Afoot in England

Guide-books are so many that it seems probable we have more than any other country--possibly more than all the rest of the universe together. Every county has a little library o...

In looking over the preceding chapter it occurred to me that I had omitted something, or rather that it would have been well to drop a word of warning to those who have the desi...

We know that there cannot be progression without retrogression, or gain with no corresponding loss; and often on my wheel, when flying along the roads at a reckless rate of very...

The "walks" already spoken of, at a time when life had little or no other pleasure for us on account of poverty and ill-health, were taken at pretty regular intervals two or thr...

The rambles I have described were mostly inland: when by chance they took us down to the sea our impressions and adventures appeared less interesting. Looking back on the holida...

One of the most attractive bits of green and wooded country near London I know lies between Reading and Basingstoke and includes Aldermaston with its immemorial oaks in Berkshir...

An afternoon in the late November of 1903. Frost, gales, and abundant rains have more than half stripped the oaks of their yellow leaves. But the rain is over now, the sky once...

It is little to a man's profit to go far afield if his chief pleasure be in wild life, his main object to get nearer to the creatures, to grow day by day more intimate with them...

"A-birding on a Broncho" is the title of a charming little book published some years ago, and probably better known to readers on the other side of the Atlantic than in England....

I came by chance to the village--Norton, we will call it, just to call it something, but the county in which it is situated need not be named. It happened that about noon that d...

Never in my experience has there been a worse spring season than that of 1903 for the birds, more especially for the short-winged migrants. In April I looked for the woodland wa...

On Easter Saturday the roadsides and copses by the little river Nadder were full of children gathering primroses; they might have filled a thousand baskets without the flowers b...

'Tis so easy to get from London to Bath, by merely stepping into a railway carriage which takes you smoothly without a stop in two short hours from Paddington, that I was amazed...

That "going back" about which I wrote in the second chapter to a place where an unexpected beauty or charm has revealed itself, and has made its image a lasting and prized posse...

The most characteristic district of South Devon, the greenest, most luxuriant in its vegetation, and perhaps the hottest in England, is that bit of country between the Exe and t...

In spite of discontents I might have remained to this day by the Otter, in the daily and hourly expectation of seeing some new and wonderful thing in Nature in that place where...

So many and minute were the directions I received about the way from the blessed cowkeeper, and so little attention did I give them, my mind being occupied with other things, th...

Health and pleasure resorts and all parasitic towns in fact, inland or on the sea, have no attractions for me and I was more than satisfied with a day or two of Sidmouth. Then o...

Abbotsbury is an old unspoilt village, not on but near the sea, divided from it by half a mile of meadowland where all sorts of meadow and water plants flourish, and where there...

Since that visit to Salisbury, described in a former chapter, when I watched and listened to the doves in those cold days in early spring, I have been there a good many times, b...

That American from Indiana! As it was market day at Salisbury I asked him before we parted if he had seen the market, also if they had market days in the country towns in his St...

My experiences at "The Stones" had left me with the idea that but for the distracting company the hours I spent there would have been very sweet and precious in spite of the clo...

The stream invites us to follow: the impulse is so common that it might be set down as an instinct; and certainly there is no more fascinating pastime than to keep company with...

I doubt if the name of this small Suffolk village, remote from towns and railroads, will have any literary associations for the reader, unless he be a person of exceptionally go...

My friend rack is a retriever--very black, very curly, perfect in shape, but just a retriever; and he is really not my friend, only he thinks he is, which comes to the same thin...