworthy Beacon. From here the view was mighty, over the rolling Exmoor hills, east and west along the curved cliffs of the Somerset coast, and out north across a Bristol Channel as pale as ice to the misty shores of South Wales under a long triple bar of cloud.

Above us only sky, as blue as delicate porcelain. We skirted a harras of Exmoor ponies, long tails billowing in the wind, and struck east along the South West Coast Path with the sea at our left elbow. A long cattle train of belted Galloway heifers went gadding and lurching along the skyline at a clumsy canter, delighted to be out in the open air.

The coast path led between sheep pastures through wind-stunted gorse bushes as stout as trees. A solitary bee buzzed among the gold gorse flowers, first raider of the year.

We turned inland and dropped down to Wydon Farm, hidden in a cleft so steep that, like Lucy in ‘The Tale of Mrs Tiggy Winkle,’ it looked ‘as though we could have dropped a pebble down the chimney.’

The homeward path lay along high-banked farm lanes. Tiny lambs bleated in quavering voices for their mothers, and a little egret stepped fastidiously along a streamlet, searching with gimlet eyes for any morsel to assuage its winter hunger.

How hard is it? 5½ miles; moderate hill walk, very well waymarked

Start: All Saints Church car park (£1 donation), Selworthy, Minehead, Somerset TA24 8TR (OS ref SS 920468)

Getting there: Selworthy is signed off A39 (Minehead to Porlock)

Walk (OS Explorer OL9): Left along road; right by church and follow ‘Selworthy Beacon’ fingerposts for 1 mile to Selworthy Beacon (919480). At cairn/trig pillar, left for 100m; right down to South West Coast Path (917481). Right along SWCP; in 1½ miles, right (938476, ‘Wydon ½’ fingerpost). In ½ mile at Wydon Farm, right (938470) on road. In 400m fork right (939466, ‘Hindon’). At Hindon Farm, left (933466) up track to road (931464). Ahead; in 300m, right (932461, ‘Selworthy Beacon’). At East Lynch Farm fork right (929462, ‘bridleway’). In 100m fork right again; in 50m, left (927463, stile, ‘public footpath’). Along fence to stile (935464); half right to road (923466); left into Selworthy.

Lunch/accommodation: Ship Inn, Porlock TA24 8QD (01643-862507, shipinnporlock.co.uk)

Info: nationaltrust.org/selworthy

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


The River Severn’s estuary was at a fantastically low tide as we crossed the ‘new’ bridge on a day of no cloud whatsoever. Looking seaward through the stroboscopic flicker of the bracing wires, we could see the tidal outcrop of the English stones fully exposed and slathered in red mud.

Downriver, the little hump of Denny Island off Portishead stood marooned in a huge desert of sand. Other sand and mud banks lay around the widening tideway like beached whales.

We were heading to Llanvihangel Crucorney, a placename whose sound put the immortal walking writer John Hillaby in mind of ‘a toy train scampering over points’. Llanvihangel Crucorney lies in the River Monnow valley that forms the eastern boundary of the Black Mountains and Brecon Beacons. It’s a great jumping off point for walks westward into those mountains, but today we were aiming east to climb The Skirrid (Ysgyryd Fawr, the ‘big split one’), a tall hill that lies north-south with its head cocked and spine raised like an alert old dog.

The Skirrid is made of tough old red sandstone lying in a heavy lump on top of thin layers of weaker mudstone – hence its history of slippage and landslides. We came up to it in cold wind and brilliant sunshine across fields of sheep, skirting its western flank through scrub woods, gorse bushes blooming yellow and holly trees in a blaze of scarlet berries, with the dark purple crags of the northern end hanging over little rugged passes of landslide rocks fallen in a jumble.

The ascent is short, steep and stepped, but it’s the sort of ‘starter mountain’ that families with six-year-olds can manage. Many were out – mums, dads, children, students, ‘maturer’ folk such as us.

Once at the peak in this unbelievably clear weather we gasped to see the landscape laid out in pin-sharp detail a thousand feet below and fifty miles off – Malverns, Black Mountains; farmlands rising and falling towards Gloucestershire and the Midlands; the slanting tabletops of Penyfan and Cribyn over in the Brecon Beacons; Cotswolds, Mendip, Exmoor; and the south Wales coast trending round into far-off Pembrokeshire.

Nearer at hand a grey streak of softly glimmering sea showed the tide rising in the Severn Estuary past Brean Down’s promontory, the slight disc of Flat Holm and the hump of her sister island Steep Holm, their lower edges lost in mist so that they looked like floating islands in some fabulous sea.
How hard is it? 6½ miles; strenuous short climb, some stumbly parts.

Start: Skirrid Mountain Inn, Llanvihangel Crucorney, Abergavenny NP7 8DH (OS ref SO 326206)

Getting there: Bus X3 (Hereford-Abergavenny)
Road – Llanvihangel Crucorney is on A465 (Abergavenny-Hereford)

Walk (OS Explorer OL13): Opposite church, lane (gateposts) to cross A465. Down drive; right at wall (325204); follow Beacons Way/BW arrow waymarks. Pass wood-framed barn; in 100m, right (328202, BW, gate). Follow BW across fields to lane at Pen-y-parc (336192). Right; beyond ‘Steppes’ house, left (332191, stile); follow BW to foot of Skirrid (333186). Right on path along west side of Skirrid to rejoin BW at southern foot of mountain (327169). Follow BW up to Skirrid summit (331183). Return; in 200m, sharp left beside hollow (331181); path descends to north foot (333185). Retrace BW back to lane at Steppes (332191). Left; in ½ mile, opposite Llwyn Franc, right (325190, gate, fingerpost ‘Crossways’). Follow hedge on right to gate/stile (325192). Half left across field, crossing Great Llwyn Franc drive (324193); on down to Crossways House (323200) and Llanvihangel Crucorney.

Lunch/Accommodation: Skirrid Mountain Inn, Llanvihangel Crucorney (01873-890258, skirridmountaininn.co.uk)

Info: Abergavenny TIC (01873-853254, visitwales.com)

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


At Quainton in the Buckinghamshire lowlands, the sails and white cap of a windmill overlook the sloping village green. On a cold cloudy afternoon, jolly chat and laughter came spilling from the George & Dragon.

Leaving the village on the North Bucks Way, we climbed the nape of Simber Hill. Somnolent cattle lay chewing the cud with eyes half closed in what looked like a state of transcendental bliss.

From Quainton Hill beyond, the views were remarkable, south to the long dark barrier of the Chiltern Hills, west and north over lower ground where whaleback hills rose from pasture striped with hedges. These green undulations looked beautiful from up here.

Down at the foot of Conduit Hill we passed between the shallow hummocks of Fulbrook, one of several deserted medieval villages hereabouts. Fulbrook probably lost most of its population during the Black Death pandemic of 1349, and the Duke of Bedford finished the job eighty years later when he converted the land into a deer park.

We followed a path across tussocky pasture and fields of dark grey plough to reach the road to North Marston. In a lane below the church we found a covered well with an old-fashioned pump. A sculpture of a boot stood attached to the stone trough.

Towards the end of the 13th century the rector of North Marston was Sir John Schorne, a renowned healer and miracle worker famed for capturing the Devil and imprisoning him in a boot. Sir John discovered the holy well during a deadly drought, and its water was said to cure gout and toothache. Judging by the agonised expression and contorted body of the rector’s icon at the well, he himself might have suffered from both afflictions.

The homeward path followed Matthew’s Way, a rural route dedicated to the memory of ‘a very special little boy’. His round infant face looked out of a photo placed beside the way, and we carried that image in our heads across the sheep pastures.

Under the grey cloud cap the western sky showed a crack of silver. As we approached Quainton a brown hare sprang up and darted away over the corrugations of medieval ridge and furrow, a lithe wild shape in this well-ordered landscape.
How hard is it? 7½ miles; easy; well marked field paths

Start: Village green, Quainton, Bucks HP22 4AR (OS ref SP 747201)

Getting there: Bus 16 (Aylesbury – Marsh Gibbon)
Road: Quainton is signed from A41 (Aylesbury – Bicester) at Waddesdon

Walk (OS Explorer 192): At top of green, left. By playground, right (745202); follow North Bucks Way north towards Quainton Hill. In ¾ mile, at top of rise with gate and blue arrow on right (750215), left to skyline gate; fork right down Conduit Hill. Cross road (752225); half right, following Outer Aylesbury Ring/OAR) across fields. In ½ mile, under power lines, right (761228, kissing gate/KG); aim for shed and stile to road (764228, OAR). Left into North Marston. In ¾ mile, right at T-junction (774228); fork left in front of Pilgrim PH; follow lane to church (777227). From south gate, right; left along Schorne Lane; fork left by well (777225). In 30m, right (KG),;follow well-marked Matthew’s Way for 2¼ miles across fields to Carter’s Lane (765202). Right; in 400m at Quainton Dairy, left (764205) on farm drive, passing Denham Hill Farm (759204), gates of Ladymead Farm (758202) and Denham Lodge (753204). Cross cattle grid; in 100m, left to road (751202); right into Quainton.

Lunch: George & Dragon, Quainton HP22 4AR (01296-655436, georgeanddragonquainton.co.uk)

Accommodation: The Lion, Waddesdon HP18 0JB (01296-651227, thelionwaddesdon.co.uk)

Info: visitbuckinghamshire.org

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


On Bodmin Moor stand sixty or so stout lads, all turned to stone for daring to play at hurling on a Sunday. As for an impious pair of music-makers who blew their bagpipes on the sacred day – why, there they are alongside, struck to stone for ever more.

Cornwall is full of Neolithic monuments and hoary legends, but the three conjoined stone circles of The Hurlers and their attendant pair of Pipers are tremendously impressive in their flattish moorland setting at the edge of the old tin mining and granite quarrying village of Minions.

From the Hurlers we made north across the moor to scramble among a clitter of boulders to the top of Stowe’s Hill, an abrupt bump in this wild landscape. Up at the summit, the winds and frosts of millennia have weathered the coarse granite into tors or piles of slabs, tremendously undercut, so smoothed and shaped that they seem more like artistic installations than natural features.

Most photogenic of all is The Cheesewring, a stack of wedges piled up as the result of a boulder-chucking contest between St Tuc and Giant Uther – so some say.

We skeltered down the hillside through a quarry of black cliffs where jackdaws glided in and out of the cracks that held their nests. From the quarry mouth a wriggle of former tramways led away. We followed one past a pair of ominous pit shafts, dark bushy holes chuting straight down and away from the upper world.

Below lay the site of the Phoenix mine, out of which six hundred Victorian workers dug tin, copper and manganese. Ruined sheds lay around the feet of a tremendous black stone engine house, from which a great red chimney pointed like a finger in the sky.

We dropped down into the valley and up a scrubby hillside to join the broad, firm track-bed of another old industrial railway. It was a three-mile walk back to Minions, trudging a circle round the waist of Caradon Hill past massive mine ruins, deep quarry canyons with rain-sculpted flanks, and unexpected corners of green leaves and trickling streams.

You could spend all your time walking the delectable coasts of Cornwall, and never even dream that these extraordinary and historic landscapes lie just inland – the other side of the county’s coin.

How hard is it? 6½ miles; moderate moorland walk; a little rock scrambling at The Cheesewring.

Start: Hurlers car park, Minions, Liskeard PL14 5LE (OS ref SX 260711)

Getting there: Bus 74 (Liskeard)
Road – Minions is signed off B3254, Liskeard (A38) – Launceston (A30)

Walk: From car park follow track to The Pipers twin stones (257713), then The Hurlers stone circles (258714). Head north to climb Stowe’s Hill to The Cheesewring granite tor (258724). Descent right (east) side to track through quarry (259723) and on. Pass two fenced mine shafts (260722); in 50m, left down to old tramway (262722). Right; in ¼ mile, fork left at granite marker post (264719) to cross road (265717). Stiles, yellow arrows (YA) to road (267716). Left; in 100m, right (gate) down to cross stream (268715). Don’t turn left (YA), but climb slope to disused railway (269712); left. In 1¼ miles, just past spoil heap (279701), bear left on track to Tokenbury Corner car park (280697). Right on old railway. In ¾ mile pass engine house and chimney; through arch (269698). In ½ mile, just past reservoir in a dip on right, fork left (264701) into dip. At ‘Private’ gate, left across granite stile (263703); right on green track to Minions.

Lunch/Accommodation: Cheesewring Hotel, Minions (01579-362321, cheesewringhotel.co.uk)

Info: Liskeard TIC (01579-349148)
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