Stefan Durkacz

Despite appearances on this blog, I've had quite a busy and eventful few weeks in outdoors terms - and varied too. At the end of March I was down in London and headed out to the Medway for a walk through the marshes. I followed the Saxon Shore Way from Rainham to Swale opposite the Isle of Sheppey. It turned into a bright and blowy spring day of huge, fast-moving skies and often brilliant sunshine. I have conflicting feelings about the marshes, because these are conflicted places - semi-industrial, not pretty, yet teeming with birdlife. There's raw ecological value here in spades. Who cares about my offended aesthetic sensibilities? Yet the intrusion everywhere of pylons, bridges, container terminals, power stations... it's hard for the mind to unwind, you're always reconciling jarring contradictions. At one point I see a ship ahead, seemingly cruising over dry land. It takes a minute to realise it's navigating the still-unseen channel between the mainland and the I...

We're off to Edinburgh in a few days, so it's been a time for saying our goodbyes. Our friends and our children's friends gathered at the local adventure playground to send us off - it was loud, and lots of fun. Finding such a great community is hard, and leaving it is even harder. Who would've thought raising children in central London could be so joyful and communal? I also had another quieter goodbye to say. I've got to know the countryside of the south east pretty well and I've grown to love it. There may not be mountains but there are forests and flower-studded downs, old sunken lanes and heaths, salt marshes and reed beds, and always a pub when you need one. Exploring here has saved me from myopic summit-bagging (much as that's still a guilty pleasure) and deepened my appreciation of nature and habitats in all their diversity. I'll be back, that's for sure. I headed to Victoria in the early blue-sky cool to catch a train into the sticks. Destin...

Steve and I took the train out to Lewes on a hot and sunny morning to stretch our legs and catch up. It had been a while. The hardest part of these walks is always getting out of town, but Lewes is small and the station is almost on the southern outskirts. We found the River Ouse and a welcoming message under the bridge carrying the bypass - not the work of the local rangers probably. Welcome to the Sussex Ouse Valley Way We weren't expecting much from the flat walk south by the river, but it was lovely. The Ouse is tidal many miles inland, from Newhaven to a few miles north of Lewes. It's been somewhat canalised and hemmed in by embankments to protect the wide lush grassy flatlands. It's a curious landscape as the Ouse cleaves the South Downs right down to sea level on its way south; in earlier times these flatlands must have been a great inland salt marsh regularly inundated by tides surging upriver through the breach in the Downs. The river walkway is a delight. The sun ...