Derwent Edge, Peak District

You can concertina this walk into a couple of hours, or else pack a lunch, take all day and let it breathe. Its centrepiece is Derwent Edge, a line in the sky running south to north, the preferred direction of travel, past a series of rocks and outcrops with down-to-earth names, like the Wheel Stones, the Salt Cellar and the Cakes of Bread, that don’t do justice to their sculptural mystery.

To the east there are grouse moors. But west and north are what we’ve come for, a wide panorama of wildness and space. Below, the upper Derwent valley is filled with a reservoir, and on its far side rolling moors and hidden valleys stretch into the desolate distance. This is a landscape that was for centuries cropped and burned and emptied of nature but is now taking steps towards recovery, with deciduous trees emerging to offset some boring spruce plantations that in places smother the hillside. Things may be getting better, nature-wise. For now, though, the main attraction is elemental: wind and light that cleanse the soul, cloudscapes and showers of stinging rain.

I love Derwent Edge for all those things, and across four decades have walked it every so often, on hot summer days and in the depths of winter when the northern sky was turquoise and pink, and hard snow squeaked with cold. But it’s most special for one Christmas Day many years ago.

A dusting of snow had lightened the moors, the sky was blue above our heads but the valley at our feet was buried in cloud. Trotting north, we saw another small group hurrying south towards us, the only people we would see all day. As they grew closer, we realised we knew them. It was our good friend Sue with her husband and one of their daughters. Amazed at the coincidence, we stopped to talk. Sue was fizzing, as she almost always was, and greeted us with her usual warm smile, excited to be exactly where she was. You couldn’t help but smile back.

It was typical also that she pulled from her rucksack a flask of mulled wine and mince pies to share. The day was made. When she died a few years ago, much, much too soon, the sudden absence of her energy robbed us all.

Due to this, Derwent Edge has the memory of a beautiful person and the space she filled, now and always.
Ed Douglas is the author of Himalaya: a Human History (Vintage, £25). To support the Guardian and Observer, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply

River Avon walk, Central Lowlands

I meet the River Avon where I know it best, underneath the arches of the aqueduct in Muiravonside. The grey structure and swooping curves cradle the Union Canal on to Edinburgh. I aim to walk upstream, following the River Avon, walking part of the 10-mile heritage trail that runs from Avonbridge to Linlithgow.

I have only ever walked sections of the full trail and today I plan to walk part of the route to another feat of engineering, the Westfield railway viaduct, built in 1854 to carry coal.

The sycamore trees have all but shaken off their leaves and the earth is thick with a bed of yellow matter. The winter sun lights up the highest points of the aqueduct but down here on the well-worn path, there is only shade. I follow the track along the river, the sound of the water drowning out the birds. I think of the place I grew up, a tied house on a private country estate in Cumbria. As kids, we had the run of the gardens and woods.

Now Muiravonside is my local estate and I love to wander it too. It plots changes in history: lime kilns for building the New Town in Edinburgh, a mill for timber, a ruined Big House. Farther upstream there is even a cave where they say 13th-century Scottish knight William Wallace hid from the English. Out of the heart of the estate, farmers’ fields flank the banks of the river. There is a kerfuffle of hoof marks at the low points, a sure sign of cattle crossings.

As the path skirts away from the river and up into a field, I struggle up the gradient. Then at the top, I enter a wood. A series of steps meanders back down to the riverbed, covered in a thick layer of beech leaves. I worry about slipping, then I worry about climbing back up, as I know I will soon need to retrace my steps.

My wanderings of the estate 30 years ago always had a deadline – a split shift or sunset – and now it is no different. At the foot of the hill, a burn runs into the Avon and I cross an old wooden bridge, its timber as light as a wasp’s nest. I stop to watch the river then turn back. Next time, I’ll start from the viaduct and walk to the end of the trail where a decent pub meal is promised in Linlithgow. But for now, it’s the staircase of leaves and school pick up for me.
Rebecca Smith is the author of Rural: The Lives of the Working Class Countryside (HarperCollins £18.99). To support the Guardian and Observer, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply

The Culbone walk, Exmoor

Tiny Culbone church sits in a clearing in the woods, a couple of miles’ walk from the nearest road. Although the vicar and a few parishioners can bounce and slither down a muddy track in the ecclesiastical Land Rover, visitors must walk there along the South West Coast Path. The church, dedicated to Welsh saint Beuno, is so utterly enchanting and the walk so varied that it is no hardship to make this a there-and-back walk; it’s little more than 3½ miles from its nearest car park at Porlock Weir. Enthusiastic walkers can lengthen it to make a circular trip of around six miles or even complete the entire 29-mile Porlock Pilgrim’s Trail which links nine of Exmoor’s chapels and churches.
Culbone was one of the first places that my friend and co-author Janice and I sought out when commissioned to write the first Slow Guide to Devon and Exmoor. We both loved little churches and here was the smallest working one in England, and in a region spilling over with interest.

Not far from the church Samuel Taylor Coleridge was interrupted mid-opium dream, mid-poem by a Person from Porlock; and the Countess of Lovelace, better known as early 19th-century “computer” pioneer Ada Lovelace, lived in a mansion near Porlock Weir. Below her now-ruined house, Ashley Combe, the path passes rather surprisingly through two tunnels. These routed tradesmen to the back entrance of the manor to spare her the unpleasantness of meeting any of the lower orders as she made her way to her bathing hut.

The up-and-down trail passes through oak and beech woods with good views of the sea in winter and occasional benches where you can catch your breath and maybe enjoy a flask of mulled wine. Although you have been looking out for the church for a while – it seems a long mile and a half – you round a corner and suddenly there it is below you, its little spire, set slightly askew, reaching hopefully towards the treetops.

It looked so vulnerable that a lump rose to my throat and my eyes filled with tears, and it’s had the same effect each time I have walked there; I can’t easily explain why. I’m not religious, but there’s something about its isolation and its walls “saturated with centuries of worship”, as the church booklet so elegantly puts it, that tugs at the heartstrings.

Inside the simple interior, the harmonium is spattered with candle wax, there is a box pew for the Lovelace family, and the rough stone font, showing the chisel marks of its creator, has baptised babies since Norman times.
Janice died last year, and of all the walks we have done together, this is the most special, the most poignant. And the most repeated.
Hilary Bradt, founder of Bradt Travel Guides

The Black Hill, Herefordshire

At some point in 1977, between punk gigs and O-level exams, I went to the public library and pulled out a new book called In Patagonia. I was already obsessed with plans for worldwide adventure, and Bruce Chatwin’s first book supercharged my dreams. By the time his novel On The Black Hill came out in 1982, I was living in Sudan. No matter, a copy eventually reached me in Darfur. To my horror, however, the Black Hill in question was not set deep in the Andes, nor even a month’s ride by camel from Timbuktu. It was in the Bannau Brycheiniog (formerly the Brecon Beacons). Had Chatwin lost the plot? How could the scene of my childhood camping holidays ever be interesting? I soon learned, of course, that it could.

The location had been carefully chosen: close to the wrinkled lip of Offa’s Dyke, lying in the borderlands of England and Wales where echoes of religion and strife still resonated. Change has come to the area since Chatwin was here: Hay-on-Wye is now a vibrant book town, the Bull’s Head at the foot of the hill is a fine upmarket gastropub, and the narrow winding lanes are even less passable now that cars have grown so fat. And yet the medieval churches and neolithic monuments remain, and the walk up the Black Hill is as inspiring as ever.

Start at the car park near Black Darren crags, north-east of Longtown. Walk up the road then take the path up on to Little Black Hill then up the increasingly bleak ridge to the Black Hill itself. Panoramas can be magnificent, but it can also be mistily mysterious, with wind-battered ancient rowan trees clinging to the rocks and hardy sheep giving baffled stares. From the summit of the Black Hill you may cut short back down the Olchon valley or continue to Hay Bluff, which is in Wales.

From here there’s a choice which could depend on weather conditions: either loop westwards or east. The former takes you on to Offa’s Dyke Path and a great high level route south along another ridge. Just before the Black Darren crags, drop down and return to your car. Alternatively, if things are getting a bit spicy (and they can), drop east from the Bluff and find the low level path that follows the contours south. It is a lovely summer walk, but winter is best, when the gnarled trees are dripping with rain and the last few berries glow like embers. Then you can drop into the Bull’s Head for refreshments and read a few pages of Chatwin’s classic tale of the two brothers who extracted quietly heroic lives from these spartan hills.

The Offa’s Dyke version is 15 miles and takes six to seven hours. The lower level path to the east of the Black Hill is about the same. The short version via Olchon Valley is 9½ miles.
Kevin Rushby

A loop in the Norfolk Broads

Norfolk is so dull! So flat! Just water, sky and churches! Or so bemoaned my younger self. I grew up on the edge of the Broads, wishing I was in the middle of somewhere else. How times change. My parents still live in Acle, the village I thought so bland. Now, when I return, it’s with different eyes and different feet.

Maybe it’s because I go home at Christmas, but winter is when this landscape seems most right. Stark fields of mud and stubble; waterways, empty of holiday cruisers, left to the ducks; a crisper rattle through the reed beds. Plus, somehow, in these darker days, the space between past and present feels especially thin.

In the past, I didn’t know I liked walking. Or that I had this fine loop on my doorstep. Handily, Acle has a railway station, so you can start it from there. After traversing the village, you’re soon crossing the fields past lonely St Mary’s Church in Fishley, which sits far from any congregation. The path continues to Upton, where there’s a community-run pub, the White Horse (you’ll have to fight my parents for the chairs by the fire). Next, skirt Upton Broad nature reserve where, in winter, hen harrier and even common crane hang out.

Ahead lies South Walsham Broad, where you can pick up the Fleet Dyke. Tracing this channel, then the River Bure is – to my mind – about as Norfolk as it gets: an exposed sloshy land pressed flat by enormous skies. Before long St Benet’s Abbey appears on the bank opposite, frustratingly near but far. I was once taken over by tin boat on a youth trip. Without one, such is the bridge-less sogginess of this place, that getting there from here requires another 12-mile walk.

It’s fascinating though: founded in 1019, St Benet’s was the only English monastery Henry VIII didn’t dissolve; the Bishop of Norwich still holds a service at the ruins once a year.

The abbey isn’t the only stranded relic. As you follow the river, you can see to the windmill at Thurne (which still works), and you’ll pass close to sail-less Oby and Clippesby mills. Just three of the 300-odd drainage pumps once stationed across the county to keep the marshes dry.

The river path leads back to Upton, cuts across fields, rejoins the Bure and reaches Acle Bridge. I did a project on it once: long ago, two murders were committed here; it’s said a pool of fresh blood appears on the anniversary every year.

There’s a pub at the bridge, if you’re thirsty. Then it’s a mile or so along the river back to Acle village. Teen me would hang out at the bus stop. Middle-aged me would recommend St Edmund’s Church instead. Round-towered and part-thatched, its 15th-century font is remarkable. As my young self never said.
Sarah Baxter

Stockbury, near Maidstone, Kent

The first time I stumble across Stockbury, I feel as though I have discovered a secret. The village centre emerges from a warren of wooded lanes, kids are playing on the streets and horses are tethered on the village green while their owners lunch at the Harrow, a community-owned pub.

From the pub I follow the path to St Mary Magdalene church, which overlooks the Stockbury valley. The flint tower sits behind a yew tree with a 10-metre girth. Its branches have grown and twisted into forms resembling coral groves. There is a whisper of something ancient, an older, indigenous religion whose rules we have forgotten. The remains of the old motte-and-bailey castle next door is guarded now only by drowsy sheep, grazing under the cherry trees.

From the church I head across newly ploughed wheat fields. Fieldfares call overhead and then tumble into the hedgerow to seek shelter from the cold wind blowing in across the North Sea. The Medway estuary sweeps across the horizon. One of the country’s great migration routes for thousands of waders, ducks and geese that are pouring in to feed on the mud flats and roost on the islands. I imagine the icy water of the river sizzling as it merges on the skyline with the fiery tongues of beech trees descending from the chalk downs. Each tree is burnished, the deep reds and golds of copper kettles polished to perfection.

I head through a kissing gate into Queendown Warren, a Kent Wildlife Trust reserve. Flocks of herdwick sheep, like fluffy teddy bears in dusty pink and chocolate coats, raise their heads to watch me. The Warren is where I found sanctuary during the first Covid lockdown of 2020 while my elderly father was in hospital. Its mixture of rolling hills, woods and pasture gave me strength and clarity to make seemingly impossible decisions on his behalf. I am grateful to this landscape, those words not doing justice to my feelings for this place.

I head to the skeletal beech tree beneath which I made those decisions and sit under its boughs with my coffee flask. I touch its roots and feel the echo of the person I was, forever changed by the events of that year.

Life moves on and so do I across the downs and then back up through the lanes to Stockbury, the bright colours of the hazels casting sunshine into the gathering dusk. I’ve now moved to the Stockbury valley and this circular walk – about four miles in total – remains one of my favourites.

Carol Donaldson is the author of The Volunteers (Octopus Publishing Group, £10.99). To support the Guardian and Observer, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply