World turned upside down alert – the current America’s Cup holders is still land locked Switzerland, the world’s best rapper is white and the USA has a liberal black president…

Inspired by Salomon’s ski-boot heritage, these are fabulously comfortable and meaty hiking boots but with the nimbleness and good looks of a trail shoe…

Beautiful beaches, a tiny chapel and “hedge veg”; Rosie Hayes explores the charming channel island of Guernsey…

At Easter, I walked along the breathtaking Hadrian’s Wall. Again and again, as I climbed over stiles and went through gates along the route, I came across those small square discs with a brown circle that denote access land. Every [...]

Not deliberately but unlike everybody else out that day I elected to walk counter clockwise. Back in the middle ages this would probably resulted in me being burnt at the stake as a wizard and certainly loads of the people I encountered looked like they thought this would be too soft a punishment. But you know what – it was a really enjoyable walk.

I’ve just come back from a weekend walking along Hadrian’s Wall…

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.

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.