A winter’s trail: seasonal UK walks from Devon to Scotland
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The stark landscapes of mid-winter are the best time for enjoying the elements on these routes. Our writers tell us the personal stories behind their favourite hikes. You can concertina this walk into a couple of hours, or else pack a lunch, take all day and let it breathe. Its centrepiece is Derwent Edge, a line in the sky running south to north, the preferred direction of travel, past a series of rocks and outcrops with down-to-earth names, like the Wheel Stones, the Salt Cellar and the Cakes of Bread, that don’t do justice to their sculptural mystery.
![[A view of Ladybower reservoir on the Derwent Edge walk.]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/9a43dca5773a8810046f7f93fca10424416c88d8/0_0_7200_4321/master/7200.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
To the east there are grouse moors. But west and north are what we’ve come for, a wide panorama of wildness and space. Below, the upper Derwent valley is filled with a reservoir, and on its far side rolling moors and hidden valleys stretch into the desolate distance. This is a landscape that was for centuries cropped and burned and emptied of nature but is now taking steps towards recovery, with deciduous trees emerging to offset some boring spruce plantations that in places smother the hillside. Things may be getting better, nature-wise. For now, though, the main attraction is elemental: wind and light that cleanse the soul, cloudscapes and showers of stinging rain.
![[The Avon & Union Canal near Edinbugh.]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/4621f422d823bac35e08f4ebaee4e7bcd54393d6/0_0_8688_5213/master/8688.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
I love Derwent Edge for all those things, and across four decades have walked it every so often, on hot summer days and in the depths of winter when the northern sky was turquoise and pink, and hard snow squeaked with cold. But it’s most special for one Christmas Day many years ago.
![[Culbone church is in a remote Exmoor glade on the South West Coast Path]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/73ebbfb9b841dbdb95129b4c597b4cccbfa8822b/0_248_7360_4415/master/7360.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
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