‘Some walks in a wild country’
1831-1836: Voyage of the Beagle Five years sailing the world and Darwin was seasick all the way, which meant he snatched every chance to walk on solid land. Letters home show him revelling in the ‘glorious forest’ and the ‘green plains’ and he couldn’t resist the universal temptation to compare somewhere new to someplace known, as he likens a hike at Tierra del Fuego to the ‘wild country like that behind Barmouth’. The Snowdonia expedition with Sedgwick had taught him about geological surveys and thousands of pages of notes were devoted to the rocks, as well as the flora and fauna.
Before photography, when specimens would fade and art was not an option ( he was by his own admission awful at drawing), words were Darwin’s most powerful way of describing what he saw on the voyage. He ‘took much pains in describing carefully and vividly all that I had seen’ and was applauded as a ‘first- rate landscape painter with the pen’. He used Werner’s Nomenclature of Colour, (shown below), to precisely examine and describe the shades. Colours were likened to animal, vegetable and mineral so bluish-green would be the egg of thrush, the under disk of rose leaves, and the mineral beryl; Dutch-orange would be the crest of golden-crested wren, common marigold, or seedpod of a spindle tree, or a streak of red orpiment.
And while you can’t trace his global voyage on foot you can walk at Barn Pool near Plymouth where bad weather forced the Beagle to dock just hours after leaving. 17 days later the ship finally waved goodbye to Britain’s shores on the 27th December 1831.
WALK HERE: From Plymouth, hop on the ferry to Cremyll for a figure-of-eight walk taking in Barn Pool – www.lfto. com/ com/bonusroutes bonusroutes