A long walk back to nature

hiddeninnaturedesi

Jun 26

6 min read

Before I moved to the Scottish Borders, I lived in Edinburgh for around ten years. As a child, I loved the countryside, taking long rambles with my family almost every weekend. It was quite a change for me to move into town. Edinburgh is a very green city, and not large, so you are never very far from reaching the fields and hills, but still, my day-to-day life mostly kept me among the tenements of the town.

I missed the countryside a little, but I was at university and enjoying the social life of my early twenties; it wasn’t until I took a trip out to the Pentlands one day to climb Turnhouse Hill that I realised how much I had been missing the open space of the countryside. It wasn’t long after that trip that I asked a friend if she would like to join me in walking the West Highland Way. It was a spur-of-the-moment decision, but one that led me to eventually become a wildlife artist and an eternal lover of long-distance walking.

Life nowadays feels full of noise and pressure, but stepping out on a long-distance walk sets you free from all of that. From the first day, you have nothing to worry about but walking the miles that will bring you to that night's accommodation. Freed from the usual worries of life, you can enjoy everything you see around you, and that is mostly the British countryside and the wildlife that lives in it.

My first walk, the West Highland Way, is a popular walking route through the Scottish Highlands, from Milngavie (pronounced Mill-guy) to Fort William. It crosses some truly epic scenery, such as walking the length of Loch Lomond, hiking across the vast spaces of Rannoch Moor (with all its ten million midges in July and August), and climbing the heights of the Devil’s Staircase to look back on the famous Glencoe.

By the time my friend and I had reached Fort William, we had caught the bug of long-distance walking. A year later, we set out on the South Downs Way, a 100-mile walk through the rolling downs of Sussex. It was quite a different experience from the West Highland Way. Gone were the mountains and moorland; instead, there was rolling chalk downland and small, quaint villages with excellent pubs. We had one mad day where it rained so hard that the world was simply a white sheet of water around us, but that’s nature for you; it didn’t put us off.

The following year, we found ourselves by the coast, walking the Northumberland Coastal Path from Newcastle to Berwick-upon-Tweed. It was on this walk that I started to notice my love of wildlife and nature returning, and increasing. I had always loved wildlife, but as a child, it had been a passing curiosity about wild animals you frequently saw just from living in the countryside. A long-distance walk takes you into the deepest countryside, visiting places you would never reach on a regular day walk.

On the Northumberland coastal path, we crossed Druridge Bay, which felt like an endless stretch of golden sand and crashing waves, where you could see gulls skim the crests of waves and hear the piping sound of oystercatchers overhead. Herons hunted in the River Coquet below the bridges of Warkworth, and dolphins swam off the coast near the village of Craster. With each walk, I was falling more in love with our island's wilderness.

Over the next few years, we explored the length and breadth of Britain’s countryside through national trails and long-distance paths, including the Cotswold Way, Hadrian’s Wall, and one of England’s original national trails, the Cleveland Way, which covers the moorland and coast of the North York Moors.

The walk from Amble to Craster
Lordstones Country Park, Cleveland Way in Yorkshire
Through the Cotswolds, from Kings Stanley to Wotton-under-edge
Sycamore Gap on Hadrian's Wall

Northumberland Coastal Path, Cleveland Way, Cotswold Way, Hadrian's Wall.

Then, several years of walking later, disaster struck in the form of the 2020 COVID pandemic. I was trapped in the city, and though I was close to lovely cycle paths and parks, it was not the same. There were no wide open spaces, no long rambling paths through the hills where you barely met a soul all day. I took to going out early and spotting wildlife on the Water of Leith or bird watching along the quieter cycle paths, desperate, like so many, to stay in touch with the wild.

It was then that I started to draw birds; it was something to do that took my mind off being stuck inside and kept me close to nature. In May of that year, I had meant to walk Offa’s Dyke, a 198-mile route along the border between England and Wales, and my friend and I talked about it endlessly over the phone as the time came and went. I focused on my drawing and dreamed of the day when we would again be able to go out for longer than an hour.

It wasn’t until 2022 that we found ourselves in Chepstow, ready to set out on our longest walk yet. Almost three years since our last national trail, we were both pretty giddy with the excitement of our next adventure. It was on our first night's walk to the start of Offa’s Dyke, at Sedbury Cliffs, that I decided to start a nature journal. It would keep me sketching and be a reminder of our walk.

Sedbury Cliffs at the start of Offa's Dyke
Welsh ponies on Hatterrall Ridge
The hills to Knighton
Swans on the Montgomery Canal
The Clwydian Hills
Eglwyseg mountains

Sedbury Cliffs, Hatterrall Ridge, Hills beyond Knighton, Montgomery canal, Eglwyseg Mountains, Clwydian Hills.

Over the next twelve days, I sketched the following flora and fauna that we spotted as we walked the wild border country through the Wye Valley, over the Brecon Beacons, across the Shropshire Hills (a baking hot day of switchbacks never to be forgotten), and through the Clwydian Range of Hills into the seaside town of Prestatyn.

Sycamore branch – Spotted in the early evening while walking down a grassy, tree-lined path to the start of the walk at Sedbury Cliffs. The Sycamore branches were heavy with seed pods.
Foxglove – Spotted growing near Brockweir Brook; when we walked down into the valley where the brook flowed, the whole area was covered in foxgloves.
Honeybees and Clover – Spotted while walking through meadows on the way to Pandy. The clover was in flower, and the bees were busy flying between them.
Welsh Mountain Ponies – Spotted as we crossed Hatterrall Ridge from Pandy to Hay-on-Wye. The moorland ridge was full of ponies, many with foals.
Monkey Puzzle Tree – We spotted a grove of these trees growing on Hergest Ridge; they were deliberately planted there, but looked quite natural among the ferns and bracken of the ridge.
Red Kite – Spotted on several days of the walk, but the best moment was when we saw one circling above us, near Herrock Hill.
Poppies and Gatekeeper Butterfly – Spotted in the wheat fields near Montgomery, there were poppies scattered all around the field edge and some among the wheat. Gatekeeper and Meadow brown butterflies were enjoying the sunshine.
Moorhen – Spotted on the Montgomery canal, a flat day's walk along the restored canal. It’s a beautiful stretch of waterway and is filled with wildlife.
Female Kestrel – Spotted in the quarry above Llanymynech, the kestrel had landed a few feet from us, and we both eyed each other for several long seconds before it flew off to a more private spot further into the quarry.
Fern – Spotted in Trevor Hall Woods, the woods were cool and shady after the extremely hot weather we had been experiencing, and smelt of bracken and pine.
Bell Heather – Spotted in the Clwydian Hills. The purple heather was in flower, brightening up the hillside as we struggled over the steep slopes.
Swifts – Spotted while crossing fields near Marian Ffrith, the meadows were full of swifts, swallows, and martins darting through the sky.

This was only a small snapshot of everything we had seen. There had been the Peregrine falcon in the Clywdian Hills, cygnets and moorhen chicks on the Montgomery canal, a siskin on the edge of a small grove of pine trees, butterflies and bees in wildflower meadows, crows soaring off the Eglwyseg mountain scree slopes. The border country felt alive with nature, and we had seen so much of it just by walking from town to town.

Since Offa’s Dyke I have walked The Norfolk Coastal Path and Pedder’s Way, from Knettish Heath to Cromer, and the Cumbria Way, a wild Lake District walk from Ulverston to Carlisle. Over the next few years, I hope to walk the North Downs Way and the 268-mile-long Pennine Way, Britain’s oldest, and one of the most challenging, National Trails.