Spring in your steps When it comes to walking, Jeremy Seal discovers, it pays to let somebody else do the hard work first Sunday Telegraph, 16/3/2008
So that’s blue flax. I’m on sweeping chalk uplands above the Nadder Valley, consulting a guide to wild flowers. The guide, a colour card, is courtesy of Foot Trails, the people who have arranged my self-guided walking break. A holiday company, you might wonder, to organise what is a few days in Wiltshire rather than a trek through Nepal? The fact is this locally-based operator allows me to feel confident about the routes I’m following and where I’m staying along the way, not to mention the safe delivery of my luggage. Which leaves me free to enjoy the blue sky, with a lark singing in it, and the huge views to the valley bottoms. And the pretty little flower I would otherwise have missed, which I’ve just identified between my boots.
The self-guided walking holiday has come a long way in recent years, not least as daily luggage transfers and daypacks (oh, joy!) have become established practice. The single-centre circular walks of yore – accommodation’s Groundhog Day - have given way to the greater satisfaction and variety of linear ‘inn to inn’ routes, with new lodgings every night. But the better operators are going further still. As well as the flower guide, I’ve also been supplied with ones to trees and to the hedgerows, along with an Explorer O/S map painstakingly marked up with my route, and detailed directions on numbered pages, laminated in case of rain, which I can attach by the carabiner provided to my daypack. All this and a bar of organic chocolate too.
Foot Trails operate in Somerset, Dorset and the Cotswolds, but the company’s home territory lies between the A30 and the A303; an unromantic description for an enclave encompassing Cranborne Chase and the Blackmore Vale, the Wylye and Nadder valleys, but an apt one since it’s all-too-often bypassed on the rush west to Devon and Cornwall. With its chalk hills, ancient beech woodlands, river valleys and winterbournes, rolling fields, sunken lanes and villages of thatch and Bath-style Chilmark stone, plus lots of appealingly individual ‘free house’ pubs, the area’s a revelation. And Foot Trails’ owner David Howell may just have walked its myriad footpaths more thoroughly than any other living being. ‘We have perhaps a hundred different trails we can offer,’ says Howell, dropping me off at the beginning of my three-day walk. ‘We can shape them to every need, creating an itinerary to minimise stile crossings, say, if you plan to walk with a large dog’.
I walk ten miles that first day, following the impressively detailed directions through garlic-scented woods to lanes thick with primroses and campion. Ansty’s graveyard smells of freshly-mown grass, there’s a maypole in the middle of the village and ducks on the great pond; it’s the very quintessence of Wessex. A hare bolts across a field just before Chicksgrove where I’m booked into the Compasses Inn. At this gem of a pub, all candlelit parlour atmosphere, I’m shown to a pleasant bedroom complete not only with my safely delivered luggage but with a huge ensuite bath for soaking the muscles; walkers’ perfection but for the sounds and smells of the kitchen extractor-fan at the window.
I dine on potted crab and asparagus followed by a shoulder of very local lamb while convivial landlord Alan Stoneham rhapsodises about living here. ‘It’s the sheer peace,’ he says. So sheer that even a recent visit to Cirencester, with its roundabouts and supermarkets, struck the poor man as an urban nightmare.
Stoked on smoked salmon and scrambled eggs, I’m off early the following morning. It’s here that Howell’s directions temporarily fail me, sending me left along a field edge instead of right until my sense of direction shouts for correction. A mistake, but one which only emphasises the work that’s gone into creating this route. For where some operators’ directions simply lead walkers to a well-known ‘signature’ path or national trail like the nearby Ridgeway, there to entrust them to its waymarks, Howell’s routes seem lovingly assembled so as to extract all view and variety from the landscape. I’ve certainly forgiven him the misdirection by the time I reach the white gate at the railway line to wait for the Andover train before crossing into Tisbury. I take in the tithe barn at Place Farm which boasts the largest single expanse of thatch in England.
I lunch in the garden of the Beckford Arms in Fonthill Gifford where a serviceable ciabatta is rescued by a very fine local beer, Keystone. So much so that I’ve retreated into Beckfordian reverie by the second glass, musing over the enormous abbey-mansion, long since collapsed, that the Fonthill estate’s 19th-century owner, literary aesthete and sensualist William Beckford built here where he partied like a prodigal before retiring to a more sedate existence in Bath. In the afternoon, I walk beside the lake to glimpse ornamental urns and a balustraded bridge before leaving the estate by its imposing gatehouse.
Beckford is behind me by tea time when I reach pretty Hindon and walk up its wide street edged by pollarded limes to the Lamb. I eat well and sleep soundly in this affluent old hostelry. And in the morning I’m on to East Knoyle, with its charming church where Sir Christopher Wren was baptised and its surrounding hillsides where Patagonian alpacas, sheep out of Dr Seuss, are scattered. I’m walking down a track near the hamlet of Milton when a man with a dog stops me. ‘Are you headed for the bluebell wood?’ he asks, hardly able to contain himself. ‘It’s fabulous. As good as you’ll ever find.’ It sounds like something I’d love to see, but I’m so confident that David Howell’s route will includes such a sight that I barely concentrate on the man’s directions. Sure enough, the wood that rises beyond a field some fifteen minutes later is footed by a fuzz of the most vivid lilac. And as I cross the stile into its shade the spring air turns to perfume.
Jeremy Seal was a guest of Foot Trails (01747 861851; [email protected]) whose self-guided walking holidays cost from £476 for six nights, based on two sharing. The company also offers centre based self-guided as well as guided holidays. Foot Trails are an excellent specialist whose walks are meticulously researched and organised.
The self-guided walking holiday has come a long way in recent years, not least as daily luggage transfers and daypacks (oh, joy!) have become established practice. The single-centre circular walks of yore – accommodation’s Groundhog Day - have given way to the greater satisfaction and variety of linear ‘inn to inn’ routes, with new lodgings every night. But the better operators are going further still. As well as the flower guide, I’ve also been supplied with ones to trees and to the hedgerows, along with an Explorer O/S map painstakingly marked up with my route, and detailed directions on numbered pages, laminated in case of rain, which I can attach by the carabiner provided to my daypack. All this and a bar of organic chocolate too.
Foot Trails operate in Somerset, Dorset and the Cotswolds, but the company’s home territory lies between the A30 and the A303; an unromantic description for an enclave encompassing Cranborne Chase and the Blackmore Vale, the Wylye and Nadder valleys, but an apt one since it’s all-too-often bypassed on the rush west to Devon and Cornwall. With its chalk hills, ancient beech woodlands, river valleys and winterbournes, rolling fields, sunken lanes and villages of thatch and Bath-style Chilmark stone, plus lots of appealingly individual ‘free house’ pubs, the area’s a revelation. And Foot Trails’ owner David Howell may just have walked its myriad footpaths more thoroughly than any other living being. ‘We have perhaps a hundred different trails we can offer,’ says Howell, dropping me off at the beginning of my three-day walk. ‘We can shape them to every need, creating an itinerary to minimise stile crossings, say, if you plan to walk with a large dog’.
I walk ten miles that first day, following the impressively detailed directions through garlic-scented woods to lanes thick with primroses and campion. Ansty’s graveyard smells of freshly-mown grass, there’s a maypole in the middle of the village and ducks on the great pond; it’s the very quintessence of Wessex. A hare bolts across a field just before Chicksgrove where I’m booked into the Compasses Inn. At this gem of a pub, all candlelit parlour atmosphere, I’m shown to a pleasant bedroom complete not only with my safely delivered luggage but with a huge ensuite bath for soaking the muscles; walkers’ perfection but for the sounds and smells of the kitchen extractor-fan at the window.
I dine on potted crab and asparagus followed by a shoulder of very local lamb while convivial landlord Alan Stoneham rhapsodises about living here. ‘It’s the sheer peace,’ he says. So sheer that even a recent visit to Cirencester, with its roundabouts and supermarkets, struck the poor man as an urban nightmare.
Stoked on smoked salmon and scrambled eggs, I’m off early the following morning. It’s here that Howell’s directions temporarily fail me, sending me left along a field edge instead of right until my sense of direction shouts for correction. A mistake, but one which only emphasises the work that’s gone into creating this route. For where some operators’ directions simply lead walkers to a well-known ‘signature’ path or national trail like the nearby Ridgeway, there to entrust them to its waymarks, Howell’s routes seem lovingly assembled so as to extract all view and variety from the landscape. I’ve certainly forgiven him the misdirection by the time I reach the white gate at the railway line to wait for the Andover train before crossing into Tisbury. I take in the tithe barn at Place Farm which boasts the largest single expanse of thatch in England.
I lunch in the garden of the Beckford Arms in Fonthill Gifford where a serviceable ciabatta is rescued by a very fine local beer, Keystone. So much so that I’ve retreated into Beckfordian reverie by the second glass, musing over the enormous abbey-mansion, long since collapsed, that the Fonthill estate’s 19th-century owner, literary aesthete and sensualist William Beckford built here where he partied like a prodigal before retiring to a more sedate existence in Bath. In the afternoon, I walk beside the lake to glimpse ornamental urns and a balustraded bridge before leaving the estate by its imposing gatehouse.
Beckford is behind me by tea time when I reach pretty Hindon and walk up its wide street edged by pollarded limes to the Lamb. I eat well and sleep soundly in this affluent old hostelry. And in the morning I’m on to East Knoyle, with its charming church where Sir Christopher Wren was baptised and its surrounding hillsides where Patagonian alpacas, sheep out of Dr Seuss, are scattered. I’m walking down a track near the hamlet of Milton when a man with a dog stops me. ‘Are you headed for the bluebell wood?’ he asks, hardly able to contain himself. ‘It’s fabulous. As good as you’ll ever find.’ It sounds like something I’d love to see, but I’m so confident that David Howell’s route will includes such a sight that I barely concentrate on the man’s directions. Sure enough, the wood that rises beyond a field some fifteen minutes later is footed by a fuzz of the most vivid lilac. And as I cross the stile into its shade the spring air turns to perfume.
Jeremy Seal was a guest of Foot Trails (01747 861851; [email protected]) whose self-guided walking holidays cost from £476 for six nights, based on two sharing. The company also offers centre based self-guided as well as guided holidays. Foot Trails are an excellent specialist whose walks are meticulously researched and organised.
