WalksAndWalking

Walks And Walking – The AA Magazine Autumn Walks

Autumn is nearly upon us, and with the delicious morning air laced with the scent of damp leaves comes the inescapable urge to tramp through a forest carpeted with them. The AA Magazine has pinpointed its favourite six Autumn Walks and woods to go walking in, so check out their list here – from Faskally Forest in Scotland down to Bedgebury in Kent – and see if you agree. Why not get in touch, too, with your own Fall favourites?

The AA Magazine Autumn Walks

No matter how old I get I still find myself picking up fat acorns and shiny new horse chestnuts on woodland tramps: the schoolboy thrill of them never dwindles. (If you bring some home, put chestnuts into spidery corners of your house – they deter the eight-legged ones…) And if you’re in something of a contemplative mood why not commit Gerald Manley Hopkins’ sad but beautiful poem Spring and Fall to memory and recite it to yourself as you walk?

Margaret, are you grieving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leaves, like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! as the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you will weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sorrow’s springs are the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What héart héard of, ghóst guéssed:
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.

For more walks please visit our walking routes page.