Innholdsfortegnelse for October 2024 i Country Walking

1 Riddle of the stone is solved It lies at the heart of Britain's most famous ancient monument, yet the origin of the Altar Stone at Stonehenge has long been a mystery. But there are new clues. Geochemical fingerprinting of the rock has narrowed its source to the Orcadian Basin of north-east Scotland, more than 450 miles away. Nobody knows how the six-tonne hunk of old red sandstone was moved to Wiltshire 5000 years ago – by sea is thought most likely – but the discovery means every nation of Britain is represented at Stonehenge. The vast sarsens came from the nearby Marlborough Downs, the bluestones from the Preseli Hills of Pembrokeshire, and the altar stone from Scotland. This spring, archaeologist Professor Keith Ray walked 222 miles from Wales’ bluestone quarries to…

Your View The View WRITE TO US AT: Country Walking, Media House, Lynch Wood, Peterborough PE2 6EA EMAIL: editorial@countrywalking.co.uk ● FACEBOOK: facebook.com/countrywalking ● TWITTER/X: x.com/countrywalking Fifteen years ago I set off with a friend to walk the Inn Way to the Yorkshire Dales, a six-day, 75-mile walk through some of England's finest countryside. (For those who don't know Mark Reid's excellent Inn Way guides I can heartily recommend them.) On our first day we noticed a couple of people ahead of us who turned out to be staying in the same pub that night. We got chatting and discovered we were doing the same walk. By the second evening in Askrigg we'd agreed we'd walk together and by the end of a fabulous week we were all firm friends. In July 2010…

DISCOVER Red RED EARNESTLY DAUBED on cave walls was pretty much the first use of a colour in art, in the form of bison and other animals hunted by our Palaeolithic ancestors. Hunting was dangerous. It involved the spilling of blood. It needed courage and aggression, even a kind of passion. Maybe the red depictions of animals were warnings, because all these things are closely associated with those three very powerful letters. Red even demands our attention as walkers. The word is used liberally in location names: Red Tarn, Red Screes, Red Pike, and up on Scotland's Isle of Skye, right next to the infamous Black Cuillin, you'll find the Red Cuillin. Like cave painting turned to sculpture, this herd of bison-shaped hills grazes in the shadow of its scary…

DISCOVER Green THERE'LL BE A large number of you who, on realising this article is an ode to the colour green, will have lines from Blackadder swirling round your head. So let's address that right away. We're in Elizabethan London, and Edmund Blackadder's loyal but dim-witted friend Percy claims to have relieved Blackadder of his financial woes by creating pure gold. Blackadder rushes over to take a look… Blackadder: “Percy… it's green.” Percy: “That's right my Lord.” Blackadder: “Yes Percy, I don't want to be pedantic or anything, but the colour of gold is gold – that's why it's called gold. What you have discovered, if it has a name, is some… green.” Percy: “Oh Edmund! Can it be true, that I hold here in my mortal hand, a nugget…

DISCOVER White WHEN VIEWED FROM mainland Europe, Britain isn't green at all. It's white. Many a curious French citizen would have stood on the Cap Gris-Nez headland near Calais on a clear day, gazing across the Channel. Staring straight back at them from 21 miles away would be the White Cliffs of Dover, rising like distant icebergs from the blue. For some, it would be the only view they would ever get of these mysterious isles, which is perhaps why Britain has historically also been known as Albion, a term thought to derive from the Greek word for ‘white’. It's an enchanting first view of our homeland. The cliffs may be impenetrable, but they somehow still look inviting, almost edible, gleaming like enormous chunks of Kendal Mint Cake. You can,…

More is better Anthony Byrde's letter about stiles displays remarkable arrogance and lack of empathy. There are plenty of people more than capable of doing a day's walk in the countryside, but who have great difficulty with stiles. People with dodgy knees and hips, those less agile or getting a bit older and stiffer. Being able to access the countryside and walking in the fresh air is good for our physical and mental well-being. The more accessible we can make the countryside, the better for us all. By gradually replacing stiles with gates, more parts of the path network will be available, or at least easier, for more people to manage. Cathy Swinbank, by email A mile in their shoes The terms ‘lame and chair-bound’ is offensive and should not be…

DISCOVER Blue NOT THAT THIS is a competition AT ALL, but while many other colours will stake their claim to being the walker's closest friend this issue, blue is quietly laughing at all of them. Let's start with the huge, hulking and unignorable fact in the room: 71% of our planet is basically blue. I'm talking about water, of course, and yes, I have to concede that water does not always present itself to us in blue form. But as soon as our Sputniks and Explorers started slipping the surly bonds of Earth to send back photos of our homeworld from above, we knew how it was: THIS PLANET IS BLUE. This almost certainly explains why blue is by far the most talked-about colour amongst the peoples of the Earth.…

DISCOVER Orange ‘Let's just go for a walk – somewhere, anywhere – and see the orange empire take its bow. Your local woodland is as good as anyone else's.’ TIP FOR PEDANTS out there. The first time someone talks about the leaves turning orange this autumn, put up a smug hand and say this: “ACTUALLY, they aren't turning orange, my friend. The orange was already there. We just couldn't see it.” Yes, the orange of autumn puts us firmly back in the same realm of optical oddity that you'll see discussed elsewhere this issue. Orange – and indeed yellow and gold – are already contained in the colours of every leaf on every tree. The only reason we can't see them in the summer is because the green of chlorophyll…

DISCOVER Black IN THE BEGINNING all was black. Perhaps a deity created light, perhaps it followed a Big Bang, but 13.8 billion years since that explosion, black still dominates the uplands of Britain. Black Hill is the commonest name for a summit in Britain, with 48 across the country. There are also Black Mountains, Black Mounts, Black Crags, Black Fells and hundreds of peaks bearing the Scottish Gaelic dubh or dhubh and the Welsh du or ddu. Here in Herefordshire I'm walking up a Black Hill to a Black Mountain and returning by a place called Black Darren, all in an area known as the Black Mountains. The southern approach to this Black Hill is fondly called the Cat's Back – a thin, knobbly ridge which arches up from the…

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 GREAT RIDGE, Route 13, June 2024 With the 1000th mile in sight, we took a short break away for a special place to complete the challenge. We ascended Lose Hill and were rewarded with fabulous far reaching views as we walked along the Great Ridge to Mam Tor. I calculated using the OS app that we would reach Mam Tor 4¾ miles into our walk, a fitting place to celebrate our 1000th mile. We did it! We celebrated with pints at the Castleton pubs before completing the walk back. Vicky & Stephen Toghill, Brackley FOURTEEN LOCKS, Route 20, July 2024 Can you see the M4? You wouldn't believe we have…

Walking Weekend The View WHOLE LOTTA ROSY Sudbury and its surrounding villages are renowned for buildings coloured in Suffolk Pink, a tradition that goes back to the 14th century. MEDIEVAL WEAVERS AND 18th-century silk mills brought wealth to the market town of Sudbury and most British silk is still produced here. This handsome market town and nearby villages, ringed by water meadows and ancient commons, have hundreds of beautiful buildings from light-filled churches to halftimbered cottages. Also look out for buildings coated in the famous Suffolk Pink – a shade of dark pink whose origin dates back to the 14th century when dyes were added using the likes of sloe berries, blackthorn and ox blood. The artist Thomas Gainsborough was born in Sudbury in 1727 and his birthplace is a fabulous…

IN A WOODLAND glade in southern England, a black butterfly the size of a small bat lands on the grass. When this purple emperor moves in the sunlight you realise how it got its name, as a vivid indigo coruscates across its wings. Purple has long been an imperial colour. A dye called Tyrian purple – developed in the Phoenician city of Tyre in the 15th century BC – once carried a value three times higher than gold. Egyptian Queen Cleopatra adored it so much she used it for skirts, sofas, and sails on her boat. Some Roman emperors declared they alone could wear the colour and anyone else who tried it would be put to death. The prized pigment varied in shade from clotted-blood to violet and was made…

IT'S THE COLOUR of melanin and chocolate cake, of woodgrain and ale, yet brown is so often freighted with disappointment. The colour of suspicious stains, of apple bruises, of what was that bird? Just some little brown job. Chief among the heart-sinkers for walkers: mud. An experience so common yet which features so little in our Facebook memories. We are ingrates. Not only is it essential to all the countryside upholstery we do appreciate, it's an interplanetary novelty other worlds would kill for – Mars, Mercury and their ilk making do with mere lifeless regolith. In fact mud's a recent innovation even here on earth – the planet being 4.54 billion years old, but soil ten times younger; the key to its habitability. Soil is the story of all the…

DISCOVER Gold IN A WAY, a walk is a funny place to be thinking about gold – an imperishable store of one kind of value, set against the literally priceless commodities of our health, happiness and the natural world, which seem overwhelmingly the only things that matter when you're out there all clear-eyed with your perspectives on. But on this walk the two are inextricably linked – because it's a journey to the source of the Welsh dragon's surprising hoard, and the starting place of a Snowdonian gold rush which lasted for 50 years (and may be about to begin again). I'm here on the slopes of Clogau (1017ft/ 310m), a modest hill overlooking the beautiful Mawddach estuary, between mighty Cadair Idris and the long, lonely Rhinog range. But the…

Walking wordsearch 10 nuts, berries, leaves and mushrooms to forage in October & one bonus one! JUST FOR FUN ● BULLACE ● BEECHNUTS ● HAZLENUTS ● ROSEHIP ● SLOES ● WALNUT ● BAYBOLETE ● PENNYBUN ● YARROW ● DAMSONS Where is this? JUST FOR FUN Country: __________________________ (Apprentice) National Park/County: __________________ (Master) Specifically it's: ________________________________ ____________________________________ (Maestro) Last month's answers WHERE IS THIS? In Pinn, Cuillin, Isle of Skye, Scotland PRIZE CROSSWORD By Will Adams AUGUST WINNERS David Sanders, Nottingham; Juliet Digweed, Malvern; Phil Gibson, Somerset Sept issue 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…

STANLEY Aerolight Transit Mug 0.35L £33 Though effective at keeping drinks cold, we found this travel mug really comes into its own when it's on coffee duty, keeping the drink piping hot for several hours. The spout is easy to flick open using one hand, and it doesn't spill easily if drinking when on the move. It's also slim and fairly light, so will slip easily into your rucksack's side pocket. We'll be loving this mug in winter too. uk.stanley1913.com BIOLITE Headlamp 425 £60 An amazing little headtorch –super light (78g), yet it emits 425 lumens (easily enough for night walks and camping trips). It uses a rechargeable battery that lasts for 60 hours on a low light, which is up there with the best of them. It's easy to…

Miles walked this month: 99 One of the inspirations for this issue was an 1814 book: Werner's Nomenclature of Colour, adapted to zoology, botany, chemistry, mineralogy anatomy and the arts by P. Syme. The pages look like a paint chart, and beside each square of colour is a name and a description of where you'd see it in nature – animal, vegetable, mineral; a way to describe colour in a time long before you could photograph it. Darwin carried a copy on HMS Beagle. Smoke grey is the breast of the robin around the red; Dutch orange is common marigold or the seedpod of a spindle tree; peach blossom red is red cobalt ore. Syme wrote ‘it is very difficult to give colours for every object in nature; the tints…