About Christopher

Christopher Somerville is Walking Correspondent of The Times. His long-running ‘A Good Walk’ series appears every Saturday in the Times Weekend section. He has written some 40 books, many about his travels on foot in various parts of the world, and thousands of articles in all the national newspapers. He has had two collections of poetry published. He loves music, and sometimes tries to play it.
 

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Introducing … the Armchair Walker

Welcome back to post-lockdown wandering! It’s wonderful to be able to get out and about, and to walk far and near again. The Times have resumed my weekly ‘A Good Walk’ column in the Saturday Weekend section (see Walks and Facebook page links on this page), and I’m busy once more piling up new walks in the stock cupboard. There’s no knowing how long these new freedoms are going to last, so let’s grab ’em while we’ve got ’em.

Lots of you have said you like the Armchair Walkers I’ve been posting during the Covid-19 outbreak. So I’ll keep them coming on this page, for anyone who can’t get out and about on foot. No maps or detailed directions – just an invitation to sit back with a cup of tea or a glass of something nice, and savour some moments, memories and plans for the future!

 

Grease the Boots! Stay Frosty!

Instagram: somervillewalkman
Twitter: @somerville_c
Facebook: @BlogCS

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Armchair Walker #12

Abbotsbury

Abbotsbury lies on the Dorset coast a little inland of Chesil Beach, the notorious shingle bar on which hundreds of ships and thousands of seafarers came to grief in days of sail. On stormy days the waves pound the bar with a menacing roar, but today all was still and calm under a cloudy sky as we set out among the rich gold stone cottages of Abbotsbury with their grey thatched roofs.

How did Blind Lane earn its name? An old holloway floored with flint and dark iron-rich stone, it led away up the hill behind the village. Black cattle grazed the strip lynchets or terraced scars left by medieval ploughing.

It was an exhilarating walk westward at the rim of the down, shoved along by a strong easterly wind. Neolithic long barrows and Bronze Age round ones pimpled the turf. The gorse-smothered Iron Age ramparts of Abbotsbury hill fort stood remarkably well preserved. Ahead opened the dramatic seascape and landscape of the Jurassic Coast, its cliffs faced with gold and white as landslips reveal the underlying strata. Further round Lyme Bay the colours darkened to the greys and blacks of the tottering cliffs beyond Lyme Regis, some of the most unstable land in these islands.

Down the single sloping street of West Bexington, and back east into the wind along a beach of pebbles mumbled so small by the sea that they resembled coarse sand. Ahead the long curve of Chesil Beach terminated in the sloping wedge of the Isle of Portland with its squared-off cliffs, quarried for freestone since Roman times.

A short sharp climb inland across a corrugation of lynchets to reach St Catherine’s Chapel on its round hill, with a superb view down over Abbotsbury and its mighty medieval tithe barn. Spinsters in fading hopes of securing a man would climb to the chapel and pray:

‘A man, St Catherine!
Please, St Catherine!
Soon, St Catherine!’

The coda was then whispered:

‘Arn-a-one’s better than narn-a-one!’

 

 

More Armchair Walkers here

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