Great British literary walks

Great British literary walks


WILLIAM GILPIN - Wye Valley (6 miles)
William Gilpin’s Observations on the River Wye, published in 1782 (and now reprinted by Pallas Athene), extolled the river’s picturesque charms and they are at their best on the Goodrich-Symonds Yat circular walk, one of the routes in “Walk this Wye”, a free booklet available at local tourist offices, which you can also order online: go to www.wyevalleyaonb.org.uk and look for “Publications” under “News & Activities”.
Picture: GETTY


JANE AUSTEN - Chawton, Hampshire (4.5 miles)
Starting from the house Jane lived in for the last eight years of her life, from 1809 to 1817, this walk takes in the church where her mother and sister, Cassandra, are buried and includes a stretch along a disused railway line. Details: website for Edward Thomas walk. www.easthants.gov.uk/edo/tourism.nsf/webpages/walking
Picture: CHRISTOPHER COX


WILLIAM WORDSWORTH - Rydal and Grasmere, Cumbria

Reading The Grasmere Journals by Dorothy Wordsworth
Distance 5 miles; Map OS Explorer OL7: The English Lakes South-eastern Area

The route Details in “Wordsworth Walk Two” under “Walks – Kendal and the Southern Lakes” at www.lakedistrictoutdoors.co.uk

Is this the most popular literary walk in the country? No matter, it merits having its praises repeatedly resung for this stroll around the navel of the Lakes should be regarded as a compulsory initiation into England’s most beautiful region. Wordsworth put the Lake District on the map for tourists and his spirit still haunts its fells and waters.

This circular walk takes in tiny Dove Cottage, where he produced his best work and wrote that epic manifesto of poetic Romanticism, The Prelude, and Rydal Mount, where he lived the last 37 years of his life, as well as the Wordsworth Trust Museum, the graveyard where he and his sister Dorothy are buried, and two of Cumbria’s loveliest small lakes, Grasmere and Rydal Water. As you follow the southern shore of the latter lake, look across to the opposite shore and there is Nab Cottage, the home of that “English opium-eater”, Thomas

De Quincey. Note, too, the island in the middle of Grasmere, where Wordsworth, Dorothy and Coleridge went for picnics.
Picture: DAVID BURGES


SIR WALTER SCOTT - Loch Katrine

Reading Rob Roy by Sir Walter Scott
Distance 13 miles; Map OS Explorers 364, 365: Loch Lomond North/The Trossachs

When Scott’s epic poem, The Lady of the Lake, was published in 1810 it was an immediate literary sensation. Set in and around Loch Katrine in the scenic Trossachs, where the Highlands and Lowlands meet, it relates the story of Ellen Douglas, exiled on an island in the loch. In a forerunner of the “Captain Corelli effect” readers flocked to the area in their thousands to see for themselves the real-life locations of the poem. Scott repeated the trick with his novel Rob Roy, about the Highland outlaw and folk hero Rob Roy MacGregor, who was reputedly born on the shores of the loch.

This walk includes locations relevant to both works (for example, Ellen’s Isle and the burial ground of the MacGregors) and involves a pleasurable cruise on the loch’s resident steamship – inevitably called the Sir Walter Scott. Take the 10.30am sailing, get off at Stronachlachar Pier at 11.15 and simply walk back along the shore road through a glorious landscape fit for the top of a chocolate box. Details of sailings at www.lochkatrine.com .
Picture: Tim Hurst