History is all around you when you’re hillwalking. Mountain time travel is in the ancient trading routes, coffin trails and Roman ways you follow through our high places. It’s in the 16th-century stone walls you use to handrail along, and in the many tumuli, barrows and settlements marked on your map. It’s in the landscape, too; in glacial valleys, strata-striped cliff faces, limestone pavements, and peaks formed in the molten bellies of long-dead volcanos.
Main image: Blà Bheinn in its winter coat, Isle of Skye | Credit: Joshua Adeyemi (@talesbyjosh)
As Winter is often a time for nostalgia, our December winter skills special is dedicated to this free-range type of history, the kind walkers absorb by a gentle process of curiosity-driven osmosis. If this is how you like your history dished up, Britain is a brilliant place to be. We don’t just have some of the oldest exposed rocks anywhere in the world – we also have a time-bending array of petrified forests, fossilised dinosaur footprints, glacial cirques and Neolithic settlements. There are walks that will transport you back 3 billion years to the Precambrian era or guide you through the geological ruins of the last Ice Age. Who needs a time machine when the landscape wears its history so proudly on its sleeve? And as a reminder that time can travel extremely fast, there’s also plenty in this issue to indicate that we’re well on our way towards winter. You’ll find inspiration for wintery routes in our Wild Walks section and a bumper 10-page winter skills special headed up by the experts at Glenmore Lodge.
Highlights of this issue:
- 10 pages of winter skills advice from the experts at Glenmore Lodge
- Go time travelling with ice age polar bears and the dinosaurs on British walks through history
- Dave Sexton remembers guarding the first white-tailed eagle chick to hatch in Britain for 100 years
- Mountain Style: Max Leonard and Henry Iddon take us for a tour through 70 years of summit fashion
- Isis Taylor goes era-hopping in the Costa Blanca, exploring Neolithic cave paintings and Moorish fortresses
- Mapped big snow days taking in the high points of Britain in her winter coat
- We launched our annual TGO Reader Awards!
PLUS: Jim Perrin paints a portrait of Moelfre; we escape on a snow-clad Yr Wyddfa; our gear team tests the best winter sleeping bags, group tents and sleeping mats; Nadia Shaikh looks towards winter in praise of the red fox; Juls Stodel helps another reader with their own Uphill Struggle; we share the latest news from the mountains; check the calendar of walking events we rate; and get inspired with our reviews of the latest outdoor books.
Mountain time travel awaits:
Rock of Ages: Fossilised dinosaur prints, volcanic craters, ice-carved corries – there are places in Britain where the landscape is a portal to the past. Hanna Lindon takes a stroll through 4 billion years of British history.
“On Skye’s sea-girt northwestern coastline, where the toes of the Trotternish Ridge crumble into the sea, is a small, sheltered bay. The rocks here form a sort of stepped pavement, which curves protectively around a small crescent of sand. This is An Corran Beach; and it’s one of just a handful of places in the world where you can walk in the footsteps of dinosaurs. The fossilised prints at An Corran were left in the rich mud of a tropical lagoon by a group of meat-eating theropods. That was over 165 million years ago, back when Skye occupied roughly the same latitude as North Africa, but the marks look like they were made yesterday. Put your own foot next to one of those three-toed prints, and you get the feeling that history is breathing down the back of your neck. It’s the closest real life comes to time travel. There are places like this all over Britain; time-capsule topography, where the past comes alive in the colours and contours of the rock or in the marks left by lifeforms long extinct. And, if you know how to read the clues left behind by history, a walk through these landscapes can become an imaginative dive into deep time…”
Mountains of Style: Today, down jackets built for K2 are worn on the school run and premium waterproofs pop up in pubs. In their photo book, Max Leonard and Henry Iddon track down hard-as-nails but unheralded mountaineers of the past and the fabric innovators who put them safely – and sometimes even stylishly – on summits to ask: how did we get here?
“The conquest of Everest was a watershed. Part of that was the advanced clothing it introduced: down jackets from France and one of the first synthetic-cotton fabrics in the windsuits that Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay wore. It also kickstarted an explosion in the popular love of the outdoors. Around this time, the first national parks, Outward Bound and the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award were created, helping many more people enjoy the outdoors. Everest’s innovations didn’t trickle down quickly. In that immediate post-war period, austerity still reigned, and most people wore woolly jumpers and breeches or old work clothes when they headed out to the hills. But change, driven by new materials, was not far away…”
Window to the Past: Alicante is famous for its beaches; less so for its hiking. But in the Sierra de la Serrella, a short hop from the city, Isis Taylor discovers a network of trails that combine natural beauty with an insight into ancient culture.
“The track turned rough underfoot, uneven and clearly less travelled. I was following faded waymarks when I felt it; eyes. Two dogs stood frozen behind a barbed wire fence, tails stiff. A human-shaped shadow lingered in the background. I quickened my pace. In the middle of the track lay a lone sun-lounger, an empty bottle of cerveza and a still-smoking cigarette. I was on the right path, so why did it feel like I was trespassing? This must be the territory of the infamous Stone-Throwing Farmer – the local legend Juan had warned me about. I later heard rumours that, after a few too many rocks were hurled in the direction of unsuspecting tourists, the local government stepped in with a hushed payout to secure access over this visitor-adverse farmer’s land. Still, much like the smoke from his cigarette, his presence was not entirely welcoming. As I wound through interlocking valleys, passing below a spectacular double limestone arch known as Els Arcs, the sky melted from burnt orange to soft lavender. Then the stillness was broken by a sharp scent carried on the breeze: boars. A second later and a rustle. A pack of wild boars erupted out from the bushes below me, crossed the main path, and disappeared as quickly as they had appeared. My heart raced. The hush soon returned; but I had never felt more alive…”
Winter is Coming: Our annual winter skills special returns, with essential tips, tricks and advice from Scotland’s national outdoor training centre, Glenmore Lodge.
“Winter is coming, and it won’t all be bluebird days of grippy neve, sunglasses and views for miles. No doubt they’ll be some epic days, but on the whole, ‘having an epic’ is something to be avoided! And so we’re delighted to be working in partnership with Scotland’s national outdoor training centre once again for this year’s Winter Skills Special. Many of our older readers will have a relationship with Glenmore Lodge. It’s an institution for good reason. This time, we’re guided safely through the mysteries of avalanche prone terrain by senior forecaster for the Scottish Avalanche Information Service, Graham Moss. Mountaineering Instructor Tom Weston answers our practical questions on what to put in our winter packs and puts the age-old crampons vs microspikes argument to bed once and for all. And we meet the next generation of Instructors, partaking of what Glenmore Lodge does best – sharing knowledge, helping people thrive, and celebrating the magic and grit of winter.”
