After our rainy winter, spring has got well into its stride, and these 20 walks across the country are full of it. Primroses, celandines, bluebells and the white flowers of pungent wild garlic are all on show under hedges and trees, from the Devil’s Punch Bowl in Surrey to the wheelchair-accessible old railway nature reserve at Smardale in eastern Cumbria. You’ll find apple blossom frothing pink and white in the Bulmers cider orchards at Herefordshire, and tender green leaves sprouting on the chestnuts and beeches of the parkland at Blatherwycke in Northamptonshire.
Brown hares are cantering and skylarks belting out song over the downland fields of Oxfordshire, Hampshire and Wiltshire. Avocets and terns are well on with their nesting in the gravel pit lakes at Cliffe Pools, down on the Kentish shore of the River Thames. And further north, ring ouzels are whistling in watery nooks of the Scottish Highlands, while the moors of Lancashire, Yorkshire and Northumberland are haunted by the bubbling cries of nesting curlew, the sentinels of spring in these northern uplands.
You must log in or register to comment.