A guide to Britain’s 20 wildest walks
The week before last I walked the sea walls of Canvey Island. No one would call this shore of the lower Thames conventionally wild — there were fuel tankers in the channel and oil refinery flames in the sky. But there were also skylarks singing, shelduck feeding on the mudflats and reed buntings nesting along the ditches. The wild and the workaday were co-existing very nicely on the RSPB’s brand new West Canvey Marsh Reserve.
As we have become tamer, more urbanised and less in touch with the natural world, our fascination with the wild has grown. We long for contact with wild places, wild life and wild experiences, just to keep sane. When we step outside, we find to our relief that Britain has not been tamed by concrete and health-and-safety.
Wildness and walking — they’re synonymous. It doesn’t matter if it’s the margins of a ploughed field or a Scottish mountain-top, a salt-marsh in the middle of an RAF bombing range or a tangle of ancient woodland. The hare in the furrow, the storm-shattered crag, the curlew over the mudflats or the toadstool in the leafmould: they are all “other”, they are not us. You can get where they only are by walking there.
Here are 20 walks in the wild. Wildlife reserves, seawall paths, an ancient forest, a flowery limestone wilderness. These evoke the wild places of the imagination — druids and wicked witches, Norse legends, real-life tragedies. And there are uplands, hills, moors, mountains. Pen-y-fan, the crown of the Brecon Beacons; Glen Doll in the Angus glens; a windswept and captivating circuit of the Isle of Iona.
Which brings us back to Canvey Island. Wildness is all around; you just have to open your eyes to it. These 20 walks are wild and wonderful — but there are 20 more outside your back door. Stick a sandwich in your pocket, grab an OS Explorer map — and go.
Guide to difficulty ratings
1/5 A gentle, largely flat walk requiring little effort and ideal for those who want to start walking in the countryside
2/5 This walk requires moderate effort and has one or two modest ascents
3/5 Those after a moderate challenge will enjoy these walks: the terrain may be rough, there will be some ascents/descents
4/5 These are aimed at experienced walkers who enjoy demanding routes that are long and/or require physical effort; may require specialist hill-walking gear
5/5 For very knowledgeable walkers: parts of the route will not be marked by a path, there will be several steep ascents/descents and correct outdoor kit is essential
Walks
1 Whernside, North Yorkshire
2 Blanchland and Rookhope, Co Durham
3 Rough Tor and Brown Willy, Bodmin Moor, Cornwall Pages
4 Croaghan, Co Antrim
5 Slaidburn, Whitendale and Dunsop Bridge, Forest of Bowland, Lancashire
6 Dunsyre and the Covenanter’s Grave, South Lanarkshire
7 Gedney Drove End, Lincolnshire
8 Wayland’s Smithy and White Horse, Oxfordshire
9 Barbury Castle, Swindon, Wiltshire
10 Pen-y-fan and Cribyn, Brecon Beacons
11 Isle of Iona Inner Hebrides
12 Swine Sty and Big Moor, Peak District, Derbyshire
13 Ebbor Gorge and Priddy, Somerset
14 West Canvey Marsh RSPB Reserve, Essex
15 Glen Doll and the Den of Altduthrie, Angus
16 Pagham Harbour, West Sussex
17 Grassington Moor, Wharfedale, North Yorkshire
18 Hutton Roof Crags, near Burton-in-Kendal, Cumbria
19 Bedford Purlieus, near Wansford, Cambridgeshire
20 Wistman’s Wood, Dartmoor, South Devon