L is for Landlady 

We arrived leg-weary, blistered, peat-smeared and hungry. For our modest fee we got a dinner of rubber chicken, a breakfast of rubber bacon, and a twin ‘room’ in the attic which was half of a DIY division of one of those Victorian skivvy’s bedrooms you couldn’t swing a rat round. The nether regions of our half bulged hardboardily out over a hairpin bend in the staircase, so that you had to bend into a hairpin yourself to manoeuvre into the apartment. The 30W bulb dangled shadeless from the ceiling of the other room, shedding a tenth of its sickly light into ours. All night came the drain-clearing snoring of a 20-stone (each) couple from Birmingham, with whom we’d shared the rubber chicken and the solace of a very loud TV, and whose offer of a good rub-down with oils Dad had regretfully declined.

The sheets? Pink, winceyette, slithered on to the floor. The beer? Unspeakable. The moral? Research before you leap. And be thankful it’s the 21st century next time you’re booking your stopovers.

I is for Islands

Essex and islands? Yes, indeed. A whole jigsaw scatter of them, out at the far end of causeways or short bridges. Each with its own grandstand of a seawall path, each exuding that very particular island magic of not quite being part of the humdrum world. Here’s a roll-call of my favourites… Canvey Island, lying tight against the north Thames shore, half grazing marsh and bird reserve, half housing, with a fantastical backdrop like a giant’s geometry set – the flare stacks of Shell Haven oil refinery. Huge wedge-shaped Foulness in the mouth of the Thames, sealed off by the military but open once a month for curious explorers to venture across. Wallasea Island in the crook of Foulness, where the sea walls have been breached to make a brilliant new bird marsh.

Swinging north, the islands of the Blackwater estuary. Hard up against Maldon and its sea salt works is Northey Island, a National Trust Reserve, where Danes once slaughtered Saxons. There’s Osea Island in the throat of the channel with its zigzag causeway over the mud. And big oval Mersea Island (pictured), where sailing boat halyards chink musically as you savour a dozen fresh oysters in the Company Shed.

Go east, young man and woman – you won’t regret it.

Image: Bob Jones via geograph.org.uk

Christopher Somerville,
£12.99, www.hodder.co.uk,
ISBN 978 1 444 70463 1

My 10-year-old self lay back on the turf of Bulbarrow Hill in the shade of a beech spinney, book in hand, all alone in deepest Dorset. And I’ll never forget the cold pang of terror when I looked up from my book to see an evil little face, with goat-like eyes and the most cynical of smiles, staring out at me from among the tree trunks.

The hallucination (if that’s what it was) certainly had a lot to do with the story I was reading: The Music on the Hill by Saki, a Gothic fantasy in which a woman destroys an offering to Pan in the woods, and is herself gored to death by a stag driven wild by mysterious piping from a copse. I was a fanciful boy (and how the child has proved father to the man!), with a capacity for wild flights of imagination – easy prey for Saki’s baroque whimsies. I can remember running off, not daring to look back, in dread of eerie music and the hot breath of a stag on my neck.

Now, when I’m out walking and the path takes me deep into tanglewood, I’m occasionally conscious of a something or a someone there – a presence neither benign nor malign, but watchful and quietly amused. I think of it as a manifestation of whatever it was in the medieval psyche that gave rise to the Green Man, that enigmatic carved face sprouting leaves and fruit from its nostrils which we see in so many of our country churches. I’ve never again experienced anything like my childhood terror of the wildwood. But even if it isn’t the sort of thing a proper grown-up admits to, I’m quite pleased, if truth be told, that the Green Man hasn’t vanished from those psychic thickets quite yet.

As a scowling teenager – and boy, could I scowl for England – I was once part of a group dragooned over Dartmoor by a walk leader like that. Needless to say, not a smile, song or utterance passed our lips. When our man fell in a bog we laughed, briefly. But that was the only jot or tittle of jollity in 48 hours of pure embarrassment, leavened with large helpings of hatred.

Now that I’m a big boy, and don’t basically give a damn what anyone thinks of me, I like a pinch of jollity with my walks. Or better still, after them, with a pint in the hand and another in the bush. Best of all is the Boxing Day ritual observed by jolly fools at the Seymour Arms, down a lane at the end of nowhere not too far from where I live. A post-Christmas-pudding hike up the hill for a tune and a dance on the Bronze Age chieftain’s tomb at the top. Then afterwards another dance and a tune in the public bar: all wooden benches, wooden tables, 1950s decorations and a coal fire. There’s a proper pint drawn from a barrel, ribbons and preposterous hats, music-hall songs and genial nonsense. What has that got to do with walking? Nothing. But the jollity wouldn’t be anything without the walk that special day, and vice versa, with knobs on. Big red ones, eh? Eh?

F is for Flora and Fauna

There are differences between them. You never hear a peep out of Flora. And she’s a down-to-earth kind of girl, very rooted. Whereas Fauna’s either all over the place, up in the air and gabbling fit to beat the band. Or she keeps herself to herself as quiet as, say, a mouse, and runs a mile if you make the wrong move.

Now when they first caught my eye, both Flora and Fauna used to be very reliable about turning up on time (give or take a week or two), and in the usual places, too. But recently they’ve been getting a bit flighty, a bit unpredictable. Flora’s retreated to the hilltops when she used to be a valley girl, while Fauna’s either much too early or doesn’t turn up at all. Springs have been especially funny. Flora’s started popping up when you just don’t expect her, and Fauna’s been making all sorts of saucy moves before I’ve even got my thermals off! This spring, though, they were both sulky and didn’t put in an appearance till I’d almost given up on them.

I hope they’re not thinking of leaving me. I’d really, really miss them.

£17.75 from The Ramblers Bookshop

You’ll find Somerville’s versatile hand behind some of the best walks writing – whether it’s the foreword to another vast AA compendium of British walks or the regular column he pens in this magazine. But free from the constraints of a brief – as he is in this personal collection of 20 journeys across Britain – you realise Somerville is far more than just a great walks writer; he’s a gifted storyteller full stop. His idiosyncratic chronicling of these islands’ natural and social history is every bit as funny as Bill Bryson, yet his keen sense of the poetic makes him far more profound. But what I love most about this book is it epitomises what for me is so invaluable about walking: affording you the luxury of time just to wonder, muse and really experience the world around you.

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