COVER STORY

Heading out to admire the season’s changing colours? You’ll want to end your amble with a pint and good grub. By Alastair Sawday

Autumn, a gentle bridge between the dying of the summer light and the darkness of winter, is a time to walk, to kick through the fallen leaves and breathe the sharpness in the air. It is worth travelling to some of the best autumnal walks, ending your journey in a pub.

We have here a collection of the cosiest of them, the most welcoming, beautiful and genuine. Their food is special, too, and the walks around and from them are enough to banish the deepest of glooms. I defy anyone to resist the charms of a good pint of ale after a gentle amble through a forest or wetlands, or along the shore of sea or loch – charms even more intense after a vigorous scramble down a hill.

There are pubs here to make one salivate from one’s armchair, the names alone would get me moving. Can the Ginger Peanut near Exmoor be resisted, let alone the Merry Harriers near Winkworth Arboretum?

These autumn pubs are scattered, too, across the best of England, Scotland and Wales – with the Ribble Valley, the River Tay, Loch Tummell and the Brecons all crying out to be enjoyed. In these welcoming hostelries you can enjoy venison scotch eggs, pheasant, wood pigeon, duck, pork pulled in all directions and vegetarian dishes to match the urban best.

The food revolution has reached the remotest corners of Britain, and these pubs show it. If local asparagus with duck egg and truffle mayonnaise doesn’t speed you on your walk, then how about fresh crab gnocchi and roasted Lytham poussin?

But I must confess that a simple sandwich and half a pint can work its magic on me, too, especially after a sparkling autumn walk through countryside that is putting on new clothes.

Winter is close, yet so is the passing summer. It is a season to be walked through.

For more information on pubs featured go to sawdays.co.uk. The new edition of Sawday’s Special Places: Pubs & Inns of England & Wales is on sale now (£15.99 RRP) from all good bookshops.