Ramblings

Clare walks with Reverend Maggie McLean today on a stretch of the Camino de Santiago, the world famous pilgrimage route that concludes at Santiago de Compostela’s glorious Cathedral in northern Spain. The Camino can be completed in numerous ways, with one of the most popular routes being the French Way otherwise known as the Francés. It begins in the French town of St. Jean Pied de Port and ends 7...

This is a very special series of Ramblings. To mark Clare’s 25th year of presenting Radio 4’s walking programme she is off to Spain to fulfil her long held desire of hiking one of the world’s most famous pilgrimage footpaths, the Camino de Santiago. Translated roughly as The Way of St. James, the Camino isn’t just one route, rather it’s a network of trails across western Europe converging on Santi...

Clare meets a group of passionate walkers responsible for the redesign and relaunch of the Shropshire Way long distance footpath. Back in 2016 they got together, in collaboration with the local Council, to reroute it and improve the waymarking. And now they have a 200 mile footpath in a figure of eight, centred on Shrewsbury. For Ramblings they met Clare at the Benthall Hall National Trust carpark...

Clare meets a passionate proponent of walking today on a hike around Capel y ffin and the Twmpa in the Bannau Brycheiniog (Brecon Beacons) National Park. Andrew Green has just published a book called Voices on the Path, a History of Walking in Wales and for him it’s not just a case of putting one foot in front of the other and admiring the scenery, it’s “an activity loaded with all kinds of social...

Clare is in the Kingdom of Fife today, hiking from Clatto Reservoir to Pitscottie. It’s a beautiful stretch of the Fife Pilgrim Way, a long-distance footpath that runs 65 miles from either Culross or North Queensferry (there’s a choice of starting places) and ends in St Andrews. Joining her are three colleagues from the Fife Coast and Countryside Trust, who helped to develop the route, and an Elde...

Clare Balding is celebrating a listener’s birthday today. Not something we’ve done before, but when we heard that Lynda Pettit was marking her 60th birthday by walking 60 different routes with 60 different people, and that the idea was partly inspired by Ramblings, well we just had to join in, especially as it’s Clare’s 25th year on Ramblings (double celebrations!). Lynda and several friends took...

This is Clare’s 25th year of making Ramblings and one thing she has always enjoyed is walking all year round, in any weather. No matter how windy, how cold or how wet she’ll be out recording in the company of an equally weatherproof interviewee. Winter is her favourite season for a stroll and today she’s found someone else who feels the same… Richard Shimell’s book, Trees in Winter, is about the h...

This is Clare's 25th year of walking and talking on Ramblings! To mark this, ahem, milestone her first hike of 2025 is with a group of students from the University of Nottingham who are all members of the RamSoc (The Rambling and Hiking Society) which has just celebrated its 90th anniversary. All of today's walkers are under the age of 25, so weren't even around when Clare first stepped out with t...

Clare rambles around Epping Forest with the new Chief Scout, Dwayne Fields. He was appointed in September 2024, taking over from Bear Grylls, and has a wealth of adventure experience under his belt. Dwayne was born in Jamaica and came to the UK at the age of six. He grew up in inner city London and says his formative years were wrapped up in social stigma, and he became a victim of both knife and...

Clare joins a long established group as they embark on their 100th walk. Their route takes them from Leigh Woods, under the Clifton Suspension Bridge, and into the heart of Bristol. They call themselves The Old Lags, and every member was responsible during their careers for keeping our lights on and our kettles boiled as employees of the Central Electricity Generating Board. They’re all retired no...

Clare explores the banks of the River Itchen in Hampshire with Andrew Simkins who has just completed walking around the coast and borders of England. It’s taken him eight years, and it’s been an extraordinary journey in more ways than one. His beloved daughter, Alice, died age 28 in 2016 and he discovered that devoting himself to the process of walking helped him deal with the grief; it gave him a...

Clare meets ‘Woman with Altitude’ Lise Wortley who recreates the adventures of overlooked and forgotten female explorers. As Lise takes Clare on a walk around her childhood village of Boxford in Suffolk, she tells Clare why she doesn’t just follow in the footsteps of these incredible women but even wears the same kind of clothing and footwear. Her latest expedition, in woollen skirts and specially...

Alan Titchmarsh takes Clare Balding for his favourite stroll across Tennyson Down on the Isle of Wight. A keen and regular walker, Alan splits his time between the mainland and the Isle of Wight, and has a lot to share with Clare about this place that he loves. Best known as a TV gardener, interviewer and romantic novelist, Alan grew up in a family that took regular Sunday walks and as a young chi...

Clare hikes along a section of the GM Ringway, Greater Manchester’s new walking trail. It’s a 200 mile route split into 20 stages, starting and ending in Manchester city centre. It goes around the edge of the county through all 10 boroughs of the region, and it’s linked with public transport so people can easily access the linear stages. Joining Clare as she walks part of Stage 6, which is Strines...

Clare explores the Lower Tavy Valley in Devon with Sharon Gedye a physical geographer who's spent years discovering how the area's rich history has shaped its landscape and people. Sharon takes Clare on a circular walk starting on West Down, on the western edge of Dartmoor, heading down towards the River Tavy and eventually reaching Double Waters, the confluence of the Tavy and Walkham. On the way...

Clare and the ‘blind adventurer’ Amar Latif explore a circular route in Nidderdale, North Yorkshire. As the current President of the Ramblers, Amar is keen to promote the message that walking is for absolutely everyone, from all backgrounds and abilities. He lost most of his vision by the time he was 18 and found it very hard to accept. He began to believe that he wouldn’t be able to continue doin...

Clare meets the founders of Walking Post on a hike from Oaks Park to Kingswood in Surrey. Walking Post is a not-for-profit website run by friends who have designed, mapped and now share multiple walking routes around London, Surrey, Kent, Essex and beyond. Every walk is accessible by public transport, something key to web-designer Lucy Maddison who doesn’t own a car. The project has expanded from...

Clare is in the Cotswolds this week with a fantastic group called Every Body Outdoors. They begin their walk in the village of King’s Stanley, Gloucestershire and complete a five mile circuit taking in a stretch of Stroudwater Canal, before heading up to the top of Selsley Common. Co-founded by Steph Wetherell, Every Body Outdoors is a walking group specifically aimed at plus size people who want...

In the second of two walks in the Republic of Ireland, Clare meets rock climber, mountain instructor and walking guide, Iain Miller, to explore a stretch of the wild, rugged and spectacular Atlantic coastline of County Donegal. They meet at what Iain describes as the most remote place in Ireland, An Port, and the route they take from there affords them views over what he says is Ireland’s last gre...

In the first of two episodes recorded in the Republic of Ireland, Clare travels to Moyle Hill in County Donegal to meet adventurer and motivational speaker, Nikki Bradley. Diagnosed with a rare bone cancer at just 16 years of age, Nikki (now in her 30s) has defied expectations by living a very active life. She was the first person on crutches to climb four Irish mountain peaks, which took her 32 h...

David Almond marks 25 years of his extraordinary book, Skellig, with a walk from Seahouses to Bamburgh in Northumberland. As he tells Clare, it's a landscape that has long inspired his imagination and writing. Skellig tells the tale of Michael, a young boy who befriends a magical creature - part owl, part angel – that needs Michael’s help to survive. The book has won multiple awards, been adapted...

Clare walks to a glorious display of bluebells to capture them in watercolour in the company of artist Shelly Perkins. On a beautiful day in mid-May they set off into Mortimer Forest near Ludlow to find several acres of bluebells that stretch across high meadlowland. Shelly is an artist and while Clare is not known for her painting prowess, they take a moment to stop, take in the bluey purply haze...

Nadeem Perera is not your conventional image of a birdwatcher. In fact growing up in inner city London he was not raised as or encouraged to be a 'nature boy'. But dropping out of school as a troubled teen he had a revelation. One day he was sitting in woodland and saw a green spotted woodpecker in front of him and his passion for birds was born. Now he can be seen on BBC 1 on the One Show talking...

When author Annabel Abbs suffered a series of bereavements she found herself unable to sleep. Eventually she began getting up and walking around her garden and neighbouring fields around 3am. But when she heard about Caroline Whiteman who runs guided walks at night without head torches, she just had to go along on one. Caroline began the walks as an experiment in overcoming her fear of the dark. S...

The beautiful Borders of Scotland is the location for Clare’s walk this week. She’s exploring the area around Innerleithen with Stewart Wilson. After a career in finance Stewart made a handbrake turn in his early 40s and became a tour guide and travel blogger. He says most visitors to Scotland bypass the Borders for Edinburgh or the Highlands and Islands but – in doing so – are missing out on gorg...