Innholdsfortegnelse for March 2023 i Country Walking

1 Wainwright had unfinished business His hand-drawn, hand-lettered Pictorial Guides to the Lakeland Fells made Alfred Wainwright the best-loved guidebook writer in Britain, and a new book Wainwright Memories by Chris Butterfield – features, and recreates, three stories from his life. Based on the reminiscences of AW's publisher and friend, Andrew Nichol, it traces a holiday to Scotland in 1988, a trip to Langdale in 1990, and work on a new book in 1989. The popularity of Wainwright's Coast to Coast walk (turn to p34 for more on that) gave Andrew the idea for ‘a journey that could be completed by car rather than on foot, with all the key locations accessible for people who couldn't walk far’. Wainwright thought it a great idea and they began with a day from St…

Last year saw me attend the Annual Outdoor Gathering of the GOC (Gay Outdoor Club) in Stirling. As a Scots petrolhead teenager 50 years ago I'd raved about the city's new underpass while professing to be unimpressed with the scenery. How times change! The underpass was still there, but now it was Bannockburn and the mountains beyond that drew my attention. There was a choice of events each day, with friends new and old, from the four corners. Some wanted quietness, most others loved the muddy challenge of a ‘mobile cocktail party’ in progress. Nothing beats the company. I'm looking forward to Canterbury and the East Kent coast Annual Gathering this July.…

I wanted to share my photograph of a Brocken spectre with glories! While doing a CW route across the Carneddau in Snowdonia with some friends recently we entered mist on the summit of Pen yr Ole Wen. The sun then broke through from behind the Glyders to the south of us to reveal our Brocken spectres with the glory rings. In 60 years of mountain treks in the British hills this is only the second time I have experienced this. By coincidence or otherwise, the first time was also on the Carneddau in the 1980s.…

YOU WOULDN'T EAT a pistachio nut with a knife and fork, still less try and perform a heart bypass with an oar. But thousands of people still insist on using the wrong tool when it comes to journeys and seeing Britain. People who've driven round the Lake District or the Highlands or the Yorkshire Dales haven't really been there at all. Or rather, they've been there, but like the man who uses a spade to play the piano, they haven't really got all there is to get out of the object in question. No, there's only one tool that's really fit for this purpose, and it comes in ready-touse opposing pairs, a bit like scissors. Legs. Marvellous things, silent in operation, all-terrain, get better with use, and run like a…

KINDER SCOUT The highest Ethel (and highest land in the Peaks) is one of the hardest to get to. It's not only altitude, it's finding the thing: the top of Kinder is a plateau not a peak, and locating the loftiest bit at 2088 feet in a maze of peat hags is tough. Purists will seek it out at SK085875, but the trig at Kinder Low, half a mile south-west and just 11 feet lower (pictured) makes a cracking, and more easily ticked, goal. THORPE CLOUD This is a little hill with Alpine ambition, as if someone lopped the top 942 feet off the Matterhorn and dropped it in the southern Peak District. And they put the turf-clad, mini-mountain in a top location, wedged into Dove Dale with the famous…

LET'S BEGIN WITH a health warning. You need to fight the instinct to let birds into your life with every ounce of strength you have. They will turn you into an obsessive. They will distract you at the most vital of moments. They will make you want to never go home. But they will make you really, really happy. I do a lot of walking and I walk with a lot of people. Those people can easily be split into two groups: those that notice birds and those that don't. Now, the ones that notice them aren't necessarily good birdwatchers; they're just observant. The bird-blind on the other hand; they're normally really good talkers. Luckily, even if you fit comfortably into the latter category, there are many things you can…

IN THE SIMPLEST terms, a jacket or pair of trousers is either waterproof or it isn't. Go out in a downpour in a denim jacket and you'll soon find out how waterproof it isn't. But when it comes to outdoor gear, waterproofing can actually be measured, thanks to one basic question: how much water pressure can a material take before it starts to leak? Across the textile industry, there is one standard test which can be applied to every material in order to find out the answer to that. It's called a water column rating, or hydrostatic head test. But is it the best way of testing whether something is truly waterproof? The test The water column test is conducted by pretty much every brand for every waterproof product they…

Email your picture, along with a few words about the walk and your contact details to cwroutes@bauermedia.co.uk THIS MONTH'S PRIZE WINNER HEN CLOUD & RAMSHAW ROCKS, Route 12, Spring 2019 This was a lovely walk for a family meeting point halfway between Shropshire and South Yorkshire. We walked a circuit around Ramshaw Rocks (apparently a filming location for the 90's Pride and Prejudice) and climbed Hen Cloud, seeing one of the two peregrines. Amazing views! Hen Cloud is in the background on this picture. Julie Atkins, by email FRESHWATER BAY & MOTTISTONE, Route 27, October 2022 My walking pal and I completed this excellent route while staying on the Isle of Wight. The views were spectacular, and we enjoyed sunny, but windy, weather conditions. All-in-all a great walk which we can…

THE FUNNY THING about End to End, says George Ezra, is that he doesn't really know how to describe it. “It's a weird one. There's music, there's friendship, there's a bit of biography… but also there's hiking. A lot of hiking. I'm not sure how you tell people all of that quickly.” Whatever the film is, it has swiftly become one of the first streaming sensations of 2023, earning adoring reviews for its humour, heart and honesty. It follows George and his friends Adam Scarborough and Christy Tattershall as they hike from Land's End to John o'Groats the scenic way, covering 1215 miles over 95 days in the strange post-lockdown summer of 2021. As George says, it's a film with a lot of angles. Partly it helps George make sense…

WRITE TO US AT: Country Walking, Media House, Lynch Wood, Peterborough PE2 6EA EMAIL: country.walking@lfto.com • FACEBOOK: facebook.com/countrywalking • TWITTER: twitter.com/countrywalking LETTER OF THE MONTH Walking back the years Recently I drove from Leeds to Selkirk, and from there my uncle and I embarked on a road trip adventure. We visited Glencoe, Ratagan, Skye and Ullapool, with walks – or some random exploratory adventure – most days. Our walk up Bruach na Frithe was used from your Britain's Best Walks section and was a fabulous route! My mum passed more than 10 years ago, but to be able to adventure with her brother felt amazing and left me with memories that will stay with me forever. Walking gave me that opportunity and many more this year. I hope this brightens…

I was pleased to read Nick Hallissey's feature on Geoffrey of Monmouth, and in particular the Forest of Dean and Wye Valley walk that accompanied it. I know it well. The Suck Stone and Harkening Rocks are made of Conglomerate old red sandstone (known locally as pudding stone) – the Suck Stone becoming detached many, many years ago from the crags above. The Near Harkening rocks are the crags that sit up on the escarpment behind the Suck Stone. Incidentally, it's reputedly the largest stone in the UK. A local story goes that the concaved nature of the rock face allowed forest verderers to listen out for poachers heading into the forest, the curved nature of the rock face acting like a giant listening device not dissimilar to the manmade…

Get started! Robin Hood's bay. MAPS AND GUIDEBOOKS ► You can see a detailed plot of the Coast to Coast route at coasttocoast.uk/route-map ► Wainwright's Coast to Coast Walk (Second edition, revised by Chris Jesty): published by Frances Lincoln, £15. quartoknows.com ► Trailblazer's Coast to Coast Path, by Henry Stedman and Daniel McCrohan, £11. An excellent guide with an informal style, listing all the alternative routes and full accommodation options. West to east only. Hand-drawn maps and overview maps, no OS mapping. trailblazer-guides.com ► Cicerone's The Coast to Coast Walk, by Terry Marsh, £17. Slightly more formal style, misses a lot of the alternative routes – but it also includes instructions on going east to west as well as west to east, and comes with a full booklet of OS Explorer maps,…

STAMPS, SHELLS, COMICS, Beatles memorabilia, autographs: collecting things has long been one of the world's favourite hobbies. But richer than things are experiences, memories, moments, views – the kind you get from climbing hills. Collecting summits kicked off in Britain back in 1891, when Sir Hugh Munro published his list of 283 Scottish mountains above 3000 feet. Ten years later, Reverend AE Robertson celebrated being the first to bag them all by kissing the cairn on his final peak, and then kissing his wife. Thousands of walkers are now collecting the Munros, and the peaks on the many tick-lists that followed: Corbetts, Grahams, Donalds, Marilyns (a pun on Munro, ha ha), Wainwrights, Hewitts, Humps and more. And now we have the Ethels, a list created in 2021 featuring 95 hills…

Start something big! DISCOVER More hill lists The Munros England and Wales have many, many fantastic mountains between them, but when you rank their inventory against Scotland's you can't help but think the southern countries are just playing at it. Four 3,000 footers in England and 15 in Wales compared to 282 in Scotland? It's enough to make an English hill-walker feel atouch shy of telling a Scot that's their hobby. The Munros were first compiled by Sir Hugh Munro in 1891, and summiting'them all remains a gigantic achievement. Because it's not as if the Munros line themselves up for easy bagging. If the Lake District fells are packed in like a punnet of strawberries, the Highlands are the whole pick-you-own farm laid out before you. A beautful prospect, but back-breaking work.…

Get started! RIVER SPEY This is Scotland's second longest and fastest flowing river, famous for its salmon and whisky production. Gorge walking and group rafting trips are popular and, when you are ready to put your boots on, the Speyside Way is an 80-mile waymarked route that takes you from the Moray Firth into the Cairngorms. RIVER THAMES The Thames Way runs for just under 180 miles and you can start from its source in the Cotswolds and walk all the way into London. Find two people to join you and you could recreate Jerome K Jerome's Three Men in a Boat as you travel from Oxford to London via the site of King John's signing of the Magna Carta at Runnymede. RIVER TYNE Some of the most impressive parts…

Get started! You won't want to lug a heavy pair of binoculars around on a walk, so go for what are often called travel binoculars. A pair of 8x20 is ideal, or slightly larger 8x32: good enough to be your main binoculars should you get serious, yet small enough not to be a burden. The 8 refers to the times magnified and the 20 or 32 to the width of the objective lenses (the fat end of the binoculars). The larger the objective lens, the more light they let in and the brighter the image, especially in gloomy conditions, but of course the heavier they become. It's all about finding the right compromise. With binoculars, you do get what you pay for. Top brands include Leica, Zeiss or Swarovski, but there…

Nick Hallissey, Deputy Editor Miles walked this month: 62 Writing gear reviews for CW means I'm usually gadding about in slightly posh jackets made with the latest advances in fabric technology. But what a treat when under the Christmas tree was a bit of outdoor gear from a simpler era: an Aran jumper, hand-knitted by my marvellous mother-in-law Barbara. Not only am I loving it on winter walks (and appreciating its impeccable eco-cred), I've learned they were originally made with unwashed wool on the Aran Islands off the west coast of Ireland. Retaining the sheep's lanolin made the jumpers water-repellent. They were heavily mythologised by the writer Heinz Edgar Kiewe, whose book The Sacred History of Knitting ascribes all sorts of Celtic lore to them (mostly debunked). And The Clancy Brothers…

I've been a subscriber for a year and look forward to the escapism each month! My problem is when I read the details of the walks I never know what type of stile I might meet. Although I love walking, getting older has brought some problems. It's stone steps over walls which are a real hazard for me. Squeeze and wooden ladders are fine. It sounds rather pathetic to mention all of this but it's a shame to turn back. I hope you could give it some consideration.…

Having read Guy's footnote about his dogs, I must say our Cavalier King Charles Charlie encourages me to walk him whatever the weather. It's a pleasure to discover new places with him but I also enjoy walking him at our local park where I meet several of his friends daily. I have no clue about the owners’ names but I know all his doggy friends’ names. Having a dog for me is not just long walks in new surroundings but it's also a way to socialise while walking!…

The Cambrian Way A Welsh coast to coast, the Cambrian Way (like its more famous English sibling) follows the dream of walking sea to sea across the most beautiful terrain in the country. Unlike Wainwright's celebrated trail, it's higher, wilder, lonelier and lovelier – and at 291 miles eminently splittable into volumes to be plucked from the shelf at your convenience. The route hunts out hills with a ravenous appetite, consuming a skyline of great Welsh peaks from south to north – Twmbarlwm, Sugar Loaf, Pen y Fan, Plynlimon, Cadair Idris, Cnicht, Snowdon, Glyder Fawr and Carnedd Llewelyn to name just a few. Now waymarked and on OS Maps, but still little-walked, it's a connoisseur's long-distance path. You'll enjoy a pioneer feel denied to acorn-following’ National Trail-ers. A perfect sample…

Start something big! DISCOVER The River Wye PORTALS INTO ALTERNATE universes came thick and fast in the books of my childhood. With Alice it was rabbit holes and looking glasses; for Dorothy a tornado that spun her to Oz; while Lucy stumbled into Narnia through the back of an old wardrobe. My gateway to adventure turns out to be a litter-strewn carpark in one of Hereford's busier supermarkets. “we're going to squeeze through that gap in the hedge and we can launch our canoes on the other side,” explains my guide, Andy Ormiston, as he parks the van and instructs me to jump out. We jostle our watertight packs through the privet, then haul paddles, boats and equipment down to the river's edge. An ungainly teeter sees me perched at…

‘I WANT TO ENCOURAGE in others the ambition to devise with the aid of maps their own cross-country marathons and not be merely followers of other people's routes: there is no end to the possibilities of originality and initiative.’ So wrote Alfred Wainwright in 1972 in A Coast to Coast Walk – although I doubt he was envisaging a childish hiking pilgrimage to Nob End nature reserve or Cock Head Farm. But Old Alf's words ring true for my recent innuendo-fuelled 526km hiking adventure, walking from my home in Cockermouth (Cumbria) to visit my brother in Lickey End (Worcestershire) in aid of Baggy Trousers UK, atesticular cancer charity. There was something magical about being a trailblazer, not a sheep. My route felt unique and bespoke, a never-before-walked odyssey with a…

Start something big! DISCOVER Islands of the Lakes IT STARTED WITH aline from a childhood favourite, Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome: ‘Better drowned than duffers, if not duffers won't drown’. This was the answer the Swallows’ father sent in reply to their request to camp on an island on Coniston Water. I read the book when I was about eight; 50 years later I was finally going to do what the children had done: take a small boat to the island and stay there. Was I a duffer? We'd just have to see. My boat was a 1.5kg packraft which enabled me to walk and paddle to most of the islands in the Lake District. There are around 36, dotted around 12 of the bigger lakes. The Lakes deserve their…

YOUR COMPLETE BUYING GUIDE TO Ever BEEN OUT in a soft day? You almost certainly have, you just might not know it. In Ireland, a soft day is one with mizzle; that all-day chilly, misty rain that wafts in from the Atlantic and settles comfortably over the Emerald Isle for the whole blessed day. Little wonder that the Irish greeting of ‘grand soft day!’ is almost as common as ‘hello’. And in most cases, grand soft days are what we buy waterproof jackets for. Yes, we're a committed bunch and we'll walk in any weather, but even the most dedicated devotee of #walk1000miles is likely to balk at going out in a force 8 gale when the rain is horizontal. But give us a day of drizzle or squally showers,…

Wordsearch Stone monuments in the British countryside – 10 to find and a bonus one! JUST FOR FUN ACHAVANICH BENNACHIE DOLL TOR BRIDESTONES MERRIVALE SWINSIDE TORHOUSE NINE LADIES LONG MEG RUDSTON Last month's answers WHERE IS THIS? Rhossili Bay, Gower, Wales PRIZE CROSSWORD FEBRUARY ANSWERS JANUARY WINNERS Colette Leese, Barnsley Howard Marriott, Norwich David Perks, Southampton February winners will be published next month. Full terms and conditions can be found at greatcompetitions.co.uk Win Cicerone guidebooks Three lucky winners will each get to select two guidebooks from Cicerone's range, including The National Trails of England, Scotland and Wales and Walking in Arran. For more details, Tel. 01539 562069 or visit www.cicerone.co.uk EMAIL COMPLETED PUZZLES TO: cwcrossword@bauermedia.co.uk Closing date: 24 February 2023 WIN! Bauer Media Group (the publishers of Country Walking) have other great offers and promotions that we think you'll like,…