View from the Hill: Four Seasons in a Walker's Britain

During the Covid-19 pandemic, Christopher Somerville revisited his 450 notebooks, which contain 40 years of notes on walking the British countryside. The View from the Hill is a collection of his best walks, from January to Christmas morning, including visits to randy natterjack toads, trout, red stag, and three thousand geese.

Format: Hardback
Length: 330 pages
Publication date: 20 September 2021
Publisher: Haus Publishing

In the workshop of Christopher Somerville, a case of shelves stands, housing a collection of 450 notebooks. These notebooks bear the marks of wear and tear, with their pages stained with mud, blood, flattened insect corpses, beer glass rings, smears of plant juice, and gallons of sweat. It is within these weathered black-and-red books that the essence of Somerville's writing about traversing the British countryside has taken root. During the confinements and enforced idleness brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic, Somerville delved back into this rugged trove of notes, spanning forty years of exploration of these islands on foot. The View from the Hill presents the finest of this singular harvest, chronicling the seasonal cycle from a chilly January on the Severn Estuary to the breathtaking sight of sunrise on Christmas morning from within a prehistoric burial mound. Between these chapters lie countless walks aimed at discovering elusive randy natterjack toads in the Cumbrian spring, trout in the serene Hampshire chalk stream during the lazy midsummer, a majestic red stag in the autumn rut on the Isle of Mull, and a staggering three thousand geese in full chorus in the wintry Norfolk sky. What's most remarkable is that you can fully immerse yourself in these walks without ever leaving your chair. Simply light a fire, fill your glass, and allow Christopher Somerville to transport you to distant lands and vistas.

Weight: 524g
Dimension: 147 x 223 x 40 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781909961760