An attraction – normally in the countryside or open-air – that involves, or features, a walk.
Stowe is one of those marvellous monuments to profligacy. It is a great 17th and 18th century mansion, now a school, surrounded by an exquisite landscape that nature only had a passing hand in creating. Stowe School is a public school, and therefore private. The gardens were given to the National Trust, so privately owned, …
We set off with friends David and Cecile (and Hamish the dog) to visit Swaledale’s corpse trail. It is one of their favourite walks and the views are terrific. You may know of Yorkshire’s Swaledale, but I suppose I had better explain what a corpse trail is: so here goes. Once upon a very long …
A meeting of the Ways and Means Committee decided that a visit to Ravenglass and its steam railway was required. Dissent would not be brooked. Reports of riding the Ravenglass and Eskdale railway were examined. Indeed, a stationary lurking locomotive had even been spotted a couple of times, at Ravenglass and Eskdale (respectively). But the …
Here is a dramatic tale – of shifting landscapes, lost settlements, abandoned military installations and wobbly legs. It features the spindly, exposed, crooked finger of Spurn Head on the East Yorkshire coast. Spurn is an enigmatic, fascinating and slightly scary place, a low-lying spit of glacial clay, sand and shingle, washed on one side by …
Many people – mostly those that haven’t been there – believe that South East England is busy and crowded, with little remaining countryside of any note. They are right about it being busy – South East England is the most populous part of the UK – but they are wrong about the countryside. Leith Hill, …
Time for a walk in the Yorkshire Dales. We will stroll from the old market town of Settle, up into the hills and do a circuit of around 5 miles. The route will take in the lonely starkness of Attermire Scar, the Victoria and Jubilee Caves and, along the way, encounter preparations for war. This …
We went to the small town of Montgomery, in Powys, for some much-needed peace and quiet – and found it. Girdled by lush landscape, the old county market town of Montgomeryshire has a Georgian appearance and is a peach, a place to mentally recharge. There is little to attract the seeker of brash entertainment, or …
Pendle Hill looms over East Lancashire between the towns of Clitheroe and Nelson. With its distinctive humpback shape, visible for miles around from all directions, it is a local landmark, rising from an area of green beauty. The district is dotted with tiny hamlets and farms, divided by ancient drystone walls and full of folklore …
I seem to have been passing through Rutland, England’s smallest county, for years. It just happens to be in the way when taking a particular route to or from the Deep South and the East Midlands. A leg of this journey is along the scenic A606 road between Stamford and Nottingham, which I can highly …
Some years ago, we spent a happy couple of days with good friends in the Eden district of Cumbria. For many, Cumbria means the Lake District – which is, of course, a wonderful place; but there is more to the county than that. Eden, named for the river that flows north through it to the …
Clearly, something serious went on at Strumble Head. Pembrokeshire’s Strumble Head, aka The Pencaer Peninsula, is known for its stunning scenery and the Strumble Lighthouse. It was also the location, at Carregwastad Point, of a minor, unsuccessful, French invasion in 1797. Long before that, however, our distant ancestors seemed to be particularly busy over on …
The Weald is an area of outstanding natural beauty in South East England that, broadly speaking, stretches through the counties of Surrey, Sussex and Kent, between the chalk of the North and South Downs. It is characterised by small farms and fields, sunken lanes, gentle hills, deep deciduous woods, pretty picture-box ridge-top villages and attractive …
Near the little town of Bonnybridge, west of Falkirk, you will find the largely buried remains of Rough Castle. This was no fairy-tale fortress, with stone battlements and banners fluttering from romantic-looking towers. The lumps and ditches in the ground mark the location of a business-like frontier fort, built almost 1900 years ago on the …
Any self-respecting student of folklore will tell you that, in Britain, a kelpie (or kelpy) is a Scottish water spirit, a waterwraith. Kelpies are shape-shifters, but usually appear in the form of a horse and are malignant, deriving pleasure from the drowning of travellers. They are immensely strong and have been known to take human …
