Innholdsfortegnelse for March 2025 i Country Walking

WRITE TO US AT: Country Walking, Media House, Lynch Wood, Peterborough PE2 6EA EMAIL: editorial@countrywalking.co.uk ● FACEBOOK: facebook.com/countrywalking ● X/TWITTER: x.com/countrywalking LETTER OF THE MONTH Keeping going Pictures of the Long Mynd and the craggy walk up from Church Stretton in your January issue instantly recalled some very happy memories for me. The Long Mynd is just one of the amazing views on the 279-mile Macmillan Way which runs from Boston in Lincolnshire to the Irish Sea at Barmouth, which I walked with my journalist colleague, poet and walking companion, Peter Gubbs. We walked the seasons around to complete this memorable crossing a few years ago and while I wrote travel features along the way, Peter wrote Betjemanesque poems. Venturing out every 12 weeks over the past 40 years, we have…

Ardnamurchan Peninsula, Highland The most recent volcanic activity in Britain occurred 60 million years ago, a few million years after the asteroid collision that led to the death of the dinosaurs. A vast plume of hot mantle rock rose up beneath northwestern Britain and the magma melt came to the surface to form 10 volcanoes, on two parallel lines on an almost perfect north-south orientation. The only volcano ruin on the Scottish mainland is on the Ardnamurchan Peninsula. The volcano skeleton is defined by sections of two varieties of ring intrusions (rings of cooled magma). When the magma chamber suddenly empties, then the whole top of the mountain can collapse along a circular outward dipping fault (an angled fault) that creates a space that fills with magma to solidify as…

ROADS ARE SOMETHING walkers like to dodge, mostly leaving them to the rush of cars, vans, buses, lorries, bikes. But that tarmac often sits atop thousands of years of history and millions of footprints. And some roads – like here in the Lincolnshire Wolds – can carry us deep into the past. I like this part of the world. These Wolds were designated an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (now called a National Landscape) more than 50 years ago, in 1973. They’re also the mountains of this huge country of a county, reaching a high point at the appropriately named Wolds Top (551ft/168m). They span about 220 square miles, sitting below the Humber estuary, east of the city of Lincoln, west of the coast and above the fens. Choose a…

Email your picture, along with a few words about the walk and your contact details to cwroutes@bauermedia.co.uk HERGEST RIDGE, Route 8, October 2019 1st January: on the upward route, strong winds were behind us but we had a clear path with views north to nearby Hanter Hill and Worsell Wood. At the trig point the winds increased which made it difficult to take a photo. However, it worsened on the return track when we encountered full frontal wind and rain. Although cold and wet when we got back, it was all absolutely worth it. Karen Silverson, by email THIS MONTH’S PRIZE WINNER PENDLE HILL, Route 27, December 2022 Despite the snow and the chill, we had an amazing walk up Pendle Hill to have a photo with my favourite trig in…

IF YOU WANT to blow your mind, google the Gamburtsev Mountains. They are sensational: a vast range of jagged peaks, roughly similar to the Alps in their size and sprawl. There’s just one problem. No one has ever seen them. The Gamburtsevs are in Antarctica, buried beneath 2000ft of ice and snow. Let’s have that again: if you’re standing on the surface of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet, then some 2000ft below your feet is the summit of a 9000ft mountain. Ice, man. It messes with your head. It also messes with your country. While the Breiddens came to us by fire, other parts of Great Britain are here because of ice. At several points in Earth’s history, the hills and mountains we love were just like the Gamburtsevs: buried…

The wildest dream Alfred Wainwright is adored by walkers for his hand-drawn, hand-written Pictorial Guides to the Lakeland Fells. But in 1939, years before he began that labour of love, he wrote a story about a man in a desperately unhappy marriage, imagining his dream woman: ‘She was with him, comforting him, soothing him: he was not perplexed and frightened any more. He had been wandering to and fro through the weary years, beaten, confused, despairing, suffering; now, at last, he had found refuge.’ The man was called Michael Wayne but was clearly Wainwright, and 26 years later he handed the manuscript to Betty McNally with the words ‘You are this girl’. It was only the third time he’d met her. The first was in 1957 when Wainwright, as Kendal…

Fliss Freeborn, Content Creator Miles walked this month: 42 Hello! This is a sneaky introduction, hidden in these back pages, but my name is Fliss and I’m a new writer on Country Walking. I’m delighted to be here, and can’t wait to share some of my favourite ambles, rambles, and brambles (I love foraging and outdoor cooking). Living in Glasgow, I’m lucky to have world-beating scenery on my doorstep, and it only gets better the further north you go. Over the new year, myself and my university mountaineering club alumni spent several days in the Ling Hut in Torridon, walking, climbing, running and, ahem, scallop diving from the pier at nearby Diabaig. I found some whoppers and we saw in the new year by devouring them, along with several kilos…

1 There's good news for paths The government has announced it will scrap the deadline to register historic paths in England. The country has an estimated 40,000 miles of rights of way not currently recorded or protected and they were set to vanish forever if not registered before 2031 – a cut-off date that will now be lifted. In other path news, the Slow Ways, a group campaigning for better access to the countryside, is calling for the right to walk along field edges if the only alternative is a busy road with no pavement – an idea backed by 71% of respondents in a YouGov survey. And a growing number of farmers are keen to improve access, including Debra and Tom Willoughby who have opened permissive paths on their land in…

A WEEKEND IN ERYRI (Snowdonia) doesn’t always have to revolve around Betws-y-Coed or Llanberis. Bala might have squeezed its way into the national park with only a few feet to spare but this bustling town, at the head of the largest lake in Wales, is the perfect gateway to classic walks in the hills. It’s also an excellent weekend getaway, with a range of outdoor options if you want to make the most of your time here. Bala Lake – now properly known as Llyn Tegid – is home to varied watersports as well as excellent picnic spots. And the National Whitewater Centre near Llyn Celyn provides the rapids for fast-flowing rafting and kayaking trips. But it will probably be the mountains which catch your eye. Moel Llyfnant (on our…

FEBRUARY ANSWERS JANUARY WINNERS Paula Lavender, Oxford Lindsay Jerome, Havant Jon Raymond, Swindon Feb 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 Arran. For more details, Tel. 01539 562069 or visit www.cicerone.co.uk EMAIL COMPLETED PUZZLES TO: cwcrossword@bauermedia.co.uk Closing date: 28 February 2025 WIN! Bauer Media Group (the publishers of Country Walking) have other great offers and promotions that we think you’ll like, but if you’d rather not hear about these offers, please tick this box □ For our privacy policy visit bauerdatapromise.co.uk ▶ Bauer Media Group consists of Bauer Consumer Media Ltd, Bauer…

DOES ANYONE REMEMBER an excellent scene in the sitcom Father Ted where Ted holds two toy cows in front of Dougal’s face? “Okay, one last time,” Ted says, clearly a little frustrated. “These are small. But the ones out there are far away.” I’m pretty good at distinguishing between small and distant cows, but when it comes to the Breidden Hills, I’m just as bewildered as poor Dougal. I see these hills each time I drive from England to where I live in Mid Wales. It’s a part of the country where there’s plenty of high land, but few discernible peaks. Instead, slopes tend to rise steadily, halting at large moorland plateaus. But the Breidden Hills are an exception. Like a group of misfit soldiers banished by a huge army,…

The Inverpolly 'nunataks' We’re putting the word nunataks in inverted commas because there isn’t 100% agreement that these extraordinary mountains in the far north-west of Scotland actually are true nunataks – but it’s a great word and we didn’t want to waste it. A nunatak is a mountain that pokes up through an ice sheet, and the fact the word is Inuit tells you there’s a lot of them in the Arctic Circle. Down here in Inverpolly, the holy trinity of Suilven, Stac Pollaidh and Canisp have all been mooted as nunataks which protruded from the last great British ice sheet. All three certainly were shaped by the movement of ice. As the ice sheet came and went, it wore down the softer rocks around these peaks but could not…

GRAND DESIGNS, LOCATION, Location, Location, Escape to the Country, Homes Under the Hammer: as a nation we are fascinated by other people’s houses. Knole is one of Britain’s biggest, a mansion spanning four acres in the gentle hills of Kent. Writer Vita Sackville-West grew up here and described it as a calendar house with seven courtyards, 52 staircases and 365 rooms: one for each day of the week, week of the year, and day of the year. She admitted she’d never verified the count but how ‘after a lifetime of familiarity, I still catch myself pausing to think out the shortest route from one room to another.’ My route to the house begins a couple of miles to the south east at One Tree Hill. Bought by the National Trust…