TRAMPING IN ENGLAND

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 5, 6 January 1934, Page 1 (Supplement)

TRAMPING IN ENGLAND

CONTRASTS WITH N.Z.

PLACES AND PEOPLE

(By CX.A.)

Tramping in Now Zealand is very different from tramping at Home. 111 England there is practically 110 pioneering of paths to be done as, it being a much older country, it is riddled with tracks and bridle paths, which simply invite the tramper to follow them. These tracks and bridle paths are all.marked on tho Government ordnance maps, the popular "one-inch map" (oiio inch representing a mile), being the trampers' bible. With this map and a compass 110 tramper need ever be lost, though he may sometimes (through negligence, fog or multiplicity of tracks) wander some distance from his objective. But if one has plenty of time, to wander from one's intended route often adds to the interest of the journey, because of its complete unexpectedness. At all times in the year tho tramper in England is amply rewarded for his exertions, but it is probably during autumn that he receives his fullest reward, the woods and hedgerows being cloaked in their rich multicoloured raiment preparatory to shedding it for the winter somnolence. But let us turn to another aspect of tramping at Home. The paths and tracks already mentioned do not merely wind their way through beautiful country — country packed with so many memorable scenes as all who know England will readily agree, but they invariably connect one old-world village with another. These villages are full of quaint buildings and interesting people. In place of tho familiar corrugated iron roofed houses of New Zealand, many of the older villages (such as Penshurst and Clieddinafold. to name but two interesting old-world villages very near to London) will contain thatched cottages and manor houses of. Tudor origin. In villages such as these the true tramper lingers, finding much to interest him, for each village has its own individuality, which simply invites far more than a mere superficial acquaintance. One of the delights of tramping in England is the joy of sampling the particular delicacy of the district in which one is tramping. In New Zealand there is, in comparison, a great uniformity in the meals —.111 important point after <t long tramp. Cheese, butt-jr and other staple foods are very much the same throughout the Dominion, but that is very far from being so at Home, where each district is famed for some speciality or other. Of course, everyone has heard of Devonshire cream and cider, Eccles cakes and bath buns, but of greater delight, though perhaps less known, is the rum butter of the Lake district—a tramper's paradise. Then there are the many different cheeses of the various Yorkshire and Lancashire dales; and the lardy cakes of Berkshire must be mentioned. Cornish pasties and the clotted cream of Cornwall are other delights. All these points go to make tramping in England a source of endless interest, and if one can afford the time it is by tramping the delightful lanes and footpaths at Home that one really discovers E*i"land.