Smiles Of A Summer Night

Has summer come at last? There's sun and blue skies. The temperature is 21 degrees. Bees and butterflies are on the buddleia. Perhaps it would be good to settle down this evening with Bergman's Summer Interlude (1951), Summer with Monika (1953), Smiles of a Summer Night (1955) or Wild Strawberries (1957). Realistically what's more likely to happen is: drinking chilled white wine in the garden, eating fresh salad and strawberries, and watching the screaming swifts wheel overhead... It's a hard life! But where is Monika?

The Magician

Ingmar Bergman, one of our greatest film directors, died yesterday at the age of 89. He's up there in my own personal pantheon of European and European-style arthouse directors - along with Truffaut, Renoir, Pasolini, Tarkovsky, Kieslowski and Ray - in fact for me he towers head and shoulders above them all. Bleak, existentialist explorations of soul and psyche his films may be - but they're often brilliantly theatrical and not always without humour. If you find The Seventh Seal (1957) unremittingly serious and symbolic, try one of my own favourites, The Magician (1958), which features a strange troupe of travelling players: inventive, funny, mysterious, extravagant, it's almost Shakespearian in its mix of tragedy and comedy. As well as Bergman himself, one always thinks of his amazing cinematographer Sven Nykvist, and his small and loyal coterie of actors such as Max von Sydow and Bibi Andersson, Liv Ullmann and Erland Josephson - with whom he worked time after time. They all had such artistic rapport the script was often improvised. However these films are not for everyone. They're certainly more Dennis Potter than Harry Potter, should we say. Bergman can be a painful pleasure to watch. But if you want to feel more human, rather than escape the human condition, then his films could be for you. There's more to cinema than cynical commercialism - indeed, Bergman managed to achieve High Art.

Rain Does Not Last

Use words sparingly,

then all things will fall into place.

A whirlwind does not last a whole morning.

A downpour of rain does not last a whole day.

And who works these?

Heaven and Earth.

What Heaven and Earth cannot do enduringly:

how much less can man do it?

(From the Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu)

And yes, the sun came out today...

Robin Kevan: A Hero Of Our Times

From today's Guardian and its Great Outdoors: National Parks supplement: What I do is clean up mountains. I'm three hours away from Snowdonia, but I go up there as often as I can. I can clean up the whole of Snowdon in two days. The reason I'm doing it is because litter in high places like that is absurd and shouldn't be there. Snowdonia is stunning, so impressive. I know I'm very small there, but I have a big influence. The Pyg Track, the Miner's Path, the Llanberis Path, those are what I clean. I love Llanberis, a little village at the bottom of Snowdon that has a lot of slate mines. One of my favourite places is Cadair Idris. It's really glacial. Glaslyn is a little lake that is just lovely. I saw a helicopter coming out of there once - it was actually in the mountain, as it were, which was incredible. We like to feel that we're the first one that's ever been there, and when you see litter it blows that illusion. Being in Snowdonia makes me feel that that's what I've been put on this earth for. There are times in life when you suddenly feel real, and it makes me feel real being up there with the wind and rain on my face, a feeling of oneness. I feel alive. Most of the time we are alive, but don't feel it. Written by Robin Kevan, a voluntary litter-picker. What a fantastic bloke. Mmm... "Most of the time we are alive, but don't feel it..."

Guess What? It's Raining

Rain, rain, rain. Rain. Rain and more rain. Hey, guess what? It's raining. Again. It's coming through the walls. Damn that blocked soakaway I should've fixed months ago. I've stripped off the wallpaper. Water's streaming down the plaster like Aira Force. The downpipes are blocked and the builder's on holiday. In Greece or Croatia, probably. Where they're having the hottest summer for 100 years. While we're having the wettest summer since 1789. Apparently. The year of the French Revolution. Can't think of a witty connection. Cos I'm wet and miserable and housebound with a painful knee. And it's raining. Did I tell you that?

Two Out Of Three Peaks

When you are at the summit all directions are down but only one way will take you to your destination. This may be compared to someone standing on the North polar icecap; all directions are South but if you move in the direction you are facing you may finish up in Siberia while if you do an about turn you may end up in Canada. When descending we no longer have the strong directional aid which we had during our ascent. This, coupled with the relaxation following the achievement of reaching the top, often takes us off guard which accounts for many getting lost on the way down and often finishing on the wrong side of the mountain and many miles from their intended destination. (From Land Navigation: Routefinding with Map and Compass by Wally Keay.)

This is very true. I remember one hazy spring morning in April 1987 coming off Skiddaw quite unintentionally by a route (initially on shifting scree) that funnelled down to Tongues Beck and lonely Slades Beck and finally deposited you in Millbeck hamlet. It didn't matter in the end - but I thought for a while I was going towards Carl Side, rather more points north. And one foggy day in September 2003 I headed off Ingleborough in the absolute opposite direction to the one I'd planned - north-east on the Chapel-le-Dale path rather than south-west to Ingleton via Crina Bottom. It was only when I saw a distant Ribblehead Viaduct emerge from the mist that I realised my mistake. All this because I was simply too lazy to look at map and compass. Never mind, I had a fab if somewhat longer walk back to my Clapham starting point along an old Roman road beneath Twisleton Scars... I revisted Ingleborough on a fine warm day in early June this year because I wanted to see an unveiled view from the top for the first time. I was camping at High Laning Caravan and Camping Park in Dent. This campsite is usually busy at weekends and holiday times, but when I was there it was unbelievably quiet. I walked straight from the site down one of the narrow roads which connect gorgeous Dentdale with the outside world. A bridleway contours round Whernside's flank; then a path, intermittently flagged, leads directly up to the Whernside ridge. I ate an early lunch at the top, sheltering from the wind behind a convenient stone wall; switchbacked down into the valley and steeply up to a sun-kissed Ingleborough; then across to Horton through Sulber Nick over a mosaic of limestone pavements. From Horton, after refreshments at the Crown Hotel, I took a train on the Settle-Carlisle railway line back to Dent Station (still a 4 mile walk back to Dent Village from here!). Oh, and the view from Ingleborough? Terrific!

Clouds And Maps

Myself, I'm greedy. I want both clouds and maps. Give me the freedom to wander lonely as a cloud unencumbered by maps and heavy packs and high expectations. Sometimes it's nice and liberating just to take off without knowing exactly where one's going, relying on primitive instinct. (I wouldn't advise this for everyone - it can obviously land you in serious trouble.) However, Byronic Romanticism aside, I do love maps. In fact, I'm crazy about them. I'd rather settle down with a good map than a good book any day. (That's some admission from a bookaholic!) Don't you just love those densely-packed contour lines, those little black squiggles signifying crags and rocky outcrops, those blue wigwam symbols..? They set the heart racing. But just a thought to end with. Some time ago I was on top of Snowdon after climbing up by the Pyg track. It was a clear sunny day with a rare and lovely 360 degree view all around. Which hardly any of the summiteers seemed to notice as they were all busy with their mobile phones and GPS devices... and their maps...

Wandering Clouds

Who among us has never felt feelings such as these on returning to Lakeland after months imprisoned within city walls?

Oh there is blessing in this gentle breeze,
A visitant that while it fans my cheek
Doth seem half-conscious of the joy it brings
From the green fields, and from yon azure sky.
Whate'er its mission, the soft breeze can come
To none more grateful than to me; escaped
From the vast city, where I long had pined
A discontented sojourner: now free,
Free as a bird to settle where I will.
What dwelling shall receive me? in what vale
Shall be my harbour? underneath what grove
Shall I take up my home? and what clear stream
Shall with its murmur lull me into rest?
The earth is all before me. With a heart
Joyous, nor scared at its own liberty,
I look about; and should the chosen guide
Be nothing better than a wandering cloud,
I cannot miss my way. I breathe again!

The opening lines of Book 1 of The Prelude by William Wordsworth

And who needs maps when you have wandering clouds?

Be Gentle With Me

Anyone catch the Wainwright prgramme on BBC2 last night? Now I know that the Pictorial Guides are a dedicated labour of love, the product of a 12 year obsession. I own many of them myself and they are well-thumbed. They're a perfect shape and a perfect size and easy to carry onto the hill (though they are difficult to decipher at twilight in a tent without a strong torch and magnifying glass). I'm aware they were all hand drawn and hand written with exquisite draughtsmanship and that they're full of very skilled pen-and-ink illustrations of netsuke proportions and brimming with coy humour about women's legs. I'm full of admiration for the fact that there's nothing like them in publishing, that nothing will ever match them, that they've stood the test of time for over 50 years and sold over a million copies - or is it two million? But (and you knew there was a "but" coming, didn't you?) I'm afraid I just can't warm to them or to Wainwright, the old curmudgeon. This is sacrilege, I know - it's heaving these days at Innominate Tarn as walkers practically queue to scrunch over his ashes. I may have to duck now, and de-blog a while, to avoid the flak from the huge and zealous AW fan club. But blogs are all about honestly expressed ( self-opinionated?!) views, right..? Look, I respect him (though I do think there's more than a hint of vanity under that beguiling patina of shy modesty) - nay, admire him, and his unique series of books. But, to be honest, if I want to sit down of an evening and read about Lakeland, I'd much rather pick up A. Harry Griffin...

A Walk In The Ariège

During this period of rest and recuperation, I thought I might describe a wonderful walk I did in September 2005. The location was the Ariège in the Eastern Pyrenees. This is the last really wild part of the Pyrenean chain before it sinks down into the gentler Albères and finally descends to the Mediterranean. I arrived late at my chambre-d'hote accommodation, the Domaine Fournié, an absolutely charming 18th century manor house on the edge of Tarascon-sur-Ariège. Fearing the weather would break (which it did soon after), the next day I drove straight to the start of a short but ambitious high route I'd planned weeks before. My car sped up the stunning Vicdessos valley, skirting the extraordinary Grotte de Niaux which I would visit in the morning (this proved to be a magical hour's underground trip with flashlight to see some very atmospheric cave paintings of horse and bison, ibex and stag). I climbed higher and higher till I could go no further without damaging the car's suspension - finishing up at the southern end of the dammed Lac de Soulcem. The altitude was already 1600 metres and I couldn't wait to start walking! I headed up grassy slopes to the west, slopes strewn with autumn crocus, a flower I'd never seen before in the wild. Purple with yellow stamens, it's not actually a crocus but a member of the lily family. It grows from a corm and is poisonous. The rather nondescript LBJs (Little Brown Jobs for non-birders!) I glimpsed - as they shuffled about the rocky outcrops, looking rather like dunnocks - were alpine accentors. Another first. Higher and higher I climbed - following a proper path now, stepped in places - and entered a beautiful high valley which had been carved by the Ruisseau de la Gardelle, passing the relics of some ancient orries, or shepherds' huts - a reminder of the practice of transhumance which was so common here in the past. Here I met the only other person I would see all day - a small, thick-set Frenchman with walking stick, leathery, sunburnt face and Dali moustache - his sun hat covering a mass of curls. Blue-winged grasshoppers jumped around and butterflies I'd never seen before alighted on heather and bilberry - Cleopatra's Brimstone, Mountain Clouded Yellow, Piedmont Ringlet. (I did brief sketches and tried to identify them later!) A tough scramble up more steep grassy slopes took me to the tiny jewelled lakes of the Etangs de la Gardelle. Now I'm 2370 metres high. The sky is blue. It's warm. The silence is astonishing. The calm, windless peace is healing, relaxing. I perch on a rock by one of the lakes and eat my lunch - baguette, fromage, jambon, succulent pears and greengages I'd purchased the day before from a speciality food market in Foix. No better picnic spot. Ever. Finally I tear myself away and boulder-climb along the rim of one of the turquoise lakes and up to the col on the skyline, the highest point of the walk at 2476 metres. I'm so absorbed in watching the darting Iberian Rock Lizards at my feet - their iridescent tails flashing green and blue in the sunlight - that I slip on wet grass and fall heavily, tumbling over grass and rock and stream-bed. Eventually I come to rest and groan to myself: if you're injured, no one will find you here. Then I rationalise: stand up. If nothing's broken, everything's OK. I slide gingerly down the slope beyond the col, thankfully with only grazes and bruises. The view is massive and astounding: a huge granite amphitheatre of grey, jagged rock. No trees, little vegetation. In bad weather, in winter, this place must be desolate and dangerous. The Pic de Montcalm behind me and Andorra over the high pass in front. Cutting short the full round, I take a quicker zig-zag path back to the flat floor of the Soulcem valley, where there are black ponies, and sheep and cows with muted, clanking bells round their necks. There are more orries along the track back to the car - built of stone, with low turf roofs, some still retaining little wooden doors. I reach the car and return quickly down to the Ariège valley to nurse my wounds and reflect on a momentous day in the mountains.

Swamp Fever

From chapter 14 of The Autobiography of a Super-Tramp:

I don't know what possessed me to walk out of this town, instead of taking a train, but this I did, to my regret. For I became too weak to move, and, coming to a large swamp, I left the railroad and crawled into it, and for three days and the same number of nights, lay there without energy to continue my journey. Wild hungry hogs were there, who approached dangerously near, but ran snorting away when my body moved. A score or more buzzards had perched waiting on the branches above me, and I knew that the place was teeming with snakes. I suffered from a terrible thirst, and drank of the swamp-pools, stagnant water that was full of germs, and had the colours of the rainbow, one dose of which would have poisoned some men to death. When the chill was upon me, I crawled into the hot sun, and lay there shivering with the cold; and when the hot fever possessed me, I crawled back into the shade. Not a morsel to eat for four days, and very little for several days previous ...

Now I thought I felt bad earlier this year camping wet and bedraggled in a rainswept Borrowdale having eaten a dodgy pie in Keswick! But this graphic account of the Mississippi swamplands puts it all in perspective, even if Davies was known for embellishing his tales somewhat ...

Super Tramp

There's a long history of parody and pastiche in literature - from Cervantes to Wendy Cope. And it's not often you find these two writers sharing the same sentence! Yesterday's parody of WH Davies (1871-1940) was a little unfair. I actually like Davies's poem and did not really intend to mock it - as parodies usually do - but to use it as a way of taking a poke at the Dreadful Vice of Shopping (Outdoors shops excluded, naturally). Davies's original poem Leisure (What is this life if, full of care,/We have no time to stand and stare? etc) has been much-anthologised, though it's difficult to recall another poem of his that stands out - most of them fall into the category of unmemorable 'Georgian' verse. But I do remember reading some years ago his acclaimed memoir The Autobiography of a Super-Tramp (1908), an account of 6 years (1893-99) during which Davies begged and walked and jumped trains across North America, genuinely living as a hobo. This life of vagrancy led to the loss of a leg when he tried to jump a train in Canada and miscalculated. And on the subject of legs, my own's horizontal and healing nicely!

Pleasure

What is this life if, full of care,
We have no notes or coins to spare?

No time to stand in B and queue
(As if we'd better things to do!):

No time to see, when shops we pass,
Where markets "educate" the mass:

No time to see, in neon light,
Stores full of dross and tat and shite:

No time to turn at Xmart's glance
And watch her pornographic dance:

No time to wait till her mouth can
Open the purse of any man?

A poor life this, if full of care,
We have no time for better ware.


With apologies to WH DAVIES ...

Home Boy

I'm sitting at home resting my knee (think it's mild tendonitis) and looking out on a rare sight: a garden bathed in sunlight. After all the heavy summer rainfall (what extreme weather we're now having in the UK - mild winters, spring drought) the garden's turned into a kind of vegetational leviathan. I know for sure, though, that come a day - hopefully sooner rather than later - of pain-free knees and wall-to-wall sunshine, I won't want to hack about at plants. I'll just want to go for a walk. (My wife may have other ideas!) Yet I look back on walks past and realise I've had many enjoyable ones in the rain. You have to embrace the weather not fight it. Talking of which, wonder how you're getting on in Scotland during the downpours, John Hee?!

Life In The Woods

With all this talk of Rousseau and Revolution, you may think I'm going way off the walking topic. But no! As fellow blogger Loren Webster has reminded me, another literary walker was the admirable philosopher and naturalist Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862), the quiet revolutionary - whose philosophy of non-violent resistance influenced Gandhi and Martin Luther King. His essay Civil Disobedience (1849) promoted the following of individual conscience over civil law; and his address Slavery in Massachusetts (1854) and essay A Plea for Captain John Brown (1860) furthered the abolitionist cause. But it's for his classic Walden; or Life in the Woods (1854) that he's perhaps most remembered today. Thoreau's meditation on a 2 year sojourn by Walden Pond, Massachusetts, in a small self-built cabin, has never been more popular - though it was little liked when first published. But nowadays it chimes in so well with our current concerns of individualism, self-reliance, nature conservation. This short extract is taken from his essay Walking (1862): Moreover, you must walk like a camel, which is said to be the only beast which ruminates when walking. When a traveller asked Wordsworth's servant to show him her master's study, she answered, Here is his library, but his study is out of doors. Great stuff!

Bastille Day

Today, 14 July, is Bastille Day. The Storming of the Bastille has become known as the symbolic event which heralded The French Revolution (1789-1799). Without Rousseau and his towering work, The Social Contract, claimed Napoleon, the Revolution would not have happened. Liberty, Equality, Fraternity! William Wordsworth was captivated: Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive/But to be young was very heaven! But he soon cooled off when entered on stage Robespierre, The Reign of Terror and The Guillotine. Of course, it's easy to be wise after the event. But we never seem to learn the lessons of history. After Marx then Lenin. After Lenin then Stalin... Saint-Just said: "Nobody can rule without guilt". Take note, Nicolas Sarkozy! Gordon Brown, beware!

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

I ought to elucidate the title of my blog. Of course it echoes The Reveries Of The Solitary Walker, the last great work of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) which was published in 1782 after his death. It contains 10 "walks" which are really meditations on "Life, The Universe and Everything" Though self-absorbed and at times pessimistic, Rousseau had good reason to be so - exiled by the French Church and State, isolated by society, he fled to Switzerland where he found comfort in solitude and the natural world. History has proved him to be one of the very greatest thinkers and philosophers of the Enlightenment. Here's the first paragraph from his Ninth Walk: Happiness is a permanent condition which does not seem to be made for man here-below. Everything on earth is in constant flux, which permits nothing to take on constant form. Everthing around us changes. We ourselves change, and no one can be assured he will like tomorrow what he likes today. Thus, all our plans for felicity in life are idle fancies. Let us take advantage of mental contentment when it comes; let us keep from driving it away by our own fault. But let us not make any plans to chain it up, for those plans are pure follies. I have seldom seen happy men, perhaps not at all. But I have often seen contented hearts; and of all the objects which have struck me, that is the one which has made me most content. I believe this is a natural consequence of the power my sensations have over my internal feelings. Happiness has no exterior sign; to recognize it, it would be to see into the heart of the happy man. But contentment is read in the eyes, in the bearing, in the lilt of the voice, in the manner of walking, and seems to be transmitted to the one who perceives it. Is there a sweeter enjoyment than to see a whole people give itself up to joy on a holiday and every heart expand in the broad rays of pleasure which pass rapidly, but intensely, through the clouds of life? I think that Rousseau's "contentment" can be seen much of the time in the faces and attitudes of many of the remote walkers one meets and passes...

Grand Union

I've always enjoyed walking along canal towpaths. Let's face it, you've got to living in the Midlands. Big hills are far away, and you may only have half a day free... I've done the under-walked, pleasantly rural Grantham Canal (which winds from Nottingham 33 miles across the Vale of Belvoir in Leicestershire to Grantham in Lincs) and the only truly bad bit was at the Grantham end where hypodermic needles littered the path. I've also walked half the Chesterfield Canal (mmm... must do the Retford - Worksop section one day soon) and bits of the Trent & Mersey and the Llangollen (including the magnificent Pontcysyllte aqueduct over the river Dee). Not to mention the waterways of Venice and Amsterdam. But my big project is The Grand Union. It runs for nearly 150 miles from London to Birmingham and was engineered by William Jessop (1745-1814). You may not have heard of him as he was considerably more retiring than his self-publicizing contemporary Thomas Telford. It's one of those routes I've been walking haphazardly on-and-off for years. I've completed about one third of it (Birmingham's Gas Street Basin to Weedon in Northamptonshire) - sometimes doing "there-and-backs" (I don't mind at all retracing the same route) and sometimes using the train to return to the starting point. It was fun working out the logistics. Occasionally I even took a few hours off work in the afternoon - I used to be a 40,000 mile a year rep - to polish off another short stage in suit and posh shoes and with umbrella!!! Obsessed? Who, me? Anyhow, the guides to get are The Grand Union Canal Walk by Anthony Burton and Neil Curtis published by Aurum Press, or the one with the same title by C. Holmes published by Cicerone.

The Great Outdoors

I've read The Great Outdoors mag - or tgo as it now calls itself - right from the very first issue. (Though mainly for the unsurpassable essays by the legendary Jim Perrin it must be said.) I used to read it standing up for long periods in W. H. Smith until I could afford to buy it myself (maudlin sound of violins please!) There's no serious competition. Country Walking I find yawningly anodyne and middle-of-the-road, and Trail just makes me cringe. Ok - I know I'm probably the wrong age to appreciate it, but I just can't stand Trail's self-consciously trendy style as it tries to capture the outdoors youth market. So congratulations to Cameron McNeish for an excellent periodical. The mag's had its fair share of problems over the years with layout and presentation, but there's never been another monthly publication which could ever hope to match its maverick and committed philosophy. Long may it continue.

Perfect Day

Today started out such a perfect day. As Lou Reed once sang. A perfect day for a walk. The Peak District is my nearest area of top-quality walking territory. I decided in haste on a classic White Peak circular I'd done twice before but never in summer: Monyash - Lathkill Dale - Alport - Bradford Dale - Calling Low - One Ash Grange - Monyash. Lathkilldale is for me Derbyshire's loveliest dale, especially the upper and middle sections. A killer dale, one might say. At midday I set off down it. Yes - perfect. Knee seemed OK. Body and mind in smooth coordination. Feet hitting the right spots on the stony path. Focused, yet pleasantly vague at the same time - you know, that easy, familiar walking feeling. Blue sky, fluffy white clouds, sunshine, dappled shade. Languidly registering wild flowers - lots here on the limestone: St John's Wort, Herb-Robert, Lady's Bedstraw, Aaron's Rod. A little late in the year so only a few blooms of the rare Jacob's Ladder left - blue, bell-shaped flowers with yellow stamens. Wrens whirring across the path. Insects humming in the shade. Limestone outcrops flashing in the sunlight. Everything crisp and fresh and scented after an earlier rain shower. Pure, clear, crystal water gushing from Lathkill Head Cave. Never seen this before - often it's dry. I scoop mouthfuls with my hands. It's cold and delicious. I move on through the gorge, then into the wooded part. River weed streams in the current like Ophelia's hair. I think: Walking doesn't get much better than this. This is why I do it. Then, further downstream, things begin to fall apart. Sunday strollers, and families with barbecues, dogs and cigarettes coming up from Conksbury Bridge. At Alport there's a big walking-group-fest - a shock of clattering poles and ice-cream vans. I escape into Bradford Dale, but the clouds scud in, and my mood, already punctured, deflates. Soon there's torrential rain. A wintery, chill wind. Thunder. I plod on. Knee hurting again. Before One Ash Grange I change plan and retreat down Cales Dale, which soon joins Lathkilldale at a bridge over the swollen river. Limping back upstream to the car the weather miraculously clears, and all is calm and bright. A happy weariness in the late afternoon. Everything seems fine once more. And I think: Let me die in my footsteps. As Bob Dylan once sang.

County Tops (2)

County Tops may not be the sexiest of subjects in the walking canon, but I'll give it one more shot. Fired up by my discovery of the highest point in Notts, I decided to cross the eastern border and do the same in Lincs. Yes, Lincolnshire - where I was born and raised and went to school. And which I left at the very earliest opportunity! Yet there are so many secret, unsung delights to this county - the second largest in England. First of all, let's straighten out the myths. Lincolnshire is not all flat. True, the heights are not of Himalayan grandeur - but there is the "Lincoln Edge", that north-south-lying limestone escarpment, and there are the Wolds, those gentle chalk hills between Lincoln and the coast. And parts of the coastline can be wild, wet and wonderful walking over dune and marsh. Not to everyone's taste, I know, but variety is the spice...You can practically trip over hundreds of grey seals at Donna Nook; and you can see an extraordinary variety of birds at Gibraltar Point south of Skegness and in other RSPB Reserves further south on the Wash. But I digress. Back to the Tops... and specifically the trig pillar that marks Lincolnshire's highest point at the giddy altitude of 168 metres. I set out without map, without compass - and with only the vaguest sense of direction. I knew about the sinister Radio Listening Station (which looks just like a golf ball on a tee - or, some have said, an oversized "marital aid") just north of Normanby-le-Wold and that you had to park near there. So I did this, and edged furtively and probably illegally alongside fields of oilseed rape, startling rabbits, partridges and a flock of goldfinches as I went. This part of the Wolds was rather plateau-like so it was difficult to find any bit of ground higher than the next bit. However, I kept the faith, and eventually found the trig point, stained with lichen and bird droppings and half-hidden in vegetation (see photo). I wouldn't say the discovery was orgasmic - certainly not on a par with geocaching standards - but I felt quietly satisfied. Next Top - Bardon Hill in Leicestershire. Can't wait... but I might just spare you the sordid details!

County Tops (1)

Of course it goes without saying that since I started this walking blog it's been bucketing down with rain every day and I've also developed a slight problem with the left knee. The law of Murphy must have something to do with it. However one must turn the negative into the positive: being indoors has given me the chance to catch up on some reading (while watching the covers coming on and off at Wimbledon from the corner of my eye - natch!) One of the books I've taken down from my shelves has been Alan Dawson's invaluable The Relative Hills Of Britain, published in 1992 by the Cicerone Press. Most of this book deals with the Marilyns, those hills which are at least 500 ft higher than the land around them. (Dawson puts forward the concept of "relative height", ie the height of a hill compared to its surrounding area rather than compared to sea level.) But it was chapter 6, The County Tops, that I turned to. The County Tops are the highest points in each county. This isn't as simple as it appears. Dawson's list soon became out-of-date: between 1995 and 1998 Avon, Humberside and Cleveland were abolished; Rutland, Hereford and Worcester became independent entities again; and Berkshire was split into 6 Unitary Authorities. Furthermore, and intriguingly, my home county of Nottinghamshire's Top has changed. Instead of an indistinguishable spot 203m high on Newtonwood Lane overlooking the M1's Tibshelf Services, it's now situated a few miles from there at the summit of a conical bump in Silverhill Wood near the former mining village of Teversal. Measuring a staggering 205m (please understand, this is big for the East Midlands!), it's only 2 metres higher than the original Historic Top - but much prettier. The reason for the change? I've already given a clue. The relatively new parkland-forestry of Silverhill has been re-landscaped from the workings of the former Silverhill colliery which ceased production in 1992. So the new County Top is man-made - it's one of the restored colliery spoil heaps. The whole area was very pleasant when I visited a few weeks ago. I was so impressed with this imaginative reclamation project. There has been much tree planting and pond making, and birds and wild flowers were everywhere. And the New Top has now been crowned with a bronze sculpture, a tribute to the coal miners of Nottinghamshire (see photo - with Hardwick Hall in the middle distance). Unveiled in March 2005, it was created by Antony Dufort (who also sculpted the bronze statue of Maggie Thatcher recently erected at Westminster. Mmm... some irony here?) Unfortunately the plaque on the stone base, which listed the 65 principal coal mines of Nottinghamshire, has been vandalised and removed. The statue above depicts a miner "testing for gas" with a "Davey" lamp - the presence of deadly and explosive methane could be detected by a change in the flame's shape and colour. Silverhill colliery began production in 1875. At its peak it employed 1000 men and extracted 1 million tonnes of coal a year. But now there are only 3 working collieries in the whole of the county.

Wangari Maathai

Did you hear the inspiring Wangari Maathai on Radio 4's Desert Island Discs the other day? The first African woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, she stood up against Daniel Moi's oppressive regime in Kenya which finally came to an end in 2002. The next year she founded the Mazingira Green Party of Kenya. She also founded the Green Belt Movement which has planted over 30 million trees across Kenya to prevent soil erosion. The Nobel committee cited her huge contribution to sustainable development, democracy and peace. Known as "Tree Woman", she's a persistent campaigner against deforestation, a tireless activist on environmental and African women's issues. Born into the Kenyan Kikuyu culture in 1940, she spoke movingly on how the majestic sight of Mount Kenya had been her inspiration. The Kikuyu worshipped under trees and revered this mountain. Here are the last two paragraphs from her Nobel lecture of December 2004: As I conclude I reflect on my childhood experience when I would visit a stream next to our home to fetch water for my mother. I would drink water straight from the stream. Playing among the arrowroot leaves I tried in vain to pick up the strands of frogs' eggs, believing they were beads. But every time I put my little fingers under them they would break. Later, I saw thousands of tadpoles: black, energetic and wriggling through the clear water against the background of the brown earth. This is the world I inherited from my parents... Today, over 50 years later, the stream has dried up, women walk long distances for water, which is not always clean, and children will never know what they have lost. The challenge is to restore the home of the tadpoles and give back to our children a world of beauty and wonder.