Glen Coe, the Highlands
Exploring Britain and appreciating the charms of its incredible landscape wasn’t always a top priority for me. Like many, I ignored what was on the doorstep as I rushed abroad. Which is nothing new. Celia Fiennes, an early pioneer of the Great British road trip, argued in the 17th century that we should all get out more and explore our homeland to “cure the evil Itch of overvalueing fforeign parts”.
Her words ring truer now than ever. In my case, it took a trip to the other side of the planet to jolt me out of my complacency. Back from New Zealand, raving about its scenery, I was swiftly put in my place by a friend: “Haven’t you been to the Highlands of Scotland?”
I hadn’t. But since then, I’ve been making up for lost time. Glen Coe, one Britain’s most dramatic landscapes, is popular, being only 30 minutes from Fort William but it’s big enough to feel properly wild, with empty Rannoch Moor providing a suitably contrasting backdrop to the mountains. Some friends and I recently enjoyed a night’s bivvy at the top of Buachaille Etive Mòr, the iconic mountain, but not without incident.
A large bird, possibly in league with Satan, tore into our food supplies while backs were turned and then cackled at us all the way down the hill the next day. An incredible place for a night’s sleep but consider bringing a scarecrow.
Humphrey Butler, publisher of the Joyously Busy Great British Adventure Map (£14.99, marvellousmaps.com)
Littondale, Yorkshire Dales
The Yorkshire Dales are a classic example of the 95% rule: 95% of the people are in 1% to 2% of the places. This means that beyond the main dales, you can walk on a Saturday in August and hardly see anyone. Littondale and Langstrothdale are two of these quieter side dales, and there’s a wonderful circular walk between them following an old drover’s track over the shoulder of Birks Fell. People don’t associate Yorkshire with mountains but the Dales have 30 peaks of over 610 metres (2,000ft, the official designation of a mountain, in the UK at least) and Birks Fell is one of them. The scenery is classic dales: limestone outcrops and pavements, and dry stone walls, but there’s rarely anyone there; all you hear are the skylarks and curlews. This is the first walk I consider taking people on because of the sense of isolation. It’s pure wilderness.
Jonathan Smith, mountain guide, founder of where2walk.co.uk and author of The Dales 30, Where2Walk publishing, £8.99
Duck’s Pool, Dartmoor
While northern Dartmoor is beautiful and hilly, the south is vast open moorland with no one around, and Duck’s Pool is one of its remotest parts. We call it the Bermuda Triangle because a lot of Duke of Edinburgh groups tend to get lost there – it’s featureless, boggy and sometimes misty, so can be disorientating and a bit scary. It’s not for the fainthearted and you need to know how to navigate, but the solitude and beauty make it a wonderful place – you can walk for several hours across open terrain.
For me, it’s real Dartmoor, the high moorland that only hardier walkers see. It is the site of one of the first “letterboxes”. Letterboxing is a hobby dating back to the 19th century, where walkers follow clues and document their experience by stamping a visitor’s book kept in a “letterbox”. This letterbox is also the site of a memorial stone for William Crossing, who wrote Crossing’s Guide to Dartmoor.
John Diplock, director Dartmoor-based activity operator Spirit of Adventure
Mam Nick, Peak District
Mam Nick is the road that climbs steeply from Edale to Mam Tor, deep within the Peak District national park. The road looks pretty straightforward in cycling terms but once the overhanging trees disappear, the road swings lefts over the Noe river and kicks up twice, hardly giving you chance to appreciate the spectacular views of the valley towards Win Hill. As the road snakes around, there are great views of Back Tor, Lord’s Seat and Kinder Scout behind you, if you care to stop for a breather.
I first discovered this route on my bike in 2009 and was surprised how quiet it was compared with the hum of tourists and traffic at better-known Peak District attractions. The road is quiet throughout the week, and used mainly by ramblers and walkers at weekends. The only sound is the occasional call of a red kite or buzzard. Perhaps this is because you won’t find it written on a map – only locals call it Mam Nick.
It is one of the toughest cycling climbs and, in the opposite direction, one of the most exhilarating descents in Derbyshire, on what is left of the abandoned Shivering Mountain (Mam Tor) road and the hair-raisingly steep Winnats Pass. Both roads boast amazing views back towards the Hope valley.
Thom Barnett, founder of Sheffield-based clothing company Mamnick
Gwenffrwd–Dinas reserve, Carmarthenshire
From the start of the drive from Llandovery (the nearest town, 10 miles away), you sense that you’re delving deep into the rugged heart of the Cambrian mountains, a truly undiscovered gem of Carmarthenshire. Gwenffrwd–Dinas is an RSPB reserve, set up to protect the habitat of this ancient Atlantic oak woodland. It covers 600 hectares and is best experienced on a circular walk over a couple of hours.
Initially, the trail runs alongside the still-infant Towy river, which, even in the driest season, roars across the rocks through the gorge from its source at Llyn Brianne as it cuts through the mystical oak and alder woodland. Use the steps cut out of boulders to take on the challenge of finding the well-hidden cave of Twm Siôn Cati (the Welsh highwayman). The feeling of tranquillity and isolation is spectacular, as red kites, pied flycatchers and tree pipits soar overhead. My favourite time in Dinas is May, when bluebells cast a violet haze over the valley.
Alan Warner, countryside ranger
The Northern Fells, Lake District
The Lakeland landscape can be divided into four parts, each feeling and looking quite different. The east shifts from scoured fells to woody limestone crags. The south-west is spacious, wild-valleyed and overlooked by the scowling buttresses of England’s highest mountains. The north-west is all jumbled, knuckled hills plunging to lake-floored vales. Then there’s the far north. There are no lakes here. No roads. Here the fells swoop and bulge, looking more Scottish than English. Unbroken by the gapes of crags, it’s Arctic-esque in the snow, pristine white rolling into white.
You can lose yourself in 100 sq km or so. It is rampart-edged and slashed by valleys, with a high central keep. Caught within the encircling noose of roads are familiar fells – Skiddaw, Blencathra – and odd, unfamiliar names: Dead Crags, Thief Gill, Trusmadoor. It’s not impenetrable: the Cumbria Way splits on the way in, running around its centre like a moat. There’s even a bothy, in awesome isolation. I’d tell you where but no explorer wants directions.
Hesket Newmarket lies to the north, a stone village with the Old Crown pub serving beers named after the local fells: Brim Fell, Old Carrock, High Pike.
You couldn’t call any part of the Lakes a wilderness in itself. But by night, under cloud, or in winter, this is as wild a place as you’ll find.
Simon Ingram, editor of Trail magazine
Mill Bay, Cornwall
Land’s End is one of the busiest places in Cornwall. Yet just a mile to the south along the South West Coast Path, and two miles north of popular Porthgwarra, is a bay of towering cliffs and caves that has two names: Nanjizal and Mill Bay. I love exploring this one-mile stretch of heathland and disused copper-mining shafts, along a mainly vertiginous footpath between two craggy granite promontories. These headlands are called Carn les Boel and Carn Boel, and the latter is my favourite, with remnants of an iron age settlement.
Here I can be alone and observe seals, seabirds and peregrines rearing their young. On a clear day in May, you’re immersed in yellow gorse, orange lichen, aquamarine sea and the light and dark browns of granite glinting with feldspar. I often bring my walking guests to this bay, where we sit up high, on one side or the other of Carn les Boel, depending on the wind direction, watching the breaking waves with the sound reverberating around the bay. On extreme low tides, a walkable sand bar appears.
Paul Simmons, founder of walkitcornwall.co.uk
The Sperrins, Northern Ireland
Sprawled across the counties of Derry and Tyrone, the Sperrins are Ulster’s wildest land. The thickest sheets of the last ice age scoured these mountains into smooth undulations that banner the skyline. But don’t be fooled by gentle curves – the Sperrins’ heart is vastly bleak.
Begin by following my favourite road through the foothills to Banagher Glen’s ancient forest of oak and ash. Here, having evaded St Patrick’s banishment, Ireland’s last serpent lurks in a pool swollen by the Altnaheglish and Glenedra burns. Climbing, the forest thins to mountain bog stretching across the uplands. The view pans to the Foyle Estuary. From Sawel, the highest peak in the range, you can gaze east all the way to the Mournes, and to Binevenagh on the north coast.
Then turn around. There’s an aching wilderness of montane heath loping to the interior. With soaring buzzards to guide you, trek the lengths of eskers skirting peat-dark tarns and pools. If rough ground speckled with summer’s bog cotton keeps your eyes lowered, you’ll spy cloudberry and sundew among the coarse grasses and heather. But meadow pipit and wheatear will draw your gaze skyward to where a peregrine might slice it.
Or you’ll stumble into the neolithic. Monuments, like Clogherny Wedge Tomb, cued by boulder erratics, litter the moorland with standing stones and circles. Heading west, past the Mullaghs, old bog roads descend to the glacial valleys of Glenelly and Owenkillew patchworked by gorse-seared hill-farms. Further pockets of forest shelter red squirrel and pine marten. As ravens acrobat in the wind, you could fancy you hear the howls of one of the last Irish wolves: mac tíre – aptly the son of the country – still haunting his tundral domain.
Mary Montague, poet and author of Tribe (Dedalus Press, £9)
Handa island, north-west Scotland
If you want wild and remote, head to Handa, off the Sutherland coast. It’s not far from the North Coast 500 route, which is attracting growing numbers of visitors, but as an island we are one of the most isolated spots along this coastline. We look out of our bothy on to nothing, just mountains. Handa was last inhabited in 1847, when the islanders were relocated to Nova Scotia (voluntarily). Now it is an internationally important breeding site for seabirds, protected by the Scottish Wildlife Trust. Much of the island is surrounded by spectacular sandstone cliffs, which provide nesting sites for fulmars, kittiwakes, one of the UK’s largest guillemot colonies and 200 pairs of puffins. But on the east side, there are pristine beaches and sand dunes. Inland, the boggy moorland is home to the great skua, or bonxie as it’s known here. Most people arrive by ferry from Tarbet on the mainland (April-Sept, handa-ferry.com) but it is possible to kayak over and wild camp – if you check with the rangers first.
scottishwildlifetrust.org.uk
Craig Nisbet, ranger, Handa island
The Rhinogs, Snowdonia
Don’t be put off by images of people and trains chuffing up Snowdon – Snowdonia is one of Britain’s greatest wildernesses, second only to Scotland’s Cairngorms in size and emptiness. My favourite part is the northern Rhinogs, where I lived for many years, and which has rugged bony peaks, high tarns and glimpses of the Irish Sea. is an abundance of bronze age sites linked by a prehistoric track, recently christened the Ardudwy Way, that once connected Ireland to Britain via the natural harbours of the coast.
Standing proud like a crown of thorns is Bryn Cader Faner, a spectacular stone circle thought to be a prince’s burial cairn. From here, a network of lakes and tarns spread out and buzzards soar around the lonely granite top of Moel Ysgyfarnogod, or hare mountain. The glacial Cwm Moch valley drives a scar to the north, descending into the precipitous gorge of Llennyrch, among some of finest examples of Atlantic rainforest in Europe. Mosses and lichen drape the sessile oaks, bilberries abound and walkers can bathe in a Narnia of waterfalls and pools.
Daniel Start, co-author of Wild Guide to Wales and the Marches (Wild Things Publishing, out 1 May, £16.99)
Bure valley, Norfolk
Between the stunning north Norfolk coast, a stone’s throw to the north, and the commercialised Norfolk Broads to the south, lies the best-kept secret in Norfolk: the Bure valley, with the beautiful river Bure meandering through it. The clear waters are home to numerous aquatic creatures, from shoal upon shoals of silvery darting fish to lobster-like crayfish crawling across the river bed. You may spot the iridescent flash of a kingfisher patrolling his “beat” and in search of his next meal, the unmistakable stream of fizzing bubbles as the elusive otter speeds off into the distance, or a Chinese water deer at the river’s edge.
A footpath runs alongside the river for about nine miles from Aylesham to Coltishall, and the Bure Valley Steam railway roughly follows the same route, so you can walk one way and get the train back. Much of the river is privately owned so there are few boats on it, and it’s quite possible to canoe for two days and not see another soul. To have that tranquility just two hours from London is incredible.
Mark Wilkinson, owner of tour company The Canoe Man
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