Innholdsfortegnelse for October 2025 i Country Walking

This month I’ve been… ONE OF MY favourite photos in this issue is on page 56. You’re probably thinking it’s some fabulous view or close-up encounter with flora or fauna. It’s not. Go and take a quick look (and if you get pulled into the story around it, that’s absolute fine; I’ll wait). Why has that gloomy photo captured my heart? Partly because of that story. In an issue dedicated to weather, Laura Pashby really does prove that a grey and sightless day on a moor is better than a beautiful day spent indoors. But also because: it’s true. Yes, we generally select the sexiest photos for the pages of Country Walking most of the time. Sell the sizzle, not the sausage, as the old advertising adage goes. But to…

Humans have long been intrigued by shapes in clouds. In 423 BC, Aristophanes wrote a satirical play in which the clouds appear differently to each character – an embezzler sees a wolf, while a coward sees a deer. There are lots of lovely dialect words for clouds including the Scots roarie-bummlers for fastmoving storm clouds and the Yorkshire hen-scrattins for long wisps of cirrus. Thomas Baldwin took off from Chester in 1785 on one of the first hot air balloon flights, drawing a map of all he could see below – including the clouds. In 1802, Luke Howard classified clouds using the Linnaean system for wildlife as a model. He identified three main forms – cirrus, cumulus, stratus – which could then be subdivided into species and varieties. The first…

SEEN YOU’VE WON? Email walk1000miles@countrywalking.co.uk with your address and a pic of you holding this edition to claim your precious! #minichallenge36 Cross a bridge Show us your favourite crossings! #minichallenge37 Walk memory lane Share your finest throwback pictures #minichallenge38 Find green spaces in urban places Enter at: www.facebook.com/groups/walk1000miles #minichallenge39 Scream for ice-cream Tell us about your tastiest scoops! #minichallenge40 Go wild for a night Enjoying time under the stars BROUGHT TO YOU IN PARTNERSHIP WITH…

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 10 October 2025 putting ‘Kes October’ in the subject line. Congrats to Jim Munden from Leeds, who spotted Kes in on p48 of the August issue, and wins this month’s prize! GREAT PRIZES WORTH OVER £47…

Matthew Pike, Feature Writer & Routes Editor Miles walked this month: 84 May 2023 was a good issue of Country Walking, wasn’t it? For those without a photographic memory of all issues past, its theme was the best walk in every square of the National Grid. From this spark rose an issue featuring 56 walks, 28 of which we wrote up as step-by-step route cards. That’s a month’s worth of guides to Britain’s finest wanders, evenly spread, touching every corner of the country. Over the last two years I’ve often thought about that issue, and what an ideal companion it would make if only I had a month and a campervan to play with. A day on the Cornish coast, a day on the Isle of Wight, a day in…

Wildflowers grace spring and summer walks with blooms, but autumn sees fungi take to the floor. Appearing as if by magic from soil and wood, they can look like sea creatures (violet coral) or delicate china (porcelain fungus), like human ears (jelly ear) or alien beings (octopus stinkhorn) or fairytale toadstools (fly agaric, below). They can smell of rotting meat (stinkhorn) or of watermelon (dryad’s saddle). They can be the size of a pinhead (lemon disco) or a small sheep (giant puffball) – in fact, a honey fungus in Oregon is thought to be among the biggest living organisms on Earth, spanning almost four square miles. Fungi are bewitchingly contradictory: some are deliciously edible, others are deathly poisonous; some cure disease, others cause it. And we are still learning about…

IF YOU’RE EVER in the seaside town of Sheerness, on the Isle of Sheppey in Kent, you may spot a man staring at a wall. You might also notice him pointing a torch at this wall and examining it closely. And though this behaviour may seem rather odd, the man has a good reason to be doing this. He’s looking for European yellow-tailed scorpions – a creature you may not realise (or may not want to realise) exists in the British Isles. These scorpions are of great fascination to author and naturalist Kevin Parr. “They’ve lived in the dockyard walls since at least 1870, which is quite a bonkers thing. They’ve been in Britain longer than grey squirrels.” The reason for the torch is because, without it, the scorpions, native…

Literally priceless! 46 GO BACK TO SCHOOL And read the board! Not a blackboard, but the info boards we all see on walks. Take a pic and share the most fascinating fact you learned from it. 47 GET CREATIVE Tap into your inner artist and draw – or paint – the scenery and share a pic of your work. It can be big landscapes or tiny details, exact or abstract, whatever inspires you! 48 MAKE A SPLASH Relish the changing weather and jump in a puddle to see how big a splash you can make – and show us the pic. Might want to swap your walking boots for wellies first… 49 HUNT FOR FUNGI Look for mushrooms on your walks and send us pics of the most weird and wonderful ones you spot…

IF LAST SUMMER WAS, at the encouragement of Charli XCX, a ‘Brat summer’, this one was, thanks to the Gallagher brothers, a season of 90s nostalgia, bucket hats and fizzy lager (actually for me, it was much more about cricket, but that’s maybe for next month). Manchester in particular, a place I frequent, was for several weeks in the grip of a kind of (largely good-natured) collective madness. Every city centre hotel was full, Oasis T-shirts were de rigueur and the city throbbed to ancient singalong choruses. It wasn’t really for me, frankly. That’s not to be rude about Oasis. I quite liked the first album, as one is bound by law to say. It’s just that the massed al fresco carnage of the outdoor festival has always left me…

Blue sky thinkers Looking like fragments of summer sky, blue butterflies flutter over the sunny chalk of the South Downs. The male Adonis blue is particularly striking, favouring the warmth of south facing slopes where its only foodplant – horseshoe vetch – also thrives. Lounge lizards Look closely and you might spot a tiny dinosaur basking in the brightness. Measuring just 15 centimetres from its pointed face to the tip of its tail, the common lizard likes to warm its cold-blooded body in the sunshine, building energy to hunt flies and spiders. Summer scents You may smell this one before you see it, as the fragrance of wild thyme perfumes the summer air. Creeping low across the chalk slopes, the small-leaved plant blooms in tight-packed heads of pinky-purple flowers from…

0-15MPH (LIGHT BREEZE) Comfortable walking. No issues or stability concerns. 15-25MPH (MODERATE BREEZE) Slight resistance felt. Walking becomes a bit more tiring on exposed ground. 25-35MPH (STRONG BREEZE) Balance starts to be affected, especially on ridges. Trekking poles become helpful. Gusts may push you off line. 35-45MPH (GALE FORCE) Walking in a straight line becomes difficult. Exposed routes are hazardous. Risk of being knocked off balance. 45-60MPH (SEVERE GALE) Walking is often dangerous. High likelihood of being blown over. Most will avoid exposed terrain. 60+MPH (STORM FORCE AND ABOVE) Extremely hazardous conditions. Walking becomes unsafe. Avoid the hills unless absolutely necessary and well-trained. WIND UP… Our foolhardy attempt to measure stormy winds on Skiddaw: it broke the anemometer. If you want to know how windy it’s likely to be in…

BRITAIN IS A nation obsessed with the weather. In one survey, 94% of people had talked about it in the last six hours. (If they’d all been walkers, it would probably have been 100% in the last 12 minutes.) It’s no wonder. Few places on the planet see weather as changeable as this small island, where icy air from the pole collides with warm air from the tropics to create a waltzer-ride of rain and shine, breeze and bluster. To celebrate all its wonderful variety, we went walking in the sunniest and soggiest places, chased fog and Arctic cold, and followed the trail of storms at sea and tornadoes on land. It’s the story of how weather shapes our landscape – and every walk we take. So grab your boots:…

FitzRoy’s forecasts led directly to the creation of the longest-running broadcast programme in the world: The Shipping Forecast. In 1861, the Meteorological Office’s forecasts started to be telegraphed to ships at sea, and on 1st January 1924 the bulletin was first transmitted on radio. In July 1925, the BBC took over broadcasting duties and in October came the first transmission of a fully dedicated Shipping Forecast. The programme divides the waters around the British Isles and western Europe into 31 areas, with intriguing names such as Dogger, Long Forties and German Bight, and gives forecasts for conditions for each one. The programme has been transmitted at least twice daily since 1925, with small reductions during the two world wars and Covid, and one accidental failure to transmit on 30th May…

YOUR COMPLETE BUYING GUIDE TO OUR TESTERS Country Walking always tests products for men and women. Our reviewers Evie Nichols and Oli Reed have notched up thousands of miles on foot, and are regular reviewers for our sister website livefortheoutdoors.com This test took them to the Peak District and the Bannau Brycheiniog (AKA the Brecon Beacons). THE ‘SHOULDER SEASONS’ (spring and autumn) are funny times for kit. Right now – and indeed, in the spring – we can have balmy heat on Tuesday and a cold, wet shock to the system on Wednesday. Our coatpegs are heaving with jackets because we can’t decide between fleece, waterproof and/or insulator. And when it comes to next-to-skin layers, we’re torn between those light, airy tees we lived in through the summer, and the…