Reading a walking map where the contour lines tighten
Crowded contour lines reveal a steep hillside, but a walker's route depends on the contour interval, map scale and the path's direction through the slope.
Independent thought. In print.
Footpath Weekends
Close-to-home walks, weather notes and enough time to stop beside a tree.
Words by Hugo Clarke
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4 storiesThe latest edition
The soil a muddy shortcut carries away
A shortcut can compact soil, channel rain and move sediment, but a muddy track alone cannot tell us how much ground has truly left the slope.
Your weekend walk doesn’t need a bloody leaderboard
At the end of a perfectly pleasant walk, I looked at the distance and felt oddly disappointed. The trees had been good. The conversation had been good. We had stopped beside a stream and watched
I went for a walk and spent ten minutes doing nothing
We stopped at the halfway tree and stayed there for ten minutes. Not because anything had gone wrong. Not because we needed to assemble a lesson about slowing down. There was a comfortable place to
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