Welcome to a new year, fellow adventurers and creatives. Here are my favourite, most inspiring walks from the last journey round the sun. Sometimes the timing of a walk matters almost as much as the place.
Hetty Pegler’s Tump and Bluebell Woods, Gloucestershire
We started a spring Saturday by traipsing through woods near Coaley viewpoint, where fiddleheads unfurled into ferns. Emerged opposite bright yellow rapeseed crops and traversed a clearing to a neolithic burial mound, Hetty Pegler’s Tump (below, centre). You can peek inside the narrow passage leading to chambers of ancient bones. On our way home after lunch in the Cotswold market town of Nailsworth, we lingered in more woodlands with carpets of bluebells in an electric shade of purple.
Oxford
We’ve never spent much time in Oxford—and this is despite me spending a uni term at Oxford Brookes. I remedied that with a sunny June day trip, motivated by an exhibit at the Ashmolean Museum. After viewing sketches by Flemish masters, and finding our way through the ancient statuary to the toilets, we left the enormous museum to explore outside a while.
We walked through the Christ Church College grounds to The Meadow, wandered streets and glimpsed a pub where Tolkien and C.S. Lewis liked to drink before coming back to the main avenues to view the Bodleian Library and then the Sheldonian Theatre, with rainbow Pride flags in its tower windows and the iconic Emperor Head statues guarding it. A few months later, when I read R.F. Kuang’s Babel, Oxford’s imagery remained fresh in my mind.
Warren, New Hampshire
The population of this small town near the White Mountains peaked in 1860, but we enjoyed our family visit. The Baker River runs behind the houses on one side of the main street, and the Ore Hill Brook behind the houses on the other. A recreational trail shoots through the town as well, directing snowmobilers and bikers and pedestrians straight to the Congregational Church and the massive ballistic missile rocket standing beside it. There’s also an excellent ice cream eatery, complete with friendly porch cat. I enjoyed my early morning walks and met a retired French teacher who comes out every dawn to pick up litter.
Cerne Abbas then Durdle Door, Dorset
We celebrated our 20th wedding anniversary near the Jurassic coast in the South of England, and on one of our day trips trekked around Trendle Hill to view the Rude Giant. The path led us below the chalked soles of the180-foot long figure, dug into the slope since the late 17th century at least. We walked up and over the hill, down into the lovely town of Cerne Abbas. Its streets are lined with little streams and footbridges take townsfolk from the roads to their pretty old homes and gardens.
After our stroll there, we drove further to the coast and joined hundreds of tourists, from all nations and races it seemed, to walk down the cliffs to see the magnificent stone arch of Durdle Door. The sight was also enjoyed by a big, blissed-out seal sunning himself on the beach.
Uley, Gloucestershire
This is one of my local walks, a long circuit that comes to about 7 miles. Hilly views, horse pastures, manor estates like gingerbread houses, and old Cotswold buildings in the village of Uley. The walk has been momentous in my writing life in the past, and I reclaimed it for that purpose somewhat this year.
At the end of the summer holidays I hiked to the Prema Gallery and Cafe to start a new short story there, now complete and submitted to competitions. In November I walked through beautiful autumn sunshine to the craft fair to buy a few cards and gifts, and just before Christmas I hiked to the village and sat scribbling new novel ideas in St. Giles church while a few local ladies set up an assembly line of oranges, dolly mixtures, and candles to prepare for the Christingle service.
London: National Theatre to Holborn and Lincoln’s Inn
I love London and its juxtapositions of old and new, native and diverse. Visiting in October half-term to see the excellent West End theatrical production of Dr. Strangelove, we spent the next afternoon on a HiddenCity James Bond-themed quest leading us around west central London.
We crossed Waterloo Bridge from the National Theatre, discovered an art park on a rooftop, and the little green houses, now dwarfed by skyscrapers, that used to be refuges for cabbies. Our clues guided us behind the Courts of Justice and around the London School of Economics campus and Lincoln’s Inn. It included stops at different pubs, welcoming even while stunningly ornate, such as The Princess Louise with its mosaic floors and intricately carved wooden booths, and the majestic Last Judgment, which makes an excellent amaretto sour and has bathroom stalls like confessionals.
The Pinnacle and Post Pond, Lyme, New Hampshire
A New England lake and/ or mountain inevitably makes my annual top wanders. But this one’s special because it’s the lake I grew up on, the summit I grew up under. For years I believed the sun couldn’t truly set unless it was between two hills and reflected over a pond, because that’s how I saw it every day of my childhood.
Post Pond is smallish, but deep enough to be considered a lake; deep enough to house snapping turtles with shells over a foot in diameter. We stayed in a cabin at Loch Lyme Lodge, the rustic resort where I used to work for the summers, and I watched the sunset from a picnic table up the hill while scribbling in my notebook. My husband and I climbed around on the Pinnacle, the hill behind our cabin, and found fairy castle tree stumps, and milkweed cradles, and fantastic views. I completed the day by swimming the whole length of the lake and back.
This year, I hope to work on a new novel set in a similar location, because really, there’s just no place like home.
Where did your wanders take you this year?