To walk around a midwinter garden on a fine day when everything has shrunk down to its essential elements is like walking around a gallery. You can take your time, see things with fresh eyes and be ch

I’m sceptical about news stories you sometimes read of big black cats roaming the countryside. I was, however, tempted to don my boots for a hike I found on the internet titled In the Footsteps of the

Plundering a local byway for a spot of festive foraging, John Lewis-Stempel finds all life proliferating in the multitudinous micro-habitat of the winter hedgerow

The Lake District, nestled in the north-west corner of England in Cumbria, is the country’s most poetic landscape. From Wordsworth to Beatrix Potter, the Lake District has always drawn writers, artist

Bucklesham Hall, Bucklesham, Ipswich, Suffolk. A renovated, 15th-century hall set in formal gardens with spring-fed lakes, including one with a Japanese-style bridge and an island. It has beamed ceili

Whether winter-faded ferns, the spindly harvestman or the tyrannical stare of an irate chicken, through-lines from the prehistoric to our modern age are all around us in November, says John Lewis-Stempel