Blencathra ridges, Lake District
Length: approximately 4½ miles
Time: 3½ hours
Start/finish: Blease Road car park, Threlkeld (OS Explorer OL5)
Grade: Challenging
Refuel: Horse & Farrier Inn, Threlkeld
Picnic spot: Blencathra summit ridge
Fellwalker and author Alfred Wainwright described Blencathra as “one of the grandest objects in Lakeland”. He spent an entire winter exploring its slopes and ridges and concluded that its ascent via Hall’s Fell Ridge was “positively the finest way to any mountain top in the district”. This hike up the jagged alpine ridge can be challenging even for experienced hikers, involving a steep climb with sheer drops in places, but you can choose to make your route as hard as you wish. Do take a map.
Take the path from the car park entrance and bear right past an honesty box towards the fell. Cross the footbridge over Kilnhow Beck and continue along its wooded banks and up stone pitched steps that climb above the ravine. Go through the gate, turn right, and follow the wall past the foot of Gategill Fell to the ford of Gategill Beck. Hall’s Fell lies directly ahead.
A series of narrow tracks take you through scrubby grassland, bracken and vibrant heather. It is a steep climb, and you’ll gain height quickly. Pause to catch your breath and take in the unfolding view. Further on and the vegetation gives way to bare rock. The ridge rises in fractured stone turrets. From here you can choose to scramble over the top or take the narrow (marginally easier) route that skirts the eastern side.
The spectacular views from the broad summit ridge are ample reward for the efforts reaching it. Heather-clad fells fall away beneath you to a patchwork of green fields. To the north-west the Solway Firth marks the Scottish border; to the east rise the highest peaks of the Pennines.
Walk north-east, and descend an engineered path zigzagging towards Doddick Fell. Skirt a final rocky outcrop to join a narrow path that branches to the right beside a tiny cairn and then work your way down towards Doddick Gill. Follow the intake wall across the lower slopes of Hall’s Fell and, finally, retrace your steps back to Threlkeld.
The Horse and Farrier Inn in the village is a popular refuelling spot for fell walkers, offering a good selection of real ales and hearty home-cooked food, such as slow-roasted pork belly and braised lamb shoulder, as well as pub favourites – burgers, pies and a curry of the day (mains from £9.75).
Kari Herbert, co-author of Explorers’ Sketchbooks (Thames & Hudson), voted one of the Guardian’s top 10 travel books 2016
Hareshaw Linn, Bellingham, Northumberland
Length: 3 miles
Time: 2 hours to allow for stops
Start/finish: Northumberland national park car park at Hareshaw Linn, Bellingham (OS Explorer OL42)
Grade: Easy
Refuel spot: The Riverdale Hall Hotel
Picnic spot: Cupid’s Bower seat overlooking the waterfall
Linn is the Northumberland word for waterfall, and there’s a touch of the fairy glen to this “there and back” walk. It’s hard to imagine how different it was in the mid-1800s when this area was an ironworks. The clues are there: the stone terrace of Foundry Farm where the managers lived, the mounds of spoil from 70 coke ovens, the ruined walls of a dam, and a spring that bubbled up when drilling for coal.
Now a site of special scientific interest (SSSI), the wooded ravine through which the Hareshaw Burn runs is green with rare ferns and lichens. The burn is crossed and recrossed by six bridges as the path leads up through oak, ash, hazel and elm, ancient woodland where red squirrels ripple along branches fringed with polypody ferns. The peaty water cascades between rocks or forms amber pools where dippers bob, flashing their white chests.
The waterfall itself is 9 metres (30ft) high, spilling down the face of a high, rocky bowl, fanning out over ledges before dropping into a wide pool. Victorian parties held picnics here or used the acoustics for storytelling and music. In past hard winters, I’ve seen the Linn frozen over, its churning water stilled, turned opaque and ivory, like accretions of candle wax. Come here in the evening and you might see Daubenton’s bats scooping up flies from just above the surface of the water, or spot a lumbering badger among the undergrowth.
Return along the same path for lunch in one of Bellingham’s several pubs. The bar of the Riverdale Hall Hotel does a ploughman’s with Northumberland pork pie (£7.90) or battered cod with hand-cut chips (£8.90). Or you can have lunch in a 1947 railway carriage at The Carriages Tea Room at Bellingham Station, with quiche (£8.25) followed by sticky toffee pudding (£4.45).
Susie White, Guardian country diarist
Loch an Eilein, Cairngorms
Length: 5 miles
Time: 2 hours
Start/finish: Loch an Eilein car park (OS Explorer OL57)
Grade: Easy
Refuel: The Druie cafe, or The Winking Owl, Aviemore
Picnic spot: Viewpoint between Loch an Eilein and Loch Gamhna
Translated from Gaelic as “Loch of the Island”, Loch an Eilein is home to one of the best low-level walks in Scotland. Set within an ancient Caledonian forest, it is at its best in autumn. Carpets of heather, ferns and creeping lady’s tresses sweep between aspen, birch, rowan and Scots pine. Recently voted as Britain’s best picnic spot, it’s perfect for a leisurely weekend stroll.
Take the path from the car park past the visitor centre. A few paces away is a small beach with a fine view of the island and Clach Mhic Cailein (the Argyll Stone) beyond. Turn right and follow the main track as it twists into the trees. An unofficial path also skirts the water’s edge here, with a better view of the castle ruin, once the stronghold of the Wolf of Badenoch, Robert the Bruce’s grandson.
Continue around the westernmost limit of the loch, then turn right on to a narrower path heading south. Loch Gamhna now appears, backed by the bare Creag an Fhitheach (crag of the raven). At the next fork, turn right. As the track swings around this smaller loch it enters an area of woodland known for its gnarled “granny” pines, many of which are over 300 years old.
The path rejoins the main circuit next to a bridge spanning the outflow from Loch Gamhna. Turn right and follow the track back into the forest. Tread softly and you may spot red squirrels, osprey, capercaillie and Scottish crossbills, the UK’s only endemic bird species. Roe and red deer live here too, along with more elusive pine martens and Scottish wild cats.
Over a small footbridge and the path widens. Through a gate, and a stone wall guides you down to the water’s edge. Keep going, and you’ll arrive back at the visitor centre.
A short, fairly strenuous, extension is to ascend Ord Ban hill. Cross the stile behind the small barn at the north-east corner of the car park and follow the grassy path left. Turn right at a fork and follow a ragged path up through the trees. Above the tree line it curves right. After a short, rocky scramble it continues to the top of Ord Ban, with spectacular views across the national park.
KH
Scorhill Circle and Kestor Rock, Dartmoor
Length: 5 miles
Time: 3 hours
Start/finish: Gidleigh (OS Explorer OL28)
Grade: Moderate
Refuel: The Chagford Inn
Picnic spot: Kestor Rock
Dartmoor is scattered with sacred rocks. There are stone circles, standing stones, stone rows, cairns and healing stones. Unlike Stonehenge, there are no barriers, tickets or traffic. You can walk right into the broken remains of bronze-age huts, touch grey granite menhirs and weave between ceremonial boulders.
The high, bare moorland between Scorhill (“Scorill”) and Kestor Rock is particularly rich in lithic treasure. Head out of the small car park at Scorhill, over the brow of the hill and you soon reach the Scorhill Circle. Unlike many Dartmoor circles, this one has escaped the attention of restorers. Pointed stones poke up unevenly like lines of British teeth, presided over by a tall king slab nearly 2.5 metres (8ft) high, bulging with warty bosses of black granite.
From the circle, follow the path downhill over a narrow brook to the North Teign river. See if you can find the sacred Tolmen Stone – hint, it’s on the riverbank downstream from the first and smaller bridge. This river-smoothed rock contains a big hole, reputed to bestow healing on anyone who passes through. On either sides of the Tolmen Stone cascades there are deep pools, ideal for wild swimming.
Lustration over, pass on across the Teign-e-ver clapper bridge and up the hill, keeping slightly right to reach the stone rows and cairns on Shovel Down. From here the path dips to the Long Stone, a remarkable standing stone that yearns towards the cupped mound of Kestor Rock. Follow its inclination and climb the tor to discover round rockpools mirroring the sky and an astounding 360-degree view.
Kestor’s slopes are riddled with bronze age hut circles and field boundaries. For a circular walk, make your way through these to the lane at Batworthy and then round by the footpath in Gidleigh Wood.
For food you can take your chance at the basic but atmospheric Northmore Arms in nearby Wonson, or try The Chagford Inn at Chagford, which serves Dexter beef raised only half a mile away. Plutocrats may prefer afternoon tea at the renowned Gidleigh Park hotel.
Sara Hudston, Guardian country diarist
Badgworthy Water to Brendon Common, Exmoor
Length: 8 miles
Time: 4 hours
Start/finish: Malmsmead (OS Explorer OL9)
Grade: Moderate
Refuel: The Staghunters Inn, Brendon
Picnic spot: Hoccombe Combe ruined village
Romantics know Badgworthy Water as the Doone valley. This is where RD Blackmore set Lorna Doone, his heart-rending novel of passion, violence and high adventure. It tells how John Ridd, a farmer’s son from Malmsmead, falls in love with a daughter of the lawless Doone clan, a bunch of villains who live up the valley. Love triumphs, of course, but the lasting romance is with the Exmoor landscape. The real setting is even more magical than the myth.
Follow the bridleway from Malmsmead up the Badgworthy (“Badgery”) valley. Rocky in places, the path follows the river as it tumbles and chuckles into dark pools overhung with red-berried rowans.
After about a mile, you enter a wood of twisted oak trees, their trunks mossy and patched with lichen. Jays screech and squabble over acorns. On sunny autumn days, the oaks turn gold against the russet hills. After the wood, the path climbs high above the river and the land becomes wilder. Veer right towards the open moor, passing the ruined settlement in Hoccombe Combe where the Doones were said to have holed up between raids.
These days you’re unlikely to be robbed by brigands, but you might still hear the thrilling thunder of hooves and see riders chasing across Brendon Common. This is home to the world’s largest herd of free-living, wild Exmoor ponies. Several times a year the Floyd family ride out to gather the Tippbarlake ponies and bring them into their farm for welfare checks.
Exmoor ponies are an ancient breed. They bear a close resemblance to primitive wild horses and could be descendants of ice-age horses that lived in Britain 50,000 years ago. You can often see round-bellied mares grazing with foals at their sides near the shallow ford in Lank Combe.
Back in Malmsmead, the cafe by the bridge does a nice cup of tea. Or go a mile downriver to the Staghunters at Brendon, a dog-friendly inn serving traditional pub food.
SH
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