The nation’s outdoorsy reputation may not be fully deserved, according to the AllTrails app study, with many too scared to go on walks
Australians’ outdoorsy reputation may not be earned when it comes to survival skills, according to a new survey.
Just one in three Australians know how to deal with getting lost, while two in three Australians entirely reconsider going on trail walks due to safety concerns, according to research commissioned by popular hiking app AllTrails.
Continue reading...Ramblers criticise appointment of Robbie Douglas-Miller to Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
No 10 has appointed a wealthy Scottish landowner accused by ramblers of restricting public access to his estate as a new environment minister by making him a peer.
The government made the surprise announcement on Friday afternoon that the king was giving the title of baron to Robbie Douglas-Miller, allowing him to enter the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs as a minister.
Continue reading...English and Scottish walkers meet in mass trespass to call for greater public access to land in England and Wales, like the more generous laws of Scotland
Flag-waving activists for land reform have expressed their demands for greater freedom to roam in England and Wales by staging a symbolic trespass through farmland on the Scottish border.
In a bid to highlight Scotland’s far more generous rights of access to the countryside, around 40 campaigners tramped through boggy, dense woodland to arrive at an earth dyke north of Carlisle which once marked the medieval border.
Continue reading...The 87-mile trail follows the River Tamar and links with other routes to create circular walk around whole county
Following the banks of one of the UK’s great rivers, a new walking way has been unveiled linking the north and south coasts of Cornwall and for the first time creating a circular walk around the whole of the county.
The 87-mile (140km) Tamara Coast to Coast Way broadly tracks the River Tamar, which forms most of the border between Cornwall and Devon, taking in landscapes ranging from wooded valley to rolling farmland, heather-covered moors and areas shaped by the region’s mining history.
Continue reading...National Highways faces third intervention by a local authority over infilling, after burying Congham bridge in Norfolk in tonnes of concrete
A controversial practice by the government’s roads agency of burying historic railway bridges in concrete has been dealt a fresh blow after a third council intervened over another infilled structure.
King’s Lynn and West Norfolk council has told National Highways it must apply for retrospective planning permission if it wants to retain hundreds of tonnes of aggregate and concrete it used to submerge Congham bridge, a few miles east of King’s Lynn.
Continue reading...More than 3,000 people protest on estate of Alexander Darwall after his court victory ends right to wild camp in England
More than 3,000 people joined one of the UK’s largest ever countryside access protests on Saturday on the Dartmoor estate of a wealthy landowner who won a case ending the right to wild camp in England.
Groups of walkers, families, students and local people arrived by foot, shuttle bus and bike to the small Dartmoor village of Cornwood throughout the morning and then thronged for hours along moss- and ivy-draped lanes up on to the rugged, boulder-strewn moorland owned by the Conservative party donor and hedge fund manager Alexander Darwall.
Continue reading...Woman went missing on Friday night and extensive ground, sea and air search located her body on Saturday near Pearl beach on Central Coast
A body found in bushland on the New South Wales Central Coast is believed to be a missing 78-year-old American tourist.
Police were initially notified on Friday night that the woman had gone missing while bushwalking. They were told she was in bushland near Middle Head between Pearl and Patonga beaches.
Continue reading...Police believe Wallace died of hypothermia after walking through rugged bushland at 1am
The body of Esther Wallace has been found almost two weeks after the 47-year-old bushwalker disappeared in central west New South Wales, with police believing she died after a “terrible accident.
Police found the body at 4pm on Sunday about 2km from where Wallace was last seen at Federal Falls in the Mount Canobolas state recreation area, near Orange.
Continue reading...Walking briskly is beneficial for all health outcomes including dementia, heart disease, cancer and death
How fast you walk could be just as important for your health as how many steps you take each day, a new study suggests.
Researchers from the University of Sydney and the University of Southern Denmark found that 10,000 steps each day is the “sweet spot” to help lower the risk of disease and death. They also found that a faster pace, such as a brisk power walk, can have even greater benefits.
Continue reading...Suggestion of activities to help improve mental and physical health part of wider movement of ‘social prescribing’
GPs around England are to prescribe patients activities such as walking or cycling in a bid to ease the burden on the NHS by improving mental and physical health.
The £12.7m trial, which was announced by the Department for Transport and will begin this year, is part of a wider movement of “social prescribing”, an approach already used in the NHS, in which patients are referred for non-medical activities.
Continue reading...Nick Gardner bagged Cairn Gorm on Saturday, ending his quest in aid of Alzheimer’s and osteoporosis charities
An 82-year-old man said he felt “like a child on Christmas Eve” as he set out to scale the final peak in a mission to climb every Scottish Munro.
Nick Gardner embarked on the challenge in an attempt to raise funds for Alzheimer’s Scotland and the Royal Osteoporosis Society (ROS) after his wife, Janet, 84, who has since moved to a care home, developed both conditions.
Continue reading...Wollumbin track reopening delayed after floods, while hikers asked to reconsider climb out of respect for Indigenous sacred place
The fate of one of northern New South Wales’s most popular walking tracks remains uncertain after authorities chose to delay a controversial decision regarding its future for the fourth time.
Situated near the flood-hit town of Murwillumbah, Wollumbin national park previously attracted more than 100,000 visitors a year, and its summit is renowned as the first place in Australia to catch the sunrise.
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Continue reading...As campaign launched to enshrine right to green space, Bolton woman describes how ‘tranquility walks’ helped her through lockdown
During Covid lockdowns, Sharon Powell felt alone. She was caring for her father, 90, who was deteriorating from Parkinson’s disease and dementia, and looking after him had become increasingly difficult.
Social life in her community in Johnson Fold, Bolton, had been Powell’s escape from the pressure at home, but when Covid restrictions were introduced “everything was just gone”. She was depressed, anxious and having panic attacks “like a washing machine on full spin”.
This article was amended on 21 February 2022, to correct the spelling of Trish Goodwin’s name.
Continue reading...Rewilding has become a mantra in one Cairngorms glen – but some see initiatives to restore its forestland as a threat
Glen Feshie is one of the magnificent valleys on the north-west side of the Cairngorm massif where the forest has been released from the tyranny of grouse and deer. During the deer-stalking centuries of the 1800s and 1900s, there were 50 deer per square kilometre. Now there are one or two, and the critically endangered capercaillie are coming back. This is the place, I’ve heard, to look for the natural treeline in Scotland.
I arrive in the evening, the day before midsummer, and pitch my tent by the river. Scotland’s right to roam allows wild camping to an extent those south of the border can only dream of. The brown water is dark in the depths under the bridge, and cold. In the still-bright sunlight I walk up the valley and come to a spot where the path widens and a vista of sheer grey hills opens out. This was the setting for The Monarch of the Glen, a famous painting by Landseer of a princely 12-point stag framed by the crags above the valley.
Continue reading...As my family were neither middle class nor white European I didn’t venture into the bush until I was an adult – I’ll never forget my first time
Nothing beats the New Zealand bush. The writer Ashleigh Young once tweeted: “Sometimes NZ writers say ‘the forest’ instead of ‘the bush’ (and they definitely mean ‘the bush’) because they are nervous about saying ‘the bush’. Bring back the bush. If everyone does it, we will be fine.”
So here I am, proclaiming, “I love the bush!” Perhaps this is my opinion as an outdoor enthusiast and bisexual, but “bush” is the more accurate descriptor for the native flora of Aotearoa. Our bush is dense and scratchy, inured to the trample of boots. Our bush is thick and lush all year round, as few native plant species are deciduous. Our bush is not some wan forest: it is wild and overgrown, it does not encourage easy passage.
Continue reading...At first I was full of dread but as I pressed on I noticed things I had never seen in daylight
I’m scared of getting lost in the bush. This is unusual for an essayist. Most of us like to go for a walk in disorienting landscapes and get completely lost so that we can write about it.
Rebecca Solnit wrote that getting lost is “a voluptuous surrender” but this sounds to me like walking in increasingly frantic circles, getting cold and hungry as night closes in, until you have no option but to dig yourself a little hole and cover yourself in leaves.
Continue reading...Scotland’s newly reopened mountain bothies are shining examples of sustainable tourism. Our photographer takes us on a guided tour
The Mountain Bothies Association (MBA) charity has reopened its 105 mountain huts, shelters and howffs after more than a year of closure due to Covid. The overwhelming majority of these are in Scotland and they reopened in August for what the MBA described as “responsible use”, pointing out that Covid has not gone away. The bothies are all sorts of shapes and sizes in varied locations – many are extremely remote and operated with the agreement of owners and estates and maintained by MBA volunteers since the late 60s and early 70s.
Above,Allt nam Fang, approaching Meanach Bothy; right, Meanach Bothy, renovated in 1977, is approximately 1,000ft above sea level
Continue reading...From atmospheric Berlin to Joyce’s Trieste, via Marseille’s markets and a wellbeing walk in Copenhagen, city strolls reward the curious rambler
The art of flâneur-ing might be French and its most famous practitioners Parisians, but other European cultures have walking traditions, from the Italian passeggiata and Spanish paseo – social promenades to take the air as dusk falls – to German wanderlust: hiking with desire. Nothing opens up a city like a long ramble on foot. It’s the only way to make a place your own and unearth discoveries not listed in guidebooks or apps.
Continue reading...It is every climber’s worst nightmare. In this extract from his thrilling book about the glorious – and treacherous – Cuillin Ridge on Skye, Simon Ingram recalls the day its wild peaks almost took his life
I had been out of signal for most of the day, so when my phone suddenly stirred in my pocket, I decided to have a look. Remembering a climbing maxim – “Don’t try to do two things at once” – I shouted for my friend Kingsley to hang on, stopped and took out my mobile. The message was junk, but I took the opportunity to send some that weren’t and then check my voicemail.
Wandering absent-mindedly to where a boulder jutted off into the mist, I noticed Kingsley moving down the path. Shouting to alert him that I’d stopped, I brought the handset up to my ear and looked out at the cloud hanging off the Cuillin Ridge, waiting for the phone to connect. I took another step, just a small one to the left. And then everything went wrong.
Continue reading...Organisations in Scotland say they have tried to contact Google about the dangers but received no reply
Scottish mountaineering charities have criticised Google for suggesting routes up Ben Nevis and other mountains they say are “potentially fatal” and direct people over a cliff.
The John Muir Trust, which looks after the upper reaches of the UK’s highest mountain, said attempts to contact the company over the issue had been met with silence.
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