Wilfred Owen

Pentland Hills, nr Edinburgh

Owen was one of those brave young men who enlisted to fight in the First World War. After some horrifying experiences, he eventually landed up in Edinburgh’s Craiglockhart Hospital suffering from shell shock. There he met fellow poet Siegfried Sassoon and spent time rambling about on the nearby Pentland Hills, experiences that led him to describe his sojourn as ‘my Oxford’. While there he wrote two of the best known poems from that war: Anthem for Doomed Youth and Dulce et Decorum Est. The hospital building now houses part of Edinburgh Napier University and the Pentland Hills still provide an escape for the capital’s citizenry. Start an 8-mile circuit from the golf club at Swanston, on a path which takes you along Swanston Burn and up to the summit of Allermuir Hill. Continue over Fala Knowe for a loop around Castle Law hill, its firing ranges, Iron Age fort, souterrain (underground chamber) and lost settlements. Return via the tops of Allermuir Hill (again) and Caerketton Hill. Owen left Edinburgh in autumn 1917, later returning to the front, where he was killed one week before the Armistice.

‘While there he wrote two of the best known poems from that war: Anthem for Doomed Youth and Dulce et Decorum Est.’

ART OF WAR The Pentland Hills above Edinburgh, the city where Owen wrote, and rewrote, his Anthem for Doomed Youth.