Christopher Somerville

First published in: The Times Click here to view a map for this walk in a new window


A windy winter’s day in south Gloucestershire, the sun a nacreous ball behind fast-driving clouds. The recent mild weather had encouraged a couple of daffodils to raise their heads along the crooked lanes at Hillesley, a village tucked down in a fold of the Cotswold escarpment. Hillesley’s Fleece Inn is owned and run by the community, an excellent initiative that has kept the place alive.
As we climbed the squelching muddy path through the trees behind the village, I spotted a solitary celandine among the hart’s-tongue ferns. At the top the prospect opened out into a landscape typical of these southern Cotswolds, an undulating upland with snaking valleys invisible from on high. On the ridge ahead rose a tall column with an elaborate cap, built in 1846 in honour of Lord Robert Somerset, one of Wellington’s bravest Peninsula War officers.
A crowd of tiny animated birds rushed past with a swish of wings – goldfinches, feebly twittering, forming a little cloud that balled and elongated like a miniature murmuration of starlings. We left them to their winter manoeuvres and turned aside down the roadless declivity of Long Coombe, where rosettes of primrose leaves were showing in the shelter of hedge roots.
Spring pools shivered in the wind on the grassy slopes. Down in the steep-sided valley at the bottom, green lamb’s-tail catkins bobbed along the neatly laid hedges around Lower Kilcott. A pair of buzzards swung out of a spinney, the pale ‘headlights’ on their wings lit by the sun. Above them, a pair of parallel con trails drew themselves lazily and soundlessly across a patch of blue in a sky rapidly darkening from the southwest.
At Kilcott Mill we joined the Cotswold Way, a mud-bath that took us slithering up the valley. Under a coppiced hazel a squirrel had dug out the last of its nut hoard (or someone else’s), and nipped the crowns off each one to get at the kernel, leaving a scatter of empty shells like miniature scalped skulls on the bank.
Beyond Alderley in a spit of rain we turned along the homeward path to Hillesley, passing the magnificent Cotswold stone mansion of Rose Hill with its ranks of windows and stalk-like chimneys. A tractor grunted up the nearby lane, carrying a bale of hay on its praying mantis arms for the sheep whose rain-pearled fleeces were suddenly silvered by a low ray of sun escaping from the clouds.

How hard is it? 6½ miles; easy but muddy; field and woodland paths, country lanes.
Start: Fleece Inn, Chapel Lane, Hillesley GL12 7RD (OS ref ST 770896)
Getting there: Bus 84 (Yate–Wotton-under-Edge).
Road – Hawkesbury Upton is signed from A46 Bath-Nailsworth road; Hillesley is signed from Hawkesbury Upton.
Walk (OS Explorer 167): From pub, left; at bend, ahead up footpath via Mear’s Plantation. At top, right to Splatt’s Barn (770888); south along drive for ½ mile. At road, left (771880); fork left on Monarch’s Way for 1¼ miles via Long Coombe to road at Lower Kilcott (786892). Left; in ½ mile pass Kilcott Mill; in 150m, right off road (779897). In 200m, left on Cotswold Way for nearly 1 mile to road at Alderley (770910). Right (‘Tresham’); in 150m cross road (771909); follow Cotswold Way for ⅔ mile to road by Elmtree Farm (768916). Left; in 200m cross road (766916). Follow marked detour past Lacys; in field beyond, left (764916) on path south (passing east of Park Farm, west of Rose Hill school) for 1¼ miles to Hillesley.
Lunch: Fleece Inn, Hillesley (01453-520003; thefleeceinnhillesley.com)
Accommodation: Swan Hotel, Wotton-under-Edge GL12 7AE (01453-843004, swanhotelwotton.com
Info: nationaltrail.co.uk/cotswold-way

First published in: The Times Click here to view a map for this walk in a new window


The River Severn’s estuary was at a fantastically low tide as we crossed the ‘new’ bridge on a day of no cloud whatsoever. Looking seaward through the stroboscopic flicker of the bracing wires, we could see the tidal outcrop of the English stones fully exposed and slathered in red mud.

Downriver, the little hump of Denny Island off Portishead stood marooned in a huge desert of sand. Other sand and mud banks lay around the widening tideway like beached whales.

We were heading to Llanvihangel Crucorney, a placename whose sound put the immortal walking writer John Hillaby in mind of ‘a toy train scampering over points’. Llanvihangel Crucorney lies in the River Monnow valley that forms the eastern boundary of the Black Mountains and Brecon Beacons. It’s a great jumping off point for walks westward into those mountains, but today we were aiming east to climb The Skirrid (Ysgyryd Fawr, the ‘big split one’), a tall hill that lies north-south with its head cocked and spine raised like an alert old dog.

The Skirrid is made of tough old red sandstone lying in a heavy lump on top of thin layers of weaker mudstone – hence its history of slippage and landslides. We came up to it in cold wind and brilliant sunshine across fields of sheep, skirting its western flank through scrub woods, gorse bushes blooming yellow and holly trees in a blaze of scarlet berries, with the dark purple crags of the northern end hanging over little rugged passes of landslide rocks fallen in a jumble.

The ascent is short, steep and stepped, but it’s the sort of ‘starter mountain’ that families with six-year-olds can manage. Many were out – mums, dads, children, students, ‘maturer’ folk such as us.

Once at the peak in this unbelievably clear weather we gasped to see the landscape laid out in pin-sharp detail a thousand feet below and fifty miles off – Malverns, Black Mountains; farmlands rising and falling towards Gloucestershire and the Midlands; the slanting tabletops of Penyfan and Cribyn over in the Brecon Beacons; Cotswolds, Mendip, Exmoor; and the south Wales coast trending round into far-off Pembrokeshire.

Nearer at hand a grey streak of softly glimmering sea showed the tide rising in the Severn Estuary past Brean Down’s promontory, the slight disc of Flat Holm and the hump of her sister island Steep Holm, their lower edges lost in mist so that they looked like floating islands in some fabulous sea.
How hard is it? 6½ miles; strenuous short climb, some stumbly parts.

Start: Skirrid Mountain Inn, Llanvihangel Crucorney, Abergavenny NP7 8DH (OS ref SO 326206)

Getting there: Bus X3 (Hereford-Abergavenny)
Road – Llanvihangel Crucorney is on A465 (Abergavenny-Hereford)

Walk (OS Explorer OL13): Opposite church, lane (gateposts) to cross A465. Down drive; right at wall (325204); follow Beacons Way/BW arrow waymarks. Pass wood-framed barn; in 100m, right (328202, BW, gate). Follow BW across fields to lane at Pen-y-parc (336192). Right; beyond ‘Steppes’ house, left (332191, stile); follow BW to foot of Skirrid (333186). Right on path along west side of Skirrid to rejoin BW at southern foot of mountain (327169). Follow BW up to Skirrid summit (331183). Return; in 200m, sharp left beside hollow (331181); path descends to north foot (333185). Retrace BW back to lane at Steppes (332191). Left; in ½ mile, opposite Llwyn Franc, right (325190, gate, fingerpost ‘Crossways’). Follow hedge on right to gate/stile (325192). Half left across field, crossing Great Llwyn Franc drive (324193); on down to Crossways House (323200) and Llanvihangel Crucorney.

Lunch/Accommodation: Skirrid Mountain Inn, Llanvihangel Crucorney (01873-890258, skirridmountaininn.co.uk)

Info: Abergavenny TIC (01873-853254, visitwales.com)

First published in: The Times Click here to view a map for this walk in a new window

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Perspective is a strange commodity. When I was a child, and free to run about and play in the fields near my Gloucestershire home, the Red Lion Inn on the River Severn at Wainlode Hill seemed a sky-scraping palace, the river a mighty tideway.

Looking down from Wainlode’s heights today, I see a modest red brick pub on a bend of the Severn narrow enough to pole-vault across in two hops. Beyond stretches a yellow and green patchwork of hay meadows, cut and uncut, with the Malvern Hills standing like miniature mountains ten miles off on the northern skyline.

Walking north up the riverbank, I remember winters when King Severn would leave his lair and advance across the meadows to flood our village. On this windy summer day the grasses, enriched by the silt of Severn’s yearly incursions, ripple in different varieties – tufty sweet vernal, soft sprays of cat’s tail, a grey mist of Yorkshire fog. Big tree trunks, plucked out of Severn’s banks by last winter’s floods, wallow in the wind-roughened eddies of the river.

At Apperley’s pink-faced Coal House Inn I leave the river and make east up a green valley to a viewpoint that suddenly reveals itself, forward across wet meadows streaked with pools and fleets of water to the long sweep of the distant Cotswold Hills.

Coombe Hill Meadows is a nature reserve these days, treasured for its rare plants that thrive on regular inundation, for its orchids and ragged robin, for the wading birds, ducks and geese that throng its damp ground and carefully maintained pools, and for the marsh harriers and peregrines that hunt for frogs and water voles and small birds along its reedbeds and old abandoned canal.

As a child I knew very little of all that. I just tore about ecstatically in the great open spaces. Under enormous skies flickering with black-and-white lapwing flocks I plunged recklessly in the canal, ran as far and fast as I could, and was chased by cattle into ditches and up the pollarded willows. It was bliss.

Today I walk more soberly but just as delightedly through the squelchy meadows and along the canal where purple loosestrife grows tall and the willow leaves flick white and green in the wind. A wild and lonely place to wander, now as then.

How hard is it? 7 miles; easy; mostly level walking; squelchy in parts on Coombe Hill Meadows nature reserve

Start: Red Lion Inn, Wainlode Hill, Norton, Gloucester GL2 9LW (OS ref SO 848259)

Getting there: Wainlode Hill is signed from A38 at Norton (Gloucester-Tewkesbury)

Walk (OS Explorer 179): Right (north) along river bank for 2¼ miles to Coal House Inn (855284). Right along road; in 100m, right through gateway (855283, yellow arrow/YA). Through right-hand gate ahead (YA); up through fields (stiles) to road (862282). Right; take left fork past war memorial; in 100m, left (fingerpost) over stiles, past Willow Hill and down to B4213 (866278) by Farmers Arms. Across into Wick Lane; in 100m, left through gate (867278) into orchard; on over stile; downhill across field to track (870276). Left; through gate; half right to go through hedge gap. Left, and on through hedge gap (waymark post); ahead through next gate (875275); right to waymark post (874275, YA). Left, following YAs to canal bank (878271; YA, gate, info board). Right for 2 miles to road (850265); left to Wainlode Hill.

Lunch: Red Lion, Wainlode Hill (01452-730935, redlionwainlode.co.uk) – open every day, booking advisable for weekend meals

Accommodation: Hatherley Manor Hotel, Down Hatherley Lane, Gloucester GL2 9QA (01452-730217, hatherleymanor.com)

Info: gloucestershirewildlifetrust.co.uk; rsbp.org.uk;

First published in: The Times Click here to view a map for this walk in a new window

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It’s a short slope, but a steep one, up from the south Cotswold village of Uley to the hillfort of Uley Bury high above. But the puff is worth the effort.

Up there, walking a circuit of the ramparts on a cold, clear afternoon, it was a regal view. We looked down to Uley and Dursley tucked neatly under their wooded slopes, and out west across a patchwork of fields seven hundred feet below to the River Severn sweeping round a mighty bend, with the Forest of Dean, the pointed cone of the Sugar Loaf and the lumpy backs of the Welsh hills rising beyond.

This is what the Dobunni tribe might have been after when they built their great rectangular fort across the hill top some 2,000 years ago – a commanding prospect of the country from an impregnable position, guarded by slopes so steep that no enemy could steal up and rush them by surprise. We strolled and stared, looking west to the whaleback hill of Cam Long Down where we were headed.

The rubbly yellow track of the Cotswold Way carried us down through beechwoods where the leafless trees gripped the ferny banks with roots like talons, then swept up the grassy nape of Cam Long Down. From the crest of the hill we saw Gloucester some 20 miles to the north in a pool of sunlight, the Cathedral floating high over the city under an enormous tangled sky, a view John Constable would have caught majestically in a blur of blues and greens.

We roller-coasted on over the hummock of Peaked Down, then descended southward with a superb backdrop of three eminences in the landscape – the upturned bowl of Downham Hill, the humpy back of Cam Long Down, and the squared-off ramparts of Uley Bury coming into view.

At Wresden Farm a horse with two white socks grazed a lush meadow from which he lifted a muzzle green with grass juice to watch us go by. The lane that brought us back to Uley ran between thick old hedges, its surface floored with knobbly lumps of metal scattered among the stones, the leavings of some long-gone forge. Polished by the scouring of hooves and boot soles, they made the old track shine silver, like a pathway to an enchanted tower in some untold Cotswold fairy tale.

How hard is it? 5½ miles; moderate, some short steep sections

Start: Old Crown PH, Uley, near Dursley, GU11 5SN (OS ref ST 792986)

Getting there: Bus 65 (Stroud-Dursley)
Road – Uley is on B4066, between Dursley (A4135) and Stroud (A46/A419)

Walk (OS Explorer 167): Cross B4066; path beside church; in 100m, right (‘Cotswold Way Circular Walk’/CWCW) to kissing gate. Up slope, then left along wood edge to gate (789988, CWCW). Up through trees to gate; climb rampart of Uley Bury (788990), left/clockwise round hillfort for 1 mile. At north corner (788992), left to B4066; left onto Cotswold Way/CW. Descend and follow CW for 1¼ miles via Hodgecombe Farm (783992), then over Cam Long Down. On over Peaked Down; back along southern edge to rejoin CW (770992). South on CW for 300m to cross road (771988). On for ¾ mile past Coldharbour Farm (770986) to lane near Wresden Farm (774980). Left (east) via Newbrook Farm for ½ mile. At road by Angeston Grange (782982), ahead; on right bend, ahead on path (785982) to Uley.

Lunch/Accommodation: Old Crown, Uley (01453-860502, theoldcrownuley.co.uk) – great village pub; booking advisable.

Info: Nailsworth TIC (01453-839222)

visitengland.com; satmap.com; ramblers.org.uk