Walk of the month - we'll point you in the right direction - path through a forest

Looking for inspiration for new walking routes? Christopher Somerville has walked and written these great walks for you to follow each and every month of the year.
8 item(s)
  1. Walk of the month: Southstoke and Cam Valley, Somerset

    Walk of the month: Southstoke and Cam Valley, Somerset

    • Author: Christopher Somerville
    The houses of Southstoke, built of the same pale silver and cream oolitic limestone as their Big Brother city of Bath just over the hill, were lightly dusted with powder snow on this cold winter’s morning.
  2. Walk of the month: Blagdon Lake, Somerset

    Walk of the month: Blagdon Lake, Somerset

    • Author: Christopher Somerville
    A male blackbird, yellow bill a-tremble, was making tentative inquiries of a drab brown female on a bough in the New Inn's garden as I started down the hill towards Blagdon Lake...
  3. Walk of the month: Purton and Sharpness, Gloucestershire

    Walk of the month: Purton and Sharpness, Gloucestershire

    • Author: Christopher Somerville
    There’s definitely something strange about the river country along the Severn Estuary. Whether it’s the influence of the mile-wide tideway, the big overarching skies, or the highly idiosyncratic dwellings and their occupants down the twisty lanes that end abruptly at the river, to walk here is to step away from the everyday into some parallel, Severn-centred universe.
  4. Walk of the month: Scorriton and Huntingdon Warren, Dartmoor

    Walk of the month: Scorriton and Huntingdon Warren, Dartmoor

    • Author: Christopher Somerville
    Whatever the Tradesman’s Arms put in their beef jalfrezi on curry night, it revved me right up for a brilliant walk the following day. The hamlet of Scorriton, sitting tight under the eastern rim of Dartmoor...
  5. Walk of the month: Fingle Bridge and Castle Drogo, Devon

    Walk of the month: Fingle Bridge and Castle Drogo, Devon

    • Author: Christopher Somerville
    I hadn’t made a mistake after 30 years – the ridge-top village of Drewsteignton, perched on the northern edge of Dartmoor, was still totally charming. There were the pretty cottages and the Drewe Arms as I recalled them, bowed low under thatch on the diminutive village square, all presided over by the tall tower of Holy Trinity church.
  6. Walk of the month: Berwick St John, Wiltshire

    Walk of the month: Berwick St John, Wiltshire

    • Author: Christopher Somerville
    Squirrels had been harvesting the hazelnuts along Woodlands Lane; the split shells went crunching under our boots as we set out from Berwick St John on a cloudy morning. Beyond the gabled old house of Woodlands there was a bit of a pull up the breast of the hill, and then the exhilaration of a good old step-out along one of the ancient ridgeways that ride these south Wiltshire downs.
  7. Walk of the month: Portesham and Hardy's Monument, Dorset

    Walk of the month: Portesham and Hardy's Monument, Dorset

    • Author: Christopher Somerville
    A blackbird was singing on the garden wall of Portesham House, where stone lions couchant guarded the porch. Thomas Masterman Hardy, who lived here in the Dorset downs as a young boy in 1778, was destined for fame as a much-loved sailor and man of action...
  8. Walk of the month: Tarr Steps, Exmoor

    Walk of the month: Tarr Steps, Exmoor

    • Author: Christopher Somerville
    A dawn start on West Anstey Common, watching a magnificent red deer stag roaring rivals away from his harem of hinds. How to follow that? A pint and a sandwich at Tarr Farm Inn didn’t hurt at all, and we strode out across Tarr Steps among the gold and green oaks of the Barle Valley just as if the western sky were not heaping with ominously slaty clouds.
8 item(s)