Melrose, Sherwood & Kent The Crusader and the Rogue
On the trail of the writer who shaped everything we know about heroes…
SIR WALTER SCOTT lived from 1771 to 1832, and in that time he set out concepts of heroism and romance that turn up to this day in everything from EastEnders to Iron Man. He invented the adventure novel, and became the most widely-read author across Europe within his own lifetime. His novels were a fantastically successful hybrid of meticulous historical fact – and the purest bunkum.
And like all the authors in this issue, he was good with landscapes too. Take his most famous novels: Waverley (1814), Rob Roy (1817) and Ivanhoe (1820). Each of them focuses on a rugged, wronged hero (such as the returning crusader Wilfred of Ivanhoe or the Highland rogue Rob Roy) who is obliged to move through richly evoked landscapes on whatever their quest might be. His descriptions of the Scottish Highlands, the Central Belt and Sherwood Forest are as vivid as his characters. He knew these places intimately: despite having a pronounced limp due to suffering polio in childhood, Scott was a relentless walker.
Ivanhoe traverses the north and the Midlands; the characters shuttle around from Ashby de la Zouche in Leicestershire to Conisbrough near Doncaster via the cities of Nottingham and York and everywhere in between.
And although the nominal hero is
Ivanhoe, it also ropes in Robin of Locksley, and sets up much of the Robin Hood lore we know today.
There are also plenty of places to track down on the trail of Scott himself. Most are around Melrose in the Scottish Borders: his stunning home at Abbotsford on the River Tweed; the dramatic Smailholm Tower on a hilltop to the east (he grew up on a farm in its shadow); his grave at Dryburgh Abbey. And of course there’s the Walter Scott Monument in Edinburgh. Bedecked with 65 of his characters and climbable via its 287 spiral steps, it remains the world’s second largest monument to a writer (bested only by the José Martí monument in Cuba).
If we had to sum up his feelings on his homeland, we might choose this quote from the man himself, channelling Waverley, Rob Roy and his many other Caledonian heroes: “Where is the coward that would not dare to fight for such a land as Scotland?”
Fair point, Sir Walter.
WALK HERE: See Walk 24 in this issue for a beautiful walk at Scott’s home of Abbotsford near Melrose.
Moonraker by Ian Fleming
It’s easy to think of
James Bond in terms of exotic, far-flung locations, but he has very firm roots in
British soil. In You
Only Live Twice,
Fleming describes him growing up near Glencoe in the Highlands (an idea explored in the 2012 movie Skyfall) until he is orphaned, after which he goes to live with his aunt in Pett Bottom, Kent. The choice of village was no coincidence: Fleming frequented the Duck Inn at Pett Bottom, and was inspired to build the village into Bond’s legend while writing chapters of the book in the pub. But the strongest link is St Margaret’s at Cliffe, between Deal and Dover. Take a walk along the beach and you’ll see a row of Art Deco cottages beneath the cliffs; Fleming owned one and wrote a good deal of Bond’s adventures there. And again, he built the location into his stories: in Moonraker, villain Hugo Drax seeks to launch the titular nuclear warhead from the cliffs of St Margaret’s, targeting London in revenge for the defeat of the Third Reich. Bond saves the day, of course, and in doing so, he makes this stirring stretch of Kent coastline as valid a place for Bondian pilgrimage as the Swiss Alps or Jamaica.
WALK HERE: Download our stunning White Cliffs of Dover walk at walk1000miles.co.uk/bonusroutes