Innholdsfortegnelse for May 2025 i Country Walking

This month I've been… YOU’VE PROBABLY SEEN that cartoon that pops up occasionally, with the explorer leading a group into the jungle, saying ‘we’ll be fine as long as Jeff remembered to bring the map’. Jeff, at the back, suddenly looks alarmed because, of course, he’s carrying a mop. These days we all bring the map; usually on our phones but also, preciously, on paper too. The map is our gemstone, our objet d’art, our ticket to adventure. So here is our celebration of maps. We track down the bestsellers. We give some love to Britain’s least loved map. We give you a map-reading refresher and tell the amazing story of how Britain was mapped. And we even try ditching the map and relying on the kindness of strangers. But…

SEEN YOU'VE WON? Email walk1000miles@countrywalking.co.uk with your address and a pic of you holding this edition to claim your badger! #minichallenge11 Keep Britain beautiful Doing a very good turn on your walk and picking up litter #minichallenge12 Hop to it! Celebrating spring (and Easter) by spotting bunnies and hares #minichallenge13 Show us your favourite map Because we LOVE paper maps Enter here: www.facebook.com/groups/walk1000miles #minichallenge14 Spot a lookalike Is it a tree or a deer? A rock or a dragon? #minichallenge15 Walk to a waterfall The wonder of water and gravity BROUGHT TO YOU IN PARTNERSHIP WITH…

Planet Rock wants to find the Top 10 walking rock songs – and they’d love to hear your suggestions. Here are a few from Darren; you can back any of these or name your own choice using the form at hellorayo.co.uk/planet-rock/presenters/darren-redick/ Metallica – Wherever I May Roam Dire Straits – Walk of Life Boston – Walk On Led Zeppelin – Ramble On Foo Fighters – Walk Lenny Kravitz – Are You Gonna Go My Way Run-DMC & Aerosmith – Walk This Way And there at least half a dozen rocked-up versions of Walkin’ the Dog. Rolling Stones? Aerosmith? Dr Feelgood? Over to you.…

Kes the conker-colour Cocker is an inveterate explorer, often finding his way into the unlikeliest of places when we’re busy putting the magazine together. In fact he’s hiding out in this issue for you to find! Spot him (not on this page) and you could win over £47 worth of Mountain Paws goodies – just email the page number where you found Kes, along with your address, to: ifoundkes@LFTO.com by 23 May 2025 putting ‘Kes May’ in the subject line. Congrats to Ian Puckering from Cottingham, who spotted Kes on p33 of the Spring issue, and wins this month’s prize! GREAT PRIZES WORTH OVER £47…

IF YOU WANT a top-to-toe view of Britain, nothing beats the detail of Ordnance Survey Explorer maps. From Shetland’s Out Stack to Pednathise Head in the Isles of Scilly; St Kilda to Lowestoft Ness, every kilometre on the ground appears as four centimetres on the map, showing walkers every footpath, acre of access land, field boundary and patch of woodland. There are 403 maps in all, but we asked the OS to tell us their best-sellers – and the top 10 places the nation loves to walk. As you’ll see in the following countdown, they span some of the most eye-widening, pulse-quickening, mindblowing landscapes in Britain. Each one is studded with superstar draws, but the joy of an Explorer map is the freedom it gives you to, well, go exploring.…

In May 1955, the first Pictorial Guide to the Lakeland Fells was published. Written and illustrated by Alfred Wainwright, the series would eventually span seven volumes and 214 hills, but this one was devoted to and titled The Eastern Fells. Wainwright started work on it one November night in 1952, with a page showing the ascent of Dove Crag from Ambleside. He then drew all the routes of ascent and descent, and the summit views, for 35 fells ranging in height from Arnison Crag at 1424 feet to Helvellyn (below) at 3118 feet – and annotated each with detailed descriptions in his neat handwritten script. In fact, he was such a perfectionist he redrew the first 100 pages to make the shape of the text more pleasing. The first book…

Prior to the events of The Salt Path, Raynor and Moth Winn lived on a farm in Wales which they had lovingly restored over 30 years while bringing up two children. But in 2013 their lives were upended by double catastrophe. Moth was diagnosed with the rare brain disease corticobasal syndrome, and was given only months to live. At the same time, they lost a court case over a financial dispute with a former friend, resulting in their home being repossessed. At the point of hiding under the stairs as the bailiffs hammered on the door, Raynor spied a copy of 500 Mile Walkies, Mark Wallington’s comical account of walking the South West Coast Path, and at that moment decided the couple could ‘just walk’. They cadged a lift to Minehead…

Literally priceless! 21 DIVE INTO THE BLUE It’s bluebell season! Send us your best photos of one of Britain’s finest springtime spectacles and tell us where you saw the blooming beauties. 22 WE WILL REMEMBER May 8th marks 80 years since VE day. Honour the fallen with a walk to a war memorial and remember those lost in World War II, or any conflict. The names of 20,456 members of the Allied Air Forces who died in WWII are inscribed on this memorial at Runnymede. 23 PHONE A FRIEND And ask them to join you on a walk, and share some stories and pics. Even better if it’s a friend you haven’t seen in a while or one who isn’t a regular stroller already, and big bonus points if they sign up to…

OBVIOUSLY, THE INTERNET is both the best and worst thing that has ever happened in the history of humanity. Yes, it has opened a yawning portal into the abyss but, hey, where else am I going to find Gentle Giant’s 1974 Belgian TV special or the opening titles to Sir Prancelot or, as in this morning’s quest, a very slow and meditative video about how to lay a hedge. From Ben Orford’s YouTube channel, I learned that you should always lay them uphill on a slope, to aid with the rising of the sap. But I guess the other 26 videos (I stopped counting then) all have useful tips for the aspirant hedge layer, too. I was sent down this (almost literal) rabbit hole after an early stroll up the…

'SHE IS TOLERABLE, I suppose, but not handsome enough to tempt me.’ – Mr Darcy, probably in reference to Ordnance Survey Explorer 343 Motherwell & Coatbridge. It is a truth universally acknowledged that, when spread out on any living room floor or table, Britain’s worst-selling OS Explorer map doesn’t appear to possess much in the way of good fortune. Vast swathes of boggy wind farms. The M74. Motherwell. A marked trail called the Avon Way sounds pleasant, but on closer inspection, really it’s just another name for National Cycle Route 74, whose northern stretches I know to be most disagreeable due to graffitied waymarkers, pigeon excrement, and a virile population of empty buckfast bottles. In vain, I struggled to find any remarkable characteristics. The task in front of me – finding…

YOUR COMPLETE BUYING GUIDE TO OUR TESTERS Country Walking always tests products for both men and women. Our reviewers Fliss Freeborn and Nick Hallissey have notched up thousands of miles on foot so they know the value of good kit at the right price. This test took them to the Highlands, the Peak District, the Pennines and the Jurassic Coast. WE THINK SHOES are winning. Last August, CW braved Keswick on a scorching weekend, and we used the busyness of the surrounding fells to (unscientifically) track the popularity of shoes vs boots. Shoes, we found, were definitely winning. For every pair of boots we saw on Cat Bells, Walla Crag and even big beasts like Scafell Pike and Skiddaw, there were perhaps 10-12 people in hiking shoes. Okay, that was…

FOOTPATHS CAN MAKE us happier, connecting us with each other and with the natural world. This is a central idea in The English Path, a book written by my mum Kim Taplin, who died a year ago. First published in 1979, and reissued this spring in a new edition, the book celebrates paths in English literature, exploring the work of nearly 200 authors and artists from Shakespeare’s lovers in the green cornfield to Orwell’s Golden Country in 1984. Since my mum died, I’ve been visiting places linked to the writers she singles out as rich sources of footpath imagery. Last April I walked through a Cambridgeshire bluebell wood past lakes of white and misty violet. Delicate wood anemones flowered under a fresh canopy of beech leaves near the village of…