A summary

Having completed a walk around the coast of Britain, which kept me out of mischief for 12 years’ holidays, I decided to set myself some more challenges, giving me an incentive to keep walking. I started a South-North walk, which is still in progress as I type this, and an East-West walk, which I have just completed.

But did I learn anything? Have I reached any earth-shattering conclusions about the nature of the landscape and the state of the nation? Not really. But this walk did throw up a few contrasts and similarities which I, at least, found interesting.

Strangely, in an area so bereft of water, walking in East Anglia is an activity bound up with watercourses. From Lowestoft, I wandered into Norfolk and back into Suffolk several times, often following ancient routes between bridging points over natural and artificial waterways. Because land reclamation started early, the tracks and drove roads have been established for centuries. As for hills, there aren’t any! You might see this or that hill on the map, but it will be no more than a slight bump in the flatness.

Cambridgeshire is slightly more rolling in parts, but it wasn’t until I reached the Bedfordshire/Hertfordshire area that I started to climb a few real hills. The Chilterns, basically a great fractured slab of ground, tilted and aligned from South West to North East (where I met them) provided some serious hills and the views to go with them. Then it was flat again, across Aylesbury Vale into Oxfordshire, to reach the Cotswolds North West of the City of Oxford. The Chilterns and, especially, the Cotswolds, are pretty, in contrast with the flatlands of the East which are magnificent but stark.

Once I descended from the Cotswolds near Cheltenham, I made my way across the Severn Valley in Gloucestershire, and then through the most interesting landscape I had so far encountered, the Forest of Dean. Thick forest hides pockets of former mining and industry, and also hid from this inattentive walker an awful lot of contour lines – this was tough walking, but fascinating.

Entering Wales at Monmouth, I walked through some pleasant countryside to Abergavenny, and there I had a choice to make. The pretty route would have taken me North West, into the Brecon Beacons. But I headed South West across the South Wales Valleys. I had read about the “re-greening” of these valleys following their industrialisation and post-industrial decline. I found ample evidence of the decline, but also of new-found confidence here, as slag heaps and open-cast mines have become country parks, with a few examples of the industrial past kept as tourist attractions. In terms of effort, walking across the Valleys, deliberately cutting across the grain of the land, brought hard work but also rewards, in the form of views and variety.

By the time I had clambered out of my last Valley, I was in Carmarthenshire, pleasant if unspectacular rolling countryside, let down by the (in my experience) unprecedentedly appalling state of the footpaths (see separate moans within this blog).

And then to Pemrokeshire, a lovely county altogether, but particularly beautiful on the coast. Finishing my journey by walking along the coast to St David’s Head brought a guaranteed burst of pure pleasure (and guaranteed hard work up and down the coast path). The contrast between the featureless land and wide horizons at the beginning of my adventure, and the rugged coastline at the end, was very great in terms of “feel”, although the height difference between one end of the walk and the other was just a few tens of feet. Below is a sketch map of my route, with the stopovers.
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