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Sisters in step

Alison Harvey joins a women-only trek in the fells of the Lake District

Saturday November 9, 2002
The Guardian

Gulping the heady mix of Lakeland mountain air laced with the tang of bracken, you don't notice it at first. Then you realise there is something missing. Testosterone. Not a whiff.

For the 14 walkers having the time of their lives as they push up the somewhat serious slope from Grasmere to Helm Crag are all women. Men tend to walk like they drive - boy racers, eyes fixed on an end point and foot hard on the accelerator - destination-acquisitive.

These chilled-out hikers are on a weekend break with WalkingWomen, an organisation offering guided women-only walks that are as much about being there as getting there. The all-inclusive holidays in the Lake District, Scotland, Ireland and abroad cater for every level of walker, from lakeside strollers to high-level hikers. It's a runaway success.

"WalkingWomen is about making wonderful walks accessible to women, taking in the fantastic scenery and enjoying each other's company," says founder Diana Clarke. "It's a nurturing, non-threatening environment where you can challenge yourself as much or as little as you wish."

Our autumn weekend is being led by Sarah Rycroft, a landscape architect with a passion for the fells. She became one of WalkingWomen's 14 leaders after enjoying three holidays with the group. "I love the wildlife, the scenery and the weather up here in the Lakes," she says. "It's wonderful to be able to show it to others in a safe, non-competitive set-up and have lots of laughs along the way. It's a joy to see people develop skills they didn't know they had.

"Plenty of women on these holidays have never even been on the fells before. If you live in the Home Counties, for example, you may have no idea how mountainous the Lake District is."

Sarah, 46, from Manchester, has made many friends through WalkingWomen: "You get closer to people when you are walking. Women are going to make friends when you've got four or five hours together on a hill. There's something very unifying about being with a group of women, all or most of them strangers. It's great therapy."

Trish Jones, a 41-year-old supply teacher, has left her husband looking after their four kids on Merseyside, while she takes part in the intermediate-level weekend. "I had no idea what I was letting myself in for," she says. "I came here with someone I got to know in the school playground. I have never really walked before. The only time I've been this high is on an aircraft."

The previous day's seven-mile circular walk and 460m ascent in glorious sunshine took her from Grasmere up to Easedale Tarn, across to Blea Rigg and down to Alum Bank. Today, it will be around six miles and 420m of ascent to Helm Crag and across to Gibson Knott.

"I've taken lots of photos to prove where I've been, because no one back home will believe me otherwise," says Trish. "Having no TV in the guesthouse where we are staying and the fact that my mobile doesn't work around here has taken loads of pressure off me. It has been a fantastic experience."

Conveyancing assistant Pat Herriott, 49, from Reading, is also on her first trip with WalkingWomen. "I love the camaraderie and laughter," she says. "There's also a willingness to stop and enjoy the space and being with each other. The group has bonded so well. It's wonderful, such a beautiful place."

Pat says the weekend has given her a great sense of personal satisfaction. "I've pushed myself and succeeded. That means a lot to me."

She has also enjoyed evenings with the group, which involves rooming at Glenthorne, a comfortable guest house, with breakfast, evening meal and a packed lunch included in the £135 cost of the holiday. Saturday evening was spent chatting in the pub or, for a few, enjoying a quiet walk alone.

Diana Clarke set up WalkingWomen just 2 years ago. "I was a homeopath and burning out," she says. "I needed a change. I loved walking in the Lakes, but work commitments in Denmark had kept me off the fells. I couldn't afford to buy somewhere to live up there, so I decided to build walking into a change of career.

"It has grown faster than I imagined, although last year's foot-and-mouth crisis caused a major panic initially. We had to switch one holiday from the Lakes to Italy at short notice, but it made me realise how easy it would be to extend our range of holidays abroad."

Clarke says the women on the holidays come from a huge range of backgrounds and are aged between 16 and 80: "Ninety percent are here on their own. On one trip, there was a former policewoman, some ex-Greenham women, a couple of social workers and a croupier," she says.

Next year, WalkingWomen will offer close to 60 trips at home and abroad, including four new destinations - Namibia, Mont Blanc, Bavaria and the south of France. There are special-interest holidays such as photography, navigation on the hills and a week's skiing in La Plagne in France. Accommodation varies from comfortable inns and guesthouses to more basic but well-run youth hostels.

Other Lake District locations include Patterdale, Buttermere and Langdale. One five-night high-level trek starting at Borrowdale and staying in B&Bs en route offers Great Gable, Scafell Pike, Bow Fell and the Langdale Pikes.

· WalkingWomen, 22 Duke St, Leamington Spa, Warwicks CV32 4TR. 01926 313321, www.walkingwomen.com.

Cumbria Tourist Board: 015394 44444, www.cumbria-the-lake-district.co.uk.

February 14, 2004

Women’s walk is never done

Chloë Bryan-Brown joins an all-female walking holiday in Italy
The Times (Saturday Magazine)

Scaling new peaks: Chloë Bryan-Brown (holding sweater) hiked through fields of wildflowers, medieval villages and chestnut woods

HE WAS far too horrified to try to disguise his reaction. Piedmontese eyes bulging with bewilderment as he passed me on the street. “Madre de Dio!”, came his cry. Mother of God, please save me from this foreign witch — at least that is how it came across. I could hardly blame him, of course. Covered in mud, and with hair hanging in sodden rats’ tails, this particular female rambler was enough to put any decent Italian off his lunch.

Not that I cared. I had my cosy wooden chalet and a hot cappuccino in mind. And anyway the rain was not entirely unexpected. After four days of perfect hiking weather, the forecasters had predicted a day to forget. “Dull and overcast with heavy showers,” translated Jennifer, a retired university lecturer in Italian, from the Piedmont papers over Campari and soda in the bar-pizzeria. But we were not to be put off. All 34 of us, determined walkers to a woman, agreed — bad weather in Italy cannot be as bad as at home.

We were wrong, of course. So atrocious was it, the birds didn’t bother to get up and sing, leaving us to be woken instead by volleys of thunder ricocheting around the valleys below the tiny hill village of Bergolo where we were based. It was a sorry file of cagouled and booted women that trudged in the ensuing silence from their chalets to the village hostel where breakfast was served.

Six of us were to attempt a high walk from one valley up a ravine and back along another. The rain was not a problem once we had our Gore-Tex on, but the mud, which we had not foreseen, was. Days of dry weather had stopped the deluge from draining away and the hills were smeared with a thick butter-icing of brown sludge. We grappled our way through chestnut woods, catching on to low branches to heave ourselves up, feet sliding on the mulch of leaves and mud beneath us. It was hard work and we took in less of our surroundings than usual until the first memorable sight of the day crossed the path in front of us.

It was the first time any of us had seen a salamander and while we admired its bright black and yellow jacket, its slow rotating steps like an ancient clockwork toy made us hoot with laughter as we reached for our cameras.

Chatting now, we decided to break the walk in the hilltop village of Todocco. Leaving the woods behind us, we climbed along a small road and looked back through lace curtains of wild cherry blossom at the route we had followed. Perhaps not the most magnificent panorama I have ever seen, but one of the least spoilt. A few houses, chestnut woods, dense hazelnut groves and acres and acres of ideal walking country.

It certainly was not a day — or holiday — to forget. I had come to Piedmont with Walking Women, a relatively new holiday company set up by Diana Clarke, an enthusiastic guide and walker who still leads many of the trips. Part of the draw was that it would be all women and there would be nature and photography experts among the guides so I could indulge my amateur passion for wildflowers.

Of course, there were raised eyebrows. But my hunch that it would be fun was right. If you took away the flowers and scenery, it would still have been a delight to walk and talk to retired headmistress Jane, or theatre history lecturer Jacky, photographer Emma, engineer Lisa — any of the women in fact.

Bergolo is the smallest village in the Alte Langhe region of the province of Piedmont. Traditionally, this undiscovered hilly region of northwest Italy, sandwiched between the Alps and elegant riviera, is farming country.

It gave shelter to Primo Levi and many anti-fascist partisans during the Second World War and is portrayed in the works of its two greatest 20th- century writers, Cesare Pavese and Beppe Fenoglio, as representing innocence in antithesis to the sophisticated provincial capital of Turin.

These days, however, like so many places in rural Italy, Bergolo’s young have left and much of the surrounding land now lies fallow. Rather than watching the village die, however, the 73 residents that remain have turned their hands to cultivating rural tourism.

Spearheaded by Emanuela, the young English-speaking woman who runs the comfortable hostel, and her father Lorenzo, the tiny village now hosts an annual music festival. As well as the hostel it has holiday chalets with the bar-pizzeria, sports facilities, a “slow food” restaurant specialising in the fondues, creamy sauces, game and truffles of the region and a smart shop selling the type of Italian goodies that you find in the most fashionable of British delis.

Footpaths, as we know them, are rare in this part of Italy so we walked instead on hunters’ trails and ancient thoroughfares that Lorenzo from the hostel found for us on his motorbike. They took us through beech and chestnut woods, along spiny ridges and tiny roads that led into small medieval villages where our reputation as group of mad women (or worse) roaming the countryside often seemed to precede us.

“Are you the women of Bergolo?” one local stopped to ask, politeness apparently stopping him from making the sign of the cross, as we wandered into the village of Saliceto one day for ice-creams and beer.

We became almost blasé about the many types of orchids we saw. Madeline, our nature expert, said that in a few more weeks the wild flowers would be even more plentiful but the comfrey and vetches, wild strawberry and thyme were more than enough for me.

It was the same with sightseeing. Every village seemed to have its own 15th-century chapel with frescoes that were brought alive by Janet’s encyclopaedic knowledge of the lives and (more importantly for interpreting the frescoes), deaths of the saints.

Then there was the farm where we saw rich sheep cheeses made by hand and ordered them, in varying stages of pungent ripeness, to be brought to the hostel to take home as gifts.

For a change, on the last day Diana ordered a coach to take us to Beigua National Park, two hours south of Bergolo. Spring was further advanced here and I could see what Madeline meant about the wildflowers being even more lovely later in the year. We saw hepatica, crocuses and wild daffodils past their best, violas, cowslips, daphne, cyclamen and, by a bog near a fast river, several different varieties of moss. Here, though we had not seen much wildlife, I was reminded, when some of the braver women found stones to create a ford for the rest of us to cross the river in single file, of the procession of caterpillars walking nose to tail that I had marvelled at crossing the street in Bergolo.

It was a good image to round off a holiday where women had helped and encouraged each other, literally, to scale new peaks. From here it was a happy group that went home — leaving Piedmont safe from foreign witches again.

Need to know Getting there: Chloë Bryan-Brown travelled with WalkingWomen (0845 6445335, www.walkingwomen.com), which offers walking tours in Europe and the UK.

The next holiday in Piedmont is from May 31 to June 6 and costs £505pp including flights, accommodation, most meals, transfers and transport to all walks.

February 2001

The lure of the lakes
Walking in Britain

Clare Brown
Country Living Magazine

In no time after stepping off the train at Penrith, looking very much the novice walker with unmuddied boots, a new rucksack and waterproofs, I was watching the sunset cast an orange glow over Lake Derwent Water. As I admired it, trek leader Diana Clarke explained why she set up walking breaks company, WalkingWomen: "I love the nomadic freedom of a trek, walking beside water or on woodland paths. I run these breaks so that women can be assured of like-minded company". Diana reassured me that my lack of "serious" walking experience wouldn't matter one bit. The walks are divided into three ability levels: gentle, intermediate and high level. Mine was classed as "gentle", which meant we would set a steady pace on fairly flat terrain. This suited me well because, as I explained to my bemused colleagues before I left for Borrowdale:" I don't do hills!" Next morning, over breakfast, I met my six fellow walkers. They ranged from 24 to 60 and included a lawyer, teacher and hotel manager. We agreed on a flat start to ease us in. After encouraging us to warm up with stretching exercises, Diana led us across stream-bordered fields until we reached the wooded shore of Derwent Water. The atmosphere was relaxed and we chatted while we admired the views. Sometimes I found myself lagging behind, but those in front were happy to slow down to allow everyone to catch up. We ate our packed lunches (provided by the hotel) and sat on our waterproofs in a sheltered bay where a family of mallards swam over to greet us. By mid-afternoon we were celebrating finishing our six-mile circuit at a tearoom in Grange. Later, we strolled to nearby Lodore Falls to work up an appetite for dinner. The delicious home-cooked food was followed by a soak in the bath and an early night. We decided that our second outing should be a bit more adventurous. Diana plotted a path towards Watendlath Tarn, a lake and village high in the fells, east of Derwent Water. We ascended through woodland and Diana suggested that by shortening our steps we wouldn't feel the strain in our legs. It worked, because we had soon climbed 350 metres to the village. Brooding skies awaited our intrepid group at the top of Cat Bells, our destination for the third day's trek. Rising 300 metres above Derwent Water, the summit provided views that were worth the effort. We felt an enormous sense of achievement. I have never felt so exhausted or elated, and I returned to London ready to face the signal failure on the Underground with renewed good humour.

For details of walking holidays in the Lake District with WalkingWomen, call 01926 313321 or visit www.walkingwomen.com.