• Increase in walking sees activity return to pre-Covid levels
• Active Lives research shows two million moving more since 2016

A silver surge in walking has led to record levels of physical activity among the over-55s in England, the latest edition of the authoritative Active Lives adult survey has revealed.

Figures covering November 2022 to 2023, showed that 62.3% of 55-74-year-olds did at least 150 minutes of moderate exercise each week, up from 57% in 2016 when the survey was first commissioned. More striking still was the rise in activity in the over-75s, with 42.8% considered active, up from 33.4% seven years ago.

A five-day mindful adventure on the Knoydart peninsula – one of the last great wildernesses in the UK – offers the chance to fully unwind and leap into the unknown

It’s a relief to lay my rucksack down, plunge hot feet into the cool stream and pause to revel in the fairytale surrounds. Foxgloves stand tall against a cornflower-blue sky, ferns look almost luminous, the water glints in the early summer sunshine. A patch of moss-covered ancient forest provides shade, a cuckoo calls in the distance, mountains layer on the horizon.

I’m in Knoydart in the Highlands of western Scotland, one of the last great wildernesses in the UK, on a hiking and wild camping adventure. No roads cross the 22,000-hectare (55,000-acres) peninsula, a rugged place where a trio of Munros soar skyward, sandwiched between sea lochs Nevis and Hourn (poetically translated as heaven and hell). Over five days our group of eight will explore this land on foot, carrying our sustenance and shelter on our backs, led by two guides from The Living Project, Josh and Emily.

As a recent BBC series confirms, the idea of a spiritual journey has survived the decline of organised religion

In Geoffrey Chaucer’s England, the arrival of spring was taken by many as a cue to take to the road. As the prologue to The Canterbury Tales begins: “When in April the sweet showers fall/And pierce the drought of March to the root, and all/…Then people long to go on pilgrimages”.

Given Britain’s increasingly damp climate, contemporary pilgrims are as likely to encounter persistent rain as the occasional sweet shower. But the participants in the BBC’s sixth Pilgrimage series, which ended on Friday, were largely blessed with fine days as they travelled by foot and bus across North Wales. Travelling the Pilgrim’s Way, the group of minor celebrities followed a Christianity-based route-map of shrines and churches, but also stayed at an eco retreat and a Buddhist meditation centre.

The bestselling author has always hated being on his own, so why does he spend a few days every year hiking alone in the wind and rain? Just don’t call it a midlife crisis …

The first long solitary walk was 10 years ago. On occasional visits to Edinburgh, I’d always been taken by that beautiful stretch north of Newcastle, where the North Sea sidles up and the train seems to skirt the cliff edge, travellers looking up from books and phones, and crossing the carriage aisle to take in the view. The estuary, the town and the beach – it always seemed as if the passengers wanted the train to slow, then stop, so that we might clamber down and walk to the shore. Perhaps not all the passengers, but I certainly did and there seemed to be no reason why this couldn’t be achieved. I looked up the spot on the map, bought a guidebook to the Northumberland Coast Path, measured out distances and put aside four days. I bought new boots and socks, Ordnance Survey maps and an unnecessary compass, because how do you get lost on a coast walk? I bought roll-up waterproofs and dense, futuristic protein bars and too many novels, and on a bright, sharp day in the early summer of 2014, set out, catching the first departure from London to Newcastle, changing for Alnmouth, walking to the shore, then turning left and heading towards Berwick.

It sounds, I realise, like a textbook reaction to middle age, with that obsessive and eccentric quality, a need to achieve something measurable and definable. As midlife missions go, it wasn’t even that impressive or ambitious, hardly the Camino de Santiago or Everest; walking, not running, an almost marathon. Neither was this some new-discovered passion. I’ve been going on long walks for most of my adult life and my children have happy and less-than-happy memories of hikes across fells and moors in rain and snow. The only features that marked out this journey were the distance and the solitude. I had never walked so far nor spent so much time alone. This was new.

Walking a 26-mile stretch from Hertfordshire, our writer witnesses how a neglected artery of the city has been transformed into a recreational and cultural hub

For centuries the Lea has been a vital artery for London, carrying drinking water and grain into the city and servicing the factories and gunpowder mills that grew up along its banks. Rising in Bedfordshire, it flows for 46 miles through Hertfordshire and north-east London, eventually reaching the Thames. It’s often described as London’s second river, but this unsung tributary gets little of the glory or recognition of the Thames.

Since moving to Leyton (“settlement on the Lea”) several years ago, I’ve become familiar with the stretches alongside Hackney Marshes, but I found myself increasingly curious about what lay upriver. The Lee Valley park runs along a 26-mile stretch of the Lea. This scenic 4,000-hectare (10,000-acre) reinvention of former rubbish dumps, sewage works, gravel pits and factories was constituted nearly 60 years ago as a “green lung” for the city, and extended in 2012 to include the new Olympic Park. I decide to hike its length in an attempt to gain a fresh perspective on my part of outer London.

From a hike under huge Suffolk skies to aspen glades in the Cairngorms, our tipsters lead the way on these spring strolls

Two of the great prologues of literature begin on the same seeping bank in the village of Slad. Start the circular Laurie Lee walk from where the infant was dropped from a cart in Cider with Rosie and from where the adolescent loped off to Spain in As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning. A well-managed schedule can see you enjoying the singular hospitality of the Woolpack Inn before and after your five-mile jaunt. Head clockwise or reverse to find primrose-bounded paths, skylark-serenaded pasture and slope-clinging beech trees. The ramble is punctuated by posts inscribed with poetry by the valley’s most celebrated son.
Mathew Page

A group of seven Moorish villages in southern Spain are the perfect place to recharge – offering mountain air, sparkling springs and any excuse for a party

On our first morning in Atalbéitar, I walk into the kitchen to make coffee and wonder if I’m feeling the effects of the previous night’s festivities. Then I remember it’s not me; it’s the kitchen floor, which is on a gentle slope. I have to be careful carrying the coffee back to bed as the steps are at different heights, and the doorways are small enough to bump your head on. As I lie there, beneath a ceiling constructed of woven chestnut branches and stone slabs, I survey my surroundings, and come to the pleasing conclusion that there’s not a single right angle in sight.

We are staying in a Moorish house in this Andalucían village, and I may as well have travelled back the 700 years to when it was first built. I’ve been visiting Spain for years, as my husband leads wilderness tours here and we’ve travelled from one end to the other, seeking out hidden corners and mountain trails. But arriving in Atalbéitar at night, negotiating its tangle of passageways, ducking under ancient covered walkways while spring water rushes past our feet, we both agree, we’ve never been anywhere quite like this. The village gives the impression of having grown out of the land, rather than been imposed upon it. Its streets are too narrow for cars, the village cats roam freely, and the only sound is the occasional bleating of goats across the slopes. As I look out over the valley on this crisp winter’s morning, the sun is blazing in a solid blue sky and early almond blossom adds splashes of pastel pink to the rocky hills. Everything is still and silent.

Readers respond to Rosie Jewell’s article on the vanishing freedom to explore the English countryside

Rosie Jewell’s article on Dartmoor and the right to roam poignantly struck a chord ( As a child, I roamed Dartmoor – and it shaped me. But across England, that freedom is being trampled on, 19 March ). Returning to my childhood village, I was horrified to not only see the millpond where we children used to swim barred to the public, but footpaths now fenced so walkers are corralled into single file.
Theresa Seale
Farnham, Surrey

• As a youth in 1969, I attended a four-week Outward Bound course at Holne Park on the edge of Dartmoor. We spent nights on the moor under bivouac canvas – wild camping at its most basic. It was an unforgettable experience – no doubt shared by many over the 16 years from 1959 when there was an Outward Bound school at Holne Park.
Charlie Leventon
Shrewsbury, Shropshire

Right to Roam finds areas of outstanding natural beauty have on average poorer footpath access than rest of England

England’s most stunning “national landscapes” are largely out of bounds, and 22 of the 34 have less than 10% of their area open to the public, research has found.

The government last year renamed areas of outstanding natural beauty to national landscapes, and said part of their aim was to widen access to nature. Ministers said at the time the new name reflected a recognition that they are not just beautiful but important for many reasons including improving wellbeing.