Christopher Somerville

Bristol

Travel Writer at Christopher Somerville Blog

Travel writer. Walks, wildlife, people. Latest book ‘Walking the Bones of Britain’ is a 3 billion year geological journey, Hebrides to Thames.

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Articles

My 20 all-time favourite spring walks

2 months ago | thetimes.com | Christopher Somerville
The 20 most glorious autumn walks in Britain

Oct 17, 2024 | thetimes.com | Christopher Somerville

It’s here again, that lovely time of year when the countryside is full of seductive colours, sharp and tangy flavours in the hedges, wintering birds returning to the estuaries and lakes, and waters racing through the gorges. Heather moors are still purple in Devon and Durham, brent geese are flocking to the Sussex marshes and their pink-footed cousins to Aberlady Bay, near Edinburgh. Blackberries have fattened in the hedgerows and elderberries hang waiting to be picked.
Christopher Somerville: my 20 all-time favourite UK walks

Jul 26, 2024 | thetimes.com | Christopher Somerville

When someone asked the fast bowler Fred Trueman how he felt after breaking the barrier of 300 Test wickets, he replied succinctly: “Knackered.” Over the last 15 years I’ve written 697 walks for The Times. My wife Jane and I have zigzagged across the UK, dodging cloudbursts and heatwaves, reshaping plans as the weather dictated, trudging up hills, scooting down dales among spring flowers and summer cornfields, autumn woods and winter snow.
A good walk: Hamps Valley, Rushley Dale and Throwley Old Hall, Staffordshire

Jun 14, 2024 | thetimes.com | Christopher Somerville

The River Hamps is a winterbourne, only flowing after winter rains, and on this warm cloudy summer’s day it was a bushy green channel of butterbur leaves smothering the dry stones of its bed. Setting off from humpbacked Weag’s Bridge, I followed the Manifold Way’s cycle path past the looming cliff of Beeston Tor, its grey limestone face seamed with cracks and caves. The path snaked to and fro across the dry Hamps, the verges spattered with yellow rattle and common spotted orchids.
A good walk: Hayton, Clarborough and the green lanes, Nottinghamshire

Jun 7, 2024 | thetimes.com | Christopher Somerville

The Nottinghamshire countryside east of Retford lies low and rolling, a mosaic of isolated farmhouses and fields connected by an extensive network of old green lanes. Wide and rutted between ancient hedgerows full of wildlife, these grassy lanes are rare survivors, reminders of what all back-country roads were like before the advent of tarmac and the motor car. We set off from the Boat Inn by the Chesterfield Canal in Hayton under a pale blue sky, hazy with heat.
A good walk: Buckden Beck and Buckden Pike, Wharfedale, North Yorkshire

May 31, 2024 | thetimes.co.uk | Christopher Somerville

This walk starts along one of the most beautiful waterside paths in the Yorkshire Dales, a cornucopia of waterfalls, clear pools, wildflowers and birds of the uplands. Buttery yellow bird’s-foot trefoil, salad burnet, golden tormentil and rock rose; blue of milkwort and butterwort on lime-green leaf rosettes, early purple orchid still in bloom. The banks of the beck were spattered with the bright colours of low-growing plants, well sheltered in the narrow valley.
A good walk: Peatling Parva, Peatling Magna and Bruntingthorpe, Leicestershire

May 24, 2024 | thetimes.co.uk | Christopher Somerville

A sunlit late spring day in Leicestershire, the lush grass shin high in the pastures, enough dandelion clocks in the uncut meadows to teach the time to every child in Peatling Parva. Young cattle blew and sighed as they followed us timidly among floods of buttercups. There were kingcups in the little trickling slip of a brook, and campion as pink as nail polish in the field margins.
A good walk: Mickleton & Meon Hill, Gloucestershire/Warwickshire

May 10, 2024 | thetimes.co.uk | Christopher Somerville

The neighbouring counties of Worcestershire, Gloucestershire and Warwickshire butt up against one another near Mickleton, and today’s walk would be shared between the latter two. The houses of Mickleton stood in beautiful Cotswold stone, more cream than gold in colour. In the high wall of the manor house a line of musketry loopholes bore witness to the invasion fears of 1940. In the buttercup pastures beyond St Lawrence’s Church, newly shorn ewes bleated for their small lambs.
A good walk: Barningham and Barningham Moor, Co Durham

May 3, 2024 | thetimes.co.uk | Christopher Somerville

At a cattle grid just outside Barningham we were scratching our heads over which way to go when the farmer pulled up on his quad bike. While his border collie watched us with deep suspicion from the passenger seat, he not only pointed out the way over Barningham Moor, but gave us chapter and verse on local lore — ancient mounds in the fields, solstice alignments, old trackways, drove roads.
A good walk: Benington and Burn’s Green, Hertfordshire

Apr 26, 2024 | thetimes.co.uk | Christopher Somerville

Two renovators were busy lime-washing the chancel of Benington’s Church of St Peter, but they courteously moved their buckets and pulled back their plastic sheeting to let us have a wander about, revealing extraordinary stone carvings on the chancel arch. Out in the churchyard ― either overgrown or rewilded depending on your point of view ― the gravestones were half drowned in cow parsley, buttercups and miniature cranesbill.