Christopher Somerville

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

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Approaching Farringford along the footpath from Tennyson Down, my first reaction was ‘What an ugly house!’ Farringford in its yellow brick bulk, all castellations and creepers, looks as forbiddingly Victorian as can be. It’s only when I was immersed in the dark red and blue rooms, the study and drawing room, the schoolroom and bedrooms where the Tennyson family led their intensely interwoven lives, that I began to appreciate what a haven this Gothic pile became for Alfred Lord Tennyson, Victorian England’s favourite celebrity Poet Laureate.

At Farringford, Alfred and his ailing wife Emma could put up the shutters on the clamorous outside world. They entertained a selection of the great and good; they dressed their beloved sons Hallam and Lionel in lace collars and long hair, and didn’t care if the boys would rather play the bugle or ride their rocking horse than do maths. Tennyson was a genial man, not at all inclined to stand on ceremony.

Above all, Tennyson in his great cloak and wideawake hat was a Poet, a very visible one. He came to the Isle of Wight to escape his celebrity, but became the island’s most famous figure, striding the long down beyond Farringford and mouthing half-created lines to the four winds at the edge of the great chalk cliffs.

Up on the back of Tennyson Down I strode, too, heading west past the big Celtic cross memorial to the poet, out to where the down narrows to a precarious blade of chalk.

A fenced eyrie overlooks a most tremendous view, a flint-scored wall of chalk nearly 400 feet high, the waves mumbling its feet, running out to where the three white blades of The Needles rise from the water. A salt-stained striped lighthouse clings to the outermost stack, and gulls wheel far below.

In Tennyson’s time they built a battery out here to ward off the threat of a French invasion. A century later, scientists and engineers used the promontory as a test ground for Black Knight and Black Arrow, rockets that tried and failed to make Britain a credible player in the Great Space Race.

Afternoon sun struck glowing colours – rose, peach, white, crimson and dove grey – out of the deeply fissured cliffs of Alum Bay. Beyond them I followed a field path back towards Farringford, glancing every now and then up at the skyline for a glimpse of a genial ghost in flowing cloak and broad-brimmed hat, still striding and declaiming to the winds.
Start: High Down Chalk Pit car park, 1 mile south of Totland, PO39 0HY approx. (OS ref SQ 324855)

Getting there: Red Funnel ferries (redfunnel.co.uk), Southampton-East Cowes. Bus 5 (East Cowes-Newport), 7 (Newport-Alum Bay).
Road – A3021, A3054 to Newport; B3401 Carisbrooke and Freshwater Bay. Follow ‘Needles, Alum Bay’; in 1¾ miles, left beside Highdown Inn to car park.

Walk (6½ miles; moderate, one short steep climb; OS Explorer OL29): From car park, east along foot of Tennyson Down. In 650m pass gate/path on left (331857) and leave trees. In another 150m, with chalk pit on right and drinking trough on left, path forks right (333858), but bear left and continue on path along lower hedge. Through gate; in 100m, left on fenced path. At 3-finger post (334861), right towards Farringford House and walled garden.

Ahead up Gate Lane (fingerpost). In 200m, at ‘Private’ garden door on left, turn right (338861) down Green Lane. In 300m through gate (337857); cross path; straight ahead, steeply up through trees. Cross summit of down to Tennyson Trail (337855); right (west) for 2½ miles to coastguard cottages (301848), Needles viewpoint (298847) and Old Battery (296849).

Back along lower roadway. In ¾ mile, at left bend to Alum Bay, keep ahead (308852, ‘Tennyson Down’) on field path. In ¾ mile at Nodes Beacon cresset (319853), fork left for 600m to car park.

Lunch/Accommodation: Highdown Inn, Highdown Lane, Totland PO39 0HY (01983-752450, highdowninn.com)

Farringford House: Guided tours, opening times etc – 01983-752500, farringford.co.uk

Tourist and walking info: visitisleofwight.com

Isle of Wight Walking Festival: 4-19 May 2019 (isleofwightwalkingfestival.co.uk)

satmap.com; ramblers.org.uk

‘Have you by any chance seen any elderflowers out?’ briskly enquired the elderly gentleman we met on the road under Bembridge Down.
First published in: The Times Click here to view a map for this walk in a new window

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‘I just need another twenty-six, you see,’ he said, as though that explained everything. Twenty-six? For what? Elderflower wine, a witchcraft potion, a very precise table decoration? All seemed possible on this afternoon of wonders in the Isle of Wight, with superannuated London tube trains clacking through the fields on the island’s beautiful old railway network, seldom-seen Cetti’s warblers shouting from the bushes on Brading Marshes, and botanical rarities jewelling the slopes of Bembridge Down.

Those bee orchids! How many had I seen in my life – half a dozen at the most? And here they were by the hundred in small selective patches, their prominent sepals like lipstick-pink propeller blades, their lower lips stamped with the semblance of a bumblebee’s large round bottom. We walked the secret valley below the down, reciting the flowers we saw like a litany: eyebright and yellow-wort, field madder and lady’s bedstraw, bird’s-foot trefoil and salad burnet – tiny blooms as striking to the eye as their names fell sweetly on the ear.

Up on top of the down the flint-and-brick stronghold of Bembridge Fort crouched low and hunchbacked behind grassy ramparts that might have been those of an Iron Age hill fort. Like the blocky grey gun emplacements out at sea in the Solent, the fort was one of ‘Palmerston’s Follies’, constructed at gigantic expense in the 1860s to deter the French from an invasion they never seriously intended to mount.

We strolled the cliff path among white campion flowers at the brink of Culver Cliff, taking in the view west over the sprawl of Sandown and the varicoloured crumbling cliffs beyond. Then it was down to the flint-speckled beach of Whitecliff Bay to explore the rock pools under tottering cliffs so unstable they seemed half molten.

High above Bembridge we passed an old windmill standing foursquare, sails to the wind, under its weather-boarded cap. Then the homeward path towards nightfall across the lagoon-streaked flatlands of Brading Marshes, where buttercups in their millions gilded the meadows and a sweetly whistling blackcap sanctified the willows of Centurion’s Copse as beautifully as any vespers ever sung.

Start: Brading station, Isle of Wight, PO36 0EB (OS ref SZ 609869)

Getting there: Red Funnel Ferry (0844-844-9988; redfunnel.co.uk), Southampton-Cowes. Rail or Buses (Routes 2, 3) to Brading station
Road: Station is signed off A3055 Ryde-Sandown road in Brading. Car park £1.50 all day.

Walk (7½ miles, easy, OS Explorer OL29): Back up road; in 50m, right (fingerpost/FP, ‘B1’). Through guardrails; in 50m, right (FP ‘B36’) to cross railway (610870). Ahead across Brading Marsh RSPB Reserve. In 300m, left (613868) along River Yar. Right across footbridge (616870). In 200m, right at T-junction of paths (615869), through kissing gate/KG and bear left along hedge. In 400m, at end of field, through KG; ahead to cross B3395 (616862; take great care! – bend!). Follow path (FPJ ‘BB44-Bembridge Down’) along valley, with fence on your right. In 700m, fence turns right (622859); keep ahead, and in 150m, bear left through bushes and up to Bembridge Fort.

Cross road (624860); walk circuit of fort ramparts; return down slope and bear left to cliff fence. Left along coast path to reach Yarborough Monument (633857 – Culver Haven Inn is adjacent). Follow Coast Path, keeping left of NT ‘Culver Down’ gate and notice, downhill and along Whitecliff Bay cliffs past chalet park. In 500m, turn right down steep access road (640863) to explore beach and rock pools and visit Tuppenny Café.

Back on Coast Path, continue for 300m; turn left inland (642865, FP) past Bembridge School info board. Follow yellow arrows/YAs and FP to Hillway Road (641868). Left; in 100m, right (FP ‘BB22’, ‘Bembridge Windmill’). In 300m, cross B3395 (639871, FP); keep ahead. In 150m, right at T-junction of paths, uphill to pass Bembridge Windmill (640875). In 30m, left through gate (FP ‘BB21, Brading’). Follow path west (stiles, YAs) for 1½ miles. In Centurion’s Copse, at 620869, follow main, well-trodden track as it turns right between old wooden gateposts and in 100m, turn right at ‘Woodland Secrets’ signboard (FP ‘BB23, Brading’ on your left). Cross River Yar footbridge (616870); retrace steps to Brading station.

Lunch: Culver Haven Inn, Culver Down (01983-406107); Tuppenny Café, Whitecliff Bay

Accommodation: Crab & Lobster Inn, 32 Forelands Field Road, Bembridge PO35 5TR (01983-872244, crabandlobsterinn.co.uk) – popular, lively, bustling place.

150 Years of IoW Railways: Celebrations 30 August 2014. Tickets (vintage transport, 1950s Day, etc.) from hovertravel.co.uk, iwsteamrailway.co.uk, local outlets

Info: visitisleofwight.co.uk www.satmap.com www.LogMyTrip.co.uk visitengland.com

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


A cloudy, murky morning over Cranborne Chase. The views from Win Green were all melted into muted greys. The topograph on the saddle of high ground hinted at the prospect: fifteen miles northeast to Salisbury, twice that to the Isle of Wight down in the southeast.

Children skipped and tumbled down the steep slope towards the wooded Ashcombe valley. The sharp spring wind was soon shut away, and calm descended on the deep green cleft where the path ran edged with primroses, violets and pungent wild garlic in full flower.

These woods of the Ashcombe Estate are a prime example of careful management and discreet signage. The vast hunting forest of Cranborne Chase, on whose borders they lie, was once a different affair – a tangled tract of deep forest where outlaws skulked and wild locals in straw helmets beat up gamekeepers and poached the deer.

Down in Tollard Royal all was peachy, the snugly thatched cottages of flint and clunch, the gossipers on the benches round the village pond, all in a Sunday morning peace under steep valley slopes.

We climbed over a ridge where spring lambs were busy butting milk out of their mothers’ udders. In the cleft below the rains of late winter were drying, leaving Munday’s Pond a soggy circle of nettles.

Our path lay uphill, breasting a slope beside the old hazel coppice of Rotherley Wood. A marvellous sentinel oak, twisted, split and bow-backed, stood with its feet in a flood of bluebells, and the hazel stools themselves were circled by the sharp evergreen leaves of butcher’s broom, another indicator of ancient woodland.

Up on the back of Rotherley Down lumps and bumps in the turf showed where a Romano-British settlement was excavated in 1886-7 by local landowner General Augustus Pitt Rivers. ‘Skulls’, says the inscription on a modest pillar. ‘1 was brachycephalic, 3 were mesaticephalic, 6 were dolichocephalic, 3 were hyperdoliocephalic, one was uncertain’. The General, father of modern British archaeology, remained an educator to his fingertips.

Beyond the settlement site we turned along the chalky white track of the old Ox Drove ridge road towards Win Green. The clouds had cleared, and the Isle of Wight lay blue and humped on an invisible sea far in the southeast, a view familiar to those residents of Rotherley Down two thousand years ago.

How hard is it? 7¼ miles; easy; downland and woodland tracks

Start: Win Green car park, near Tollard Royal, SP7 0ES (OS ref ST 924204)

Getting there: Tollard Royal (B3081) signed from A350 (Shaftesbury-Blandford Forum). At top of hill before Tollard Royal, follow ‘Donheads’, then ‘Win Green’.

Walk: Through gate at top of car park; follow path along fence and downhill. Follow ‘Wessex Ridgeway’/WR and ‘Footpath’ signs through Ashcombe valley. In 1¾ miles, hairpin back left (937185, ‘Tollard Royal’ fingerpost); in 50m right through 2 gates (WR); follow path with fence on right. In ¾ mile, just before Tollard Royal pond (945178), left over stile. (NB for King John Inn, right at road). From stile climb bank, at top, on through gate (arrow) along fenced path to stile (949181). Diagonally left down to gate (940184, Munday’s Pond on left). Ahead on grassy track up slope beside Rotherley Wood. In ⅔ mile track enters wood; ahead through gate onto open down; Pitt-Rivers information pillar and excavations to right (950194). Opposite pillar, left through gate; right up middle of fields (arrows) to Ox Drove road (949205). Left; in ½ mile fork left (938206, ‘Cranborne Droves Way’), then right on chalk trackway. In ¾ mile, beside NT ‘Win Green’ sign, left (928207) up grass path to car park.

Lunch/Accommodation: King John Inn, Tollard Royal SP5 5PS (01725-516207, kingjohninn.co.uk)

Info: cranbornechase.org.uk

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

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On this bright windy day the view from the triangulation pillar on Butser Hill was at its very best – the South Downs billowing east and west, Portsmouth and Southampton sprawled far in the south, while out to sea the matt blue bar of the Isle of Wight stretched along the horizon. To the north-east the great hollow of the Devil’s Punchbowl took a bite out of the shoulder of the Surrey Hills.

Dog walkers trotted by, one couple watching their six sheepdogs fan out across the grass. The hilltop was bright with golden bird’s-foot trefoil, sky-blue harebells, bright yellow heads of wild parsnip, and tall plants of marjoram whose flowerheads we crushed between our fingers to savour their pungent smell.

This southwest corner of Hampshire is a tangle of quiet lanes. At the foot of the hill we followed a white chalk holloway, the breathy roar of a harvester percolating through the trees from the cornfields beyond. Oxenbourne Lane was spattered with fallen hazelnuts, their flesh pale green and milky. The scarlet berry clusters of lords-and-ladies grew along Cumber’s Lane, a favourite with off-road drivers. A temporary ban on their activities had resulted in the smoothing out of boggy tyre ruts and a thickening of greenery along the smashed-up verges.

The bald head of Butser Hill loomed on the eastern skyline as we crossed the infant River Meon, dried to nothing in a pebbly bed. Lower Farm and South Farm lay silent, all thatched sheds, flint walls and Dutch barns packed with round straw bales. We passed a run of olive brown ponds, the source of the Meon, and leaned on the bridge to savour twin smells – the tang of mint flourishing in the trickling water, and the sweet aroma of jam in the making that wafted seductively from the open windows of Springhole Cottage.

A flinty track shaded by a magnificent avenue of beech trees brought us south to Tegdown Bottom, where sheep and lambs were crying to one another. At the crest the South Downs Way made east for Butser Hill. The broad old track flickered with the shadows of low-flying swallows fuelling up for their long flight south to Africa – a tiny frisson from the oncoming autumn.
Start: Butser Hill car park, near Clanfield, Hants GU31 5SP (OS ref SU 712201)

Getting there: Butser Hill is signed from A3 between Horndean and Petersfield.

Walk (6¾ miles, easy, field paths and lanes; OS Explorer 120. Detailed directions are downloadable with online maps, more walks at christophersomerville.co.uk). Pass kiosk hut; through metal gate; follow grass path past radio station to pass trig pillar at summit of Butser Hill (717203). Keep ahead down far slope till you meet wide grass track; left along it (717204; occasional red-topped marker posts), through gate and on, keeping fence close below you. In ¼ mile pass a group of tumuli (714208); go through a belt of scrub and begin descending a ridge. Halfway down fork right, aiming for distant church spire. At foot of slope, into trees; in 50m fork left downhill to kissing gate at bottom (706212). Right along chalk holloway lane to Oxenbourne Lane (706217).

Left along lane; in 200m, right; in 175m, left along trackway. In ½ mile, at junction of six lanes in a grassy circle, turn left (696220) along Cumber’s Lane to cross road (696214). Take lane opposite past Fishpond Cottages to road (694211). Right for ⅔ mile past Parsonage Farm to T-junction; left (685210, ‘Clanfield, Horndean’) past Lower Farm. In 250m, left over stile (fingerpost); across paddock, through gate (yellow arrow/YA); left up South Farm drive. Bear right through farmyard and on along lane to cross bridge over ponds (685205; source of River Meon). Follow drive to Upper Barnes (685196); on up green track (YA, fingerpost) for ½ mile to meet South Downs Way/SDW (693190). Left on SDW to road (706191); left to car park.

Lunch: Rising Sun PH, North Lane, Clanfield, PO8 0RN (023-9259-6975, therisingsunclanfield.co.uk)

Accommodation: Upper Parsonage Farm, Harvesting Lane, East Meon, Petersfield GU32 1QR (01730-823490, upperparsonagefarm.co.uk)

Info: Petersfield TIC (01730-268829)

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

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

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Notwithstanding its name, the New Forest is not a monolithic block of trees. These 150 square miles of ancient royal hunting ground comprise woodland, wetland, heathland, water and farmland, a wonderful patchwork of accessible countryside from which to tease out a walk for a short winter’s day.

Waymarks are thin on the ground in the New Forest, but the patch of open heath that stretches south of Burley is crisscrossed with good clear paths. We set out on a cold sunny morning along a gravelly track that ran between flowering gorse, sombre winter-dark heather and individual silver birch trees whose slim trunks and dusky red twigs glowed in the clear light.

New Forest ponies cropped the grass by the path, delicately snipping off precise bites with their strong grey teeth. From Turf Hill the southern skyline was spiky with ranks of conifers. We caught a glimpse of a pale blue whaleback hill on the distant Isle of Wight. Between hill and trees rose the slender rocket shape of Sway Tower, a Victorian folly 218 feet tall, built entirely of concrete and still standing proud in the landscape.

It’s easy to get the impression that these heaths form a flat tableland, but in fact they are burrowed with surprisingly steep valleys known as ‘bottoms’. We dropped down into Shappen Bottom past the tufted mire of Holmsley Bog, and crossed the long disused track of the Southampton-Dorchester railway, savouring the smell of bog myrtle cones that we pinched and rubbed to release their spicy fragrance.

Up on Holmsley Ridge beyond we strode west into the sun and wind, buoyed up on exercise and exhilaration. Three ponies had caught the same mood; they came cantering across the path, hooves drumming, tails flying, the leading pony neighing wildly and kicking up his heels as he frisked along.

Down in the hollow of Whitten Bottom streams, pools and flooded ruts led to Whitten Pond, the wind-ruffled water steel blue, the grassy margins a brilliant green in the low afternoon sun. A broad track beyond climbed the gently domed nape of Dur Hill Down, before looping off across the heath towards the old railway.

It’s a shame that Slap Bottom signifies nothing more exciting than ‘sloping valley’. There we steered around a group of ponies grazing the bank of a stream, and sauntered back to Burley in the cold bright sunlight.

How hard is it? 5¼ miles; easy; heathland tracks, wet in parts.

Start: Burley Cricket car park, Cott Lane, Burley, Ringwood BH24 4AP (OS ref SU 214029)

Getting there: Bus 125 (Ringwood)
Road – Burley is signed off A35 (Christchurch-Lyndhurst) and A31 (Ringwood-Southampton)

Walk (OS Explorer OL22): Cross road; down track (‘Forestry Commission Burley’). In 50m left on gravel track. In nearly 1 mile cross old railway (219015); in 200m fork right (219013). In ¾ mile keep ahead (right) at fork (209010) to Whitten Bottom. Cross stream by outlet at Whitten Pond (203012); ahead to cross road at barrier (201013). On along track over Dur Hill Down. In ½ mile at post, right (194013) along line of trees, on track curving right across heath to road (201017). Left across old railway; right into Burbush car park. Aim left towards power lines; in 50m, right on path between trees, across stream into open. Ahead up slope; in 500m, left (206018) on clear track. In ½ mile at Goat’s Pen Cottage join gravel drive (212025); at tarred road, right to car park.

Info: Ringwood Gateway (01425-473883, thenewforest.co.uk); satmap.com; ramblers.org.uk