Your year on foot: Spring

Relish warmer, longer days with a big adventure on a short-distance trail.

Here’s a perfect project for the lengthening, warming days...

THE SUN IS warm. The breeze is friendly. The view is the brightest green. I know we have just spent 14 pages selling the joys of walking in winter, but I have a confession.

It has taken me a lifetime to even begin to warm to the cold. I have had to school myself to enjoy it; walking with people who like it and reading books by writers enthralled by it, to see if I can’t nick a bit of their enthusiasm. I can now relish a crisp day and a warm fireside, but I will always yearn for spring and the season that makes my heart sing with its light, and its life.

By April, if you’re anything like me, you are desperate to ‘throw a loaf of bread and a pound of tea in an old sack and jump over the back fence’, as naturalist John Muir had it. A day walk isn’t enough to satisfy the craving to be outdoors; three weeks on the Pennine Way is a bit daunting straight out of the winter blocks. The solution is a two- to three-day trekking adventure or what you might call a shortdistance trail. It makes the most of those long bank holiday weekends peppered through spring and kicks off the warmer seasons with intent. This is going to be a great year!

But where to go? A search at the Long Distance Walkers Association offers up 862 trails in Britain between 10 and 45 miles, from a relaxing weekend to a challenging long one, and almost certainly one that’s right up your street. Here’s our pick of five of the finest mini-trails, starting with a trio of castles in the Welsh borders.

The Three Castles Walk Monmouthshire 19 miles

Big views? Tick. Marked on your Ordnance survey map? Tick. waymarked too? Tick. wild history and good food? Tick, and a vineyard for good measure. The Three castles walk – or Taith Tri chastell – has everything you might want from a weekend trail. it’s a 19-mile loop through Monmouthshire that splits sweetly across two days; 12 miles on saturday and 7 on sunday if you walk anticlockwise, which gives you time to linger over a sunday roast and still make it home.

The trail’s three forts are known as the castles of the Trilateral, and date back to the 11th century when the Normans conquered their way north from the Battle of Hastings and built skenfrith, grosmont and white castles to control a key patch of welsh border country and protect a main route from Hereford. white castle is the mightiest, with six towers, and water still lapping in its deep moat. grosmont has the bloodiest history: in 1405 welsh prince Owain glyndŵr marched with 8000 men on the village, razing it as part of his rebellion against english rule. Henry of Monmouth – later Henry v – sent an army that defeated glyndŵr and killed as many as 1000 of his men. skenfrith is the lowest-lying, on the banks of the River Monnow, and where most people start the trail.

You might notice its six-foot thick walls have an ochre hue, built from the same old red sandstone that made the gentle curves of the surrounding hills. it’s the sort of landscape that spring paints most grandly. where the mountains may be cautious, these lower-lying hills hurl headlong into the new season; bare hedgerows erupt with fresh leaves, winter-brown fields turn to velvet green carpet, primroses pepper the banks, and bluebells flood the woods. it happens every year, but the resurrection of the countryside never fails to amaze.

The views from the top of those hills – craig syfyrddin is the highest, surfing along at around 1200 feet – spans far across miles of the oncewarring, now-peaceful borderlands, and out to the Brecon Beacons, with the angles of Ysgyryd Fawr, sugar Loaf and Hay Bluff prominent. And there are many little joys along the way too: numerous handy benches where you can sit to relish the vista; a little church at Llanfair grange where there’s a kettle and you’re invited to make yourself a brew; sunken holloways leafing into green tunnels; the sight of lapwings tumbling, lifting, plummeting, playing on the air in a display flight that carries the sheer exhilaration of spring; the call of cuckoos, and the froth of cow parsley on the verges of the quiet country lanes.

“The trail’s forts are known as the Castles of the Trilateral, and date back to the 11th century”

Feel on top of the world this spring with a weekend trek, like this one through Monmouthshire to the heights of Grosmont castle.

SIGN OUT What could be more tempting than a trail waymarker pointing into the wilds on a spring day?

border waters The anglo-Welsh border tracks the river Monnow for much of its length.

lord of the rings from 1135 this ring of castles – Skenfrith, White, and here at Grosmont – were united under a single lordship to defend the area against Welsh attack.

to the beacons The trail has long views to the brecon beacons, with the skyline of ysgyryd fawr visible here. grand designs Skenfrith’s original earth and timber fort was rebuilt in stone in the 13th century by Hubert de burgh.

name game White Castle used to be known as Llantilio Castle. fun fact: White Castle is also the name of america’s first fastfood chain.