Archive for "opinion" - Walk – The Magazine of the Ramblers

Dave Wise: Beyond the crowds

Tuesday, March 9th, 2010

Walk magazine’s ‘The paths less travelled’ article was well written, very readable and totally irresponsible…

Tags: Dave Wise, opinion
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Will Self: Don’t drive to walk

Friday, February 5th, 2010

Will Self argues that urban-fleeing walkers’ tunnel vision of the countryside is both damaging and self-defeating…

Bill Bryson: Give litter the boot

Thursday, November 26th, 2009

Best-selling author Bill Bryson loves Britain’s countryside but loathes the litter, and urges walkers to get involved…

Nicholas Crane: Feet are the future

Thursday, August 27th, 2009

BBC Coast presenter Nicholas Crane is excited by Britain’s new low-carbon economy, where walking is prized more than ever before. But, he argues, there’s still plenty to do…

Christopher Somerville’s A-Z of walking: C

Tuesday, August 25th, 2009

C is for Company Curmudgeon Man

Cameron McNeish: Renewables rethink

Thursday, May 28th, 2009

With a decision imminent on the proposed Beauly-Denny powerline through the wilds of central Scotland, Cameron McNeish argues for a fresh approach to renewable energy…

Christopher Somerville’s A-Z of walking: B

Tuesday, May 26th, 2009

B is for Binoculars

Like motherhood and apple pie, everyone is in favour of dry stone walls. We enjoy seeing them and use them to promote the countryside, as well as to sell walking boots and rucksacks, and to recruit members to heritage organisations. But few, it seems, are currently in a position to pay for their maintenance or restoration…

Will Self: In praise of industrial estates

Thursday, February 19th, 2009

Will Self balks at the crowded and ‘pre-packaged’ outdoors of Britain’s beauty spots, recommending the solitude of an ‘unlovely’ urban walk instead

A couple of years ago, the writer Nick Royle and I decided that we would undertake the Three Peaks Challenge. We’d get another rambling writer to join us, raise sponsorship and give the proceeds to charity. However, it transpired that there were grave environmental concerns about the peaks. The sheer numbers of sponsored walkers clambering up Ben Nevis, Scafell Pike and Snowdon were leading to catastrophic erosion, denudation of flora, scaring off of fauna – not to mention the large quantities of plastic water bottles that were left behind by these charitable folk.

In truth, I’ve never considered doing a sponsored walk since my age reached double digits, but I liked the idea of three writers/three peaks. I suppose it was naïve of me not to have realised the extent to which these eminences would’ve become a magnet for people who would never normally go walking. After all, I’ve been a walker all my life and I’ve noticed that the words ‘area of outstanding natural beauty’ attract Gore-tex the way sugar does wasps.

Christopher Somerville’s A-Z of walking: A

Wednesday, February 18th, 2009

A is for Anger – that healthy and yet thoroughly scary emotion. At least, we are told it is healthy. Let off steam at your workmates, exhorts the industrial psychologist. Go on, it’s good to clear the air. Scream and shout at your partner, advises the relationship counsellor. No holds barred if you really love each other, and the sex will be great when you make up. Howl and rant at farmers who obstruct footpaths, says… Hold on – says who? Only a precipitate fool, I have just come to realise.

The path I was following was overgrown, for sure. In fact the starve-acre Gloucestershire farm it crossed could not have looked more neglected. Everywhere there were signs of hardship and hopelessness – thistly fields, limping sheep, collapsing sheds. If times are tough in the mainstream banks and high streets, they are tougher still out in the agricultural backwaters. But still… this farmer obviously hated walkers. Why else would he have let his hedge smother the gap where the stile should have been? And here he came, a grim-looking chap with a sour expression.