Perhaps the title of this article should be "Trying to Bushwalk in England".

Roger Browne Sydney Bush Walkers

I met Rowena, whom I later married, in New Zealand in 1988 and in 1992 we moved to England to live.

For two decades, bushwalking had been my weekend passion. Through the Sydney Bush Walkers, SPAN, and the Auckland Tramping Club I’d spent many wonderful weekends in the bush around Sydney, Auckland, and elsewhere in Australia and New Zealand. I’d made many bushwalking friends, and discovered many wonderful and very special places.

But I was an overnight bushwalker at heart. Overnight bushwalking combines many pleasures, both primal and intellectual. It’s a way to achieve one’s physical potential, and nothing can beat that wonderful golden weariness after a solid day moving through the wilderness. It’s a way to achieve total relaxation, around the fire with ones companions at the end of the day. It’s a way to combine independence and teamwork, to be in a group with a common purpose combining everyone’s individual skills to achieve the goal. It’s a way to express the joy of life through shared activities, whether they be singing around the fire or sharing a liqueur that has been carried a great distance. It’s a way to keep ones intellect sharp, because there is plenty of time to proceed beyond conversational small-talk and into serious discussions. It’s a way to enjoy the natural environment at its best, and to realise that the technological world, for all it has to offer, is not the ultimate purpose of life.

So what differences was I to find in England? Many, that’s for sure. The first is that there’s nowhere that’s a day’s walk from a road. And there are hardly any places where "free camping" would be permitted or tolerated. If you want to do that, you really need to go to Scotland. But Scotland’s weather can be extreme at any time of year, and if you walk seriously in Scotland you’re more likely to be staying in a mountain hut or "Bothy" than in a tent.

There are plenty of English farmers who allow tent-camping in their fields, for a small charge, especially in summer. This makes possible another kind of overnight walking - designated long-distance paths. There are coastal paths allowing the walker to follow the coastline for hundreds of kilometres. There are inland paths such as the Pennine Way and the Coast-to-Coast path, which offer cross-country walking experiences. And there are loop paths in various interesting and historic parts of the country.

The long-distance paths range from two days to six weeks in length, although few people walk the longer routes in one journey. There are numerous access points and frequent public transport, so it’s common to walk a long route piecemeal over a period of months or years, eventually completing the entire length of the route. Except for a few of the more remote stretches, most paths can be walked in segments of no more than an hour or two at a time.

Camping is not the only option for these trips. Bed-and-breakfast accommodation is widely available, and in some parts of the country Youth Hostels are also an option. In the Lake District, it’s easy to put together long trips by walking from one Youth Hostel to another each day. There’s no need to choose a linear route as many Youth Hostels are within a day’s walking distance of half a dozen others.

Most parts of England are dotted with small villages, and it’s often possible to arrange on a day walk to take in a pub lunch and to finish at a teashop. Sadly, the quality of Cappuccinos is not up to what you would find in Greece or Australia, but as you might expect a pot of tea can be as good as anywhere in the world.

There’s a choice of high mountain paths and low valley routes. Each has its own interest, and often the decision will be made on the day based on the look of the weather. The low routes are often between or along stone walls, and go right to the heart of English country life - through village squares, past quarries and woodland, through farmyards and even sometimes through the gardens of houses. The high routes go up to the fells - rough grassy open country mostly grazed sparsely by sheep.

Whether you go high or low, you are likely to be sharing your route with many other people. In the more popular areas, on a sunny summer day, you could easily encounter a thousand people and two hundred and twelve dogs. Oh yes, the English do love to take their dog for a walk up in the mountains.

In addition, military fighter jets on training exercises often join you. Often you will see them sweeping through the valleys far below you, practising their precision flying. If you look towards the direction from which the sound is coming, you will not see them. Eventually you get used to anticipating their position, and looking well ahead of the direction of the sound.

Most people walk on designated public footpaths: ancient rights-of-way that are carefully mapped and jealously protected. Indeed, in most areas, even in the National Parks, it is not permitted to

But some areas have been designated as "access areas", where there is a freedom to roam. In some cases, an organisation such as the National Trust has purchased the land in order to provide public access. In other cases, an agreement has been negotiated with the landowner to provide free access.

A bill is before parliament to increase public access to open spaces. Its provisions have already been watered down considerably since its proposal, but it should still open up many new areas. That is, once the foot-and-mouth crisis is over. Most rural walking routes have been closed for many months. For the past few months, many walkers have had to resort to country lanes and seaside promenades for their exercise. The situation has now eased considerably, although many paths still remain closed and it is required to dip ones feet in buckets of disinfectant or tread on disinfectant mats in many places.

Even when walking in official open-access areas, most English walkers prefer to stick to the paths. So if you take map and compass in hand and roam, you can at last find the solitude that is commonplace in the Australian bush but so rare and precious in the English countryside.

I live in Lancaster, a small city in North-west Lancashire. Within an hour’s drive is the Forest of Bowland, where there is an access area comprising a few ridges and half a dozen valleys. I have visited this place many times, and have only once seen another person away from the signposted footpaths.

By the way, don’t be misled by the name "Forest of Bowland". There’s not a tree to be seen. Apparently the name comes from an old word "fores" meaning hunting grounds, although it’s clear from the old stumps that there was some tree cover before the sheep were introduced. The land is privately owned, and all of it is either grazed by sheep or maintained with a cover of heather to support a grouse population for shooting.

Many access areas are closed on several days each year during the grouse shooting season. People come from far away to sit for ages cooped up in a tiny hide exposed to the wind and drizzle waiting for a chance to shoot a grouse. It doesn’t sound like much fun to me, but apparently people pay a lot of money for the chance to do it.

If you’re looking for something more adventurous, there’s no need to stick to walking. There are rocky ridges to traverse (and even here you will find people coercing their dogs along the route), and also plenty of rock scrambles as well as serious rock climbing if you can manage to defrost your fingers. There are no sandstone canyons of the sort that we find around Sydney and in some other parts of Australia, but there are plenty of limestone "potholes" (caves). There are are also Gill (or Ghyll) scrambles. These involve scrambling your way upwards along a rocky mountain stream, clambering over sometimes-slippery rocks, and negotiating large boulders and waterfalls along the way.

Occasionally you will come across an area of ancient woodland, where mixed broadleaf tree species have continued to flourish, sometimes with a carpet of bluebells or other bulbs underneath. These areas are particularly beautiful but also very rare. They seem to be undervalued by the English. Indeed, in several areas the "conservation" bodies have introduced wild goats to stop oak woodlands re-growing. The reasoning is to "conserve" the immediate past history, i.e. open grazed land, rather than to allow the land to return to a more natural forested state.

For those who are interested in industrial archaeology, there are two other interesting ways to walk the countryside: by canal towpath or abandoned railway. England was criss-crossed by a multitude of railway lines, many of which have fallen into disuse during the past fifty years. Some of these can be walked or cycled, and offer a great mixture of rural landscape and urban industrial scenery.

Similarly, there is a great network of canals in many parts of the country. These are not used much nowadays except for recreational boating. Along most of their distance, they have towpaths - paths along which the horses used to pull the canal boats prior to the age of steam. The towpaths are open to walkers, and for example it is possible to walk from Birmingham into the middle of London with only an occasional short detour away from the canal. Sometimes the canals go through long tunnels. It’s not always possible to walk the tunnel; sometimes you must detour over the mountain instead.

So there you have it! There’s a wealth of walking available in England. It’s extensive and varied. It’s very accessible - and it can be rather decadent if you exploit the pub and teashop stops.

But to my mind it can never equal what the Australian bush offers.