3 MORE SPOOKY WALKS
Britain’s most haunted village
PLUCKLEY, Kent With one ghost for every 89 residents, Pluckley in Kent is Britain’s most haunted village. According to the Guinness Book of Records, no less than 12 phantoms haunt the parish. They include the ‘Watercress Woman’, whose habit for pipe smoking while glugging gin led to her fiery demise. On a walk along the Greensand Way you might encounter a spectral schoolmaster hanging from a tree or hear the death screams of a brickmaker in Dering Wood. The Black Horse pub and St Nicholas’ Church are reputedly haunted too, but also feature in Pluckley’s cosier claim to fame as locations in ITV’s The Darling Buds of May.
WALK HERE: Download an 8-mile walk from Pluckley at www.livefortheoutdoors.com/bonusroutes
A stage for the grisliest ghost stories
ALDEBURGH, Suffolk A Provost’s study in Cambridge witnessed the Yuletide premiers of the greatest ghost stories written at the dawn of 20th century, but it was the countryside of East Anglia which often provided the backdrop for M.R. James’ paranormal tales. Drawing on regular visits to his grandparents in Aldeburgh as a child, Montague Rhodes James set A Warning to the Curious in a fictionalised version of this seaside town, called Seaburgh. His walks around Suffolk’s coast and marshes bleed into the plot, which concerns an antiquarian and archaeologist called Paxton, who digs up a lost crown of East Anglia, which protects the old kingdom from invasion. He’s stalked by the artefact’s supernatural guardian and suffers an untimely death on the beach.
WALK HERE: Download Aldeburgh at www.lfto.com/bonusroutes
An American Werewolf in London Wales
CRICKADARN, Powys The eeriest thing about the fictional Yorkshire village of East Proctor wasn’t the resident lycanthrope, but its uncanny resemblance to Mid Wales. Location scouts for 1981’s An American Werewolf in London chose Crickadarn near Builth Wells as a suitably rainy stand-in for Yorkshire’s moors, where unsuspecting American hikers David and Jack are attacked. In the opening shots, the ill-fated duo are dropped off at Gospel Pass, between Hay Bluff and Twmpa in the Black Mountains. But interior scenes at The Slaughtered Lamb (where a young Rik Mayall plays a Yorkshire local) were perhaps most chilling for geographers. These were filmed at a pub in Surrey.
WALK HERE: Download Hay Bluff at www.lfto.com/bonusroutes. Find our suggested 7-mile Crickadarn route on OSmaps at www.bit.ly/crickadarnwalk