Blackdown: Start the Year on a High

Start 2016 as you mean to continue by heading for the hills with 'auld acquaintance' from OutdoorLads, and maybe some exciting new ones too.

After a week of feeling confined and bloated and latterly dismayed by the prospect of returning to work, this exhilarating walk of moderate length and exertion should be just what the doctor ordered. Furthermore, trains between London and the rendezvous are fast and frequent and will not be affected by engineering works on the day.

Situated close to the border with Surrey, Blackdown rises above some of the most pristine countryside in southern England to form a rugged greensand plateau, 280m (919ft) up. Its 202 hectares (500 acres) of heathland is owned and cared for by the National Trust. The name 'Blackdown' sounds forbidding, but it evokes the dark pine trees that cap its summit rather than the local medieval iron industry. The views it affords across the Low Weald are breathtaking.

The Victorians were enthralled by Blackdown's convenient Home Counties wildness, and one in particular became synonymous with the area: Alfred, Lord Tennyson. The Poet Laureate lived here for the last 24 years of his life, and inspired by the landscape, wrote in 'Lines to a Friend': You came, and look'd, and loved the view / Long known and loved by me, / Green Sussex fading into blue / With one grey glimpse of sea.

But people's relationship with this great whalebacked peak extends much further back. Middle-Stone Age (6000BC) artefacts have been found here, the area is crossed by ancient tracks, smugglers hid their contraband in caves here en route from the south coast to London, and the hill's beacon alerted the capital to the coming of the Spanish Armada in 1588. In 1967, Iberian Airlines Flight 062 plunged into the southern slope of the hill due to an altimeter misreading. All 37 people on board were killed, including the young British actress June Thorburn.

We shall have lunch at the Red Lion in Fernhurst, a pretty village of tile-hung cottages southwest of the hill, and genteel Haslemere has abundant opportunities for refreshment at the end of the walk. There won't be time for feasting at the Red Lion; be prepared to have just one course or a light lunch.

I can't commend this walk enough to you and I can't think of a better way to start 2016, than in your company and in this countryside, both superlative.