On walking up hills

My book, ‘The Hillwalking Bible’, is out tomorrow! Here's an extract from the Introduction [1400 words, 6 mins read

It's one of those cold, clear November mornings. At half past seven, primrose coloured light is seeping up into the bottom of the sky. As I lock the house behind me, an owl hoots somewhere in the dark woods. Cold air on my face, cold air in my nose every time I take a breath, my footsteps crunchy in the frost along the empty road. After half an hour, the first sun lights up the hillside above me. The dead bracken glows like a fox who's just had a shampoo and blow dry. Sunlight creeps downwards, lies in streaks across the fields, highlighting a white cottage, laying grey-blue shadow along the dip of a stream.

‘The Hillwalking Bible’, published by Conway (an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing) on 23 May 2024. More about the book (and order it at a small discount) here. Note: this is currently cheaper than Amazon. Ordering direct from the publisher doubles their profit and also my royalty from the sale.

Against the horizontal sunlight the ruined Morton Castle is an old painting that's just had the varnish scraped off back to its original colours. And again, upside down, in the mirror-flat lochan. Fifteen minutes up the hill, the wide valley is spread below, the woodlands chocolate brown, the fields the green of peppermint icing, farm ponds gleaming like silver foil. Today, in the second autumn after lockdown, there'll be queues for the cairn on Snowdon and Scafell Pike. But here on Morton Mains Hill, it's Margo in the yellow jacket and Julie in the red one, two neighbours from the nearby town – and jolly surprising to see any other people at all up here. They're surprised as well, and we chat for a minute before they head round to the little reservoir behind the hill and I head up along the ridge.

Two neighbours heading up Morton Mains Hill

It's a tiny one, Morton Mains Hill, just 328 metres high. But it sticks into the curve of the valley so you see all the way down to Criffel Hill behind Dumfries, the shine of the Solway Firth, a bumpy blue shadow that's the hills of England on the other side. Up here on East Morton there's clumps of sedge-grass going ochre brown, and the grass path of a shepherd's quad bike, and the bank of an Iron-age hill fort. And high above the reservoir, a bird-shape that's big, and never moves its wings – long fingershape wings, slightly splayed at the ends – can it be the Southern Upland eagle, reintroduced last summer in the higher hills away in the east? No, silly – it turns, much too quick for an eagle, and shows its slightly forked tail. It's a red kite, they've been back in our valley for the last five years now.

Two more little hills ahead of me, and I'll still be home in time for lunch.

Walking. By the time we're five years old, most of us are pretty good at it. As humans we've been at it for the best part of two million years. If you wanted to gather some berries that just came into season over in the next valley, or track down a tasty elk, or explore the sexual opportunities in the villages down the river – you went for a walk. And if you were good at walking – not just strong in the legs and lungs, but clear eyed in understanding the country, cunning in working out your way, logistically skilled in the simple art of packing the rucksack – if you were good at walking, you were good at life.

Moel Siabod above Capel Curig, Snowdonia (Eryri). As well as advice and encouragement, the book has 16 sample routes for starting off on¹.

Walking as a form of fun is more recent. I date it from Monday 2nd August 1802, when the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge tore the twigs off his wife's besom broom to make a walking stick and set off for a nine-day hike around the Lake District. Before that Monday morning, the hills and the long distance paths weren't a form of fun because they were just everyday life. Across the Southern Uplands to Edinburgh to get an education. Down the Great North Road to get a job. Across the Pennines in a snowstorm to visit your best female friend in the Vale of York.

But our ancestor of fifty thousand years ago, who picked her way up the icefield and reached the rocky ridgetop – looked out over the undiscovered valley, with its lake and its fish, its grasslands and woods, its river running down just so and its small hills arranged just so – we know that a little flame of delight burned in her heart. We know because, standing on Ben Lomond or Snowdon or the Coniston Old Man, the same little flame will burn in us as well.

Tricky routefinding above Loch Ossian, Scottish Highlands

Hillwalking, or walking along the coastline or over the bleak, empty moors: this is a natural, non-technical form of fun. It doesn't need much specialist kit, and the knowledge and skills you need are ones you'd already have if you'd only been born in the Stone Age. Maybe, living in cities, we've lost the habit of using our legs to get about the place. We may have forgotten how to head out into unknown country with only our brains and eyes to guide us. But those skills are still there, written into our minds by two million years of evolution. Plus, we've got our mobile phone and some excellent Ordnance Survey maps.

They don't know it, but three people I talked to a few weeks ago got me to write this book. The first is a neighbour who likes to go running. Not fast running, but quite a long way, ten miles or more on the farm tracks and little country roads. Now, the Southern Upland hills above where we live, they're just ideal for that sort of sport. Southern Uplands are grassy on top, with helpful grouse-shooter tracks, one hill linked to the next in wide, gentle ridgelines. No pools of tractor slurry, no muck spreaders trundling past, and great views out over the glens. Why doesn't she go running up on the Southern Uplands?

"Oh, no," she says. "Because I might get lost."

The other two were above Burnmoor Tarn, on the old corpse road from Wasdale Head. They were heading back round to Eskdale after a day up Scafell Pike. They'd enjoyed their day up and down the busiest path on England's highest hill. But –

Upper Eskdale and Scafell Pike

Starting direct from Eskdale, there are some deeply wonderful ways onto Scafell Pike. You go by the huge, empty place that's the Great Moss, up beside the long waterfall called Cam Spout, to the dramatic little saddle below England's biggest crags. In the huge emptiness of the Great Moss you might meet two or three other people. Then again, you might not. Instead of all that, the two people on my path have chosen to hike around the hill to one of England's busiest car parks, so's to head up the wide, rebuilt path behind a hundred other people.

On Barrow above the Vale of Keswick, with Skiddaw behind

Walking up Scafell Pike from Wasdale (and then back down again the same way); Snowdon from Pen-y-pass (supposing you can get into the car park, which you can't); the Yorkshire Three Peaks, or even only one of them. Yes, these are enjoyable; and you almost certainly won't get lost. But I'm hoping this book will take you a little further. Or a whole lot further, over the hundreds of other hills the UK has to offer. The downlands of the South, the windy sea-cliffs, the grim peatmoors of the Pennines, the craggy corners of the Lake District, the harsh, romantic glens of Scotland. Using the wild country navigation embedded in your brain by two million years of evolution, along with a compass (costs £15), a map (about the same), and the mapping app on your mobile phone.

Walking up hills. It's what legs, and lungs, were made for.

My preferred cover. The marketting people chose a different one…

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1. Walla Crag, Halls Fell on Blencathra, Great Gable, YHA circuit of the Scafells (Lake District); Hartington Valleys, Kinder Scout (Peak District), Ingleborough limestone, Durdle Door, (England elsewhere) Moel Siabod, Pen y Fan (Wales), St Cuthbert’s Way (Scotland/England), Ben Lomond, Meall nan Tarmachan, Mamores, West of the West Highland Way (Scottish Highlands); Stubaital High Level Route (Austria)