Country Walking

Country Walking Magazine shows you the best of British walks: the biggest views, the hidden gems, the sea cliffs and the mountain summits. All our features come complete with superb writing, inspiring photography and step-by-step instructions so you can follow every footpath yourself. In every issue, you’ll find: - In-depth stories of amazing walks - A booklet of 25 pull-out walks every issue - with OS maps! - Information about hotels, pubs, cafes, tearooms. - Clear, jargon-free tests of walking kit And... every issue our readers tell their walking stories, help us devise new walks and shape the places we go to. If you love walking, this is the magazine for you.

Welcome

IN THIS ISSUE…

The View • SIGHTS | SOUNDS | WONDERS | IDEAS | COOL STUFF

5 THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW THIS MONTH

LOVED TO BITS

HOW TO

SHOULD BE FAMOUS

THE WALKING POLL

A walk can be an escape, a protest… even an act of desperation • Poet Sasha Dugdale explains how she came to curate Ten Poems About Walking – and why 20 lines of Wordsworth can break your heart.

THREE QUESTIONS WE ASK EVERYONE

SALCOMBE • With its mild climate, abundant seafood and miles of dramatic coastal beauty, Salcombe is a top year-round walking destination (and right now, it's at its quietest!).

Don't miss…

What a year! • Your top pics and reasons why the world's a more brilliant and beautiful place when you're walking 1000 miles through it.

Get ready to feel ALIVE in 2025! • Sign up for the challenge in its historic 10th year, secure your launch pack, pin your optimism to your chest and plan to make 2025 an awesome adventure!

Let's go on a badger hunt! • Spice up your miles by taking on a mini-challenge and you could win a golden effigy of the challenge mascot – this lot just found out they have!

This month's challenges

Your View

Where's Kes? • Every month our favourite spaniel Kes goes walkies somewhere in the issue, and we want him back! Can you help find Kes?

Stuart Maconie • Seeing young relatives discover the joy of climbing a mountain for the first time is something special. But which mountain should it be, and why?

The Winter's Trail • A Shakespeare play gave us the theme for this issue, so let's take a walk in the footsteps of the Bard to see the very best of ‘old December's bareness everywhere’.

Shakespearean strolls

Plan your trip

Get knotted! • A spectacle gathers on our coast in winter – a family on holiday from the Arctic.

Journey to the Pole (IN SCOTLAND) • Spend a weekend in the Angus Glens in the bootprints of two incredible stories – one Antarctic and one Arctic.

Flowers in the snow • A botanist who followed her curiosity as far as the terrain would take her, in these hills and far beyond, sets all walkers a wonderful example.

Plan your trip

Sealed with a kiss • A parasite fraught with torrid associations, mistletoe is a shall we say bold symbol of romance.

‘In summer, I live. In winter, I exist.’ • Hannah Hauxwell farmed 80 acres of remotest Teesdale for more than 60 years, becoming a national treasure along the way. CW salutes the world's most famous Daleswoman, who faced the barest teeth of winter… and smiled.

Plan your trip

As white as snow • Star-shaped tracks tell tale of a speedy, determined and ferocious hunter – on manoeuvres and undercover.

The nightmare after Christmas • Alone at night on a hilltop during the worst blizzard in decades; blinded, shoeless, and surrounded by lethal drops. You'd need the bloody mindedness of a 19th-century vicar to survive that…

Plan your trip

Out on your ear • Keep your eyes open in winter for a disquietingly lifelike ear-shaped...