Newsletter Spring 2022

Kay’s 100th birthday would have been in 2022, and interestingly this year marks the 50th Anniversary of The Garden Hisory Journal as well as the Buckinghamshire Garden’s Trust 25th Anniversary and of course the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee. Quite a year!

Sadly, I never met Kay as it was around 2013 that I first came across her whilst researching for my MA dissertation on Maud Grieve. I do however owe much to her as she had carried out a considerable amount of research on Maud, and other herbalists from the 1970s onwards. Her research formed the basis for my dissertation and later my book about ‘Maud’ which I fittingly dedicated to Kay.

I discovered Kay’s archive quite by chance when I contacted Joan Dugdale, a herbalist living in Australia; she had hoped to write a book about Maud but was unable to find sufficient information about her early life. Joan suggested I contact Mick Thompson, the estate manager at Ashridge, as he was the custodian of Kay’s archive. Of course, I already knew of Mick as he was secretary of Bucks Gardens Trust. He had produced copies of Kay’s papers which he gave me, as well as lending me some of Maud’s pamphlets. The rest is history, as they say: I completed my MA and in 2017 published the book about Maud Grieve.

Kay Smith or Kathleen as she was then known was born in Wigan, Lancs. On finishing school, she left home at the age of just 17, and enrolled at Studley College in Warwickshire to study Horticulture. She was there for three years between 1940 and 1943, becoming head girl. She later wrote a history of the establishment. The women-only college was set up in 1898 by Lady Frances, Countess of Warwick in 1902 it moved to Studley Castle. During the war, she also signed up for the Women’s Land Army.

On leaving the college she worked at the RHS at Wisley and in London and she also started to contribute to garden journals and magazines. She was then invited to join Amateur Gardening magazine and continued to freelance whilst bringing up her daughter. Kay had married Waclaw Kasimercz (known as Vance) in 1952 and their only child Diana was born in 1955.

In 1956 she published her first book on herbs, Wild and Garden Herbs. She was editor of the Hardy Plant Society Bulletin for ten years and in the early 1960s the consultant editor on horticulture for Reader’s Digest.

In 1967 she was a founding member of The Garden History Society (later The Gardens Trust), serving as secretary and conference organiser. Finally standing down from the committee in 1979, she was elected a Life Vice-President in 1980 in recognition of her contribution. Kay played a key role in the promotion of Garden History both in the UK and internationally and was instrumental in increasing the society’s membership.

Pamphlet “Medicinal Herbs and their Cultivation” from Kay’s Archive © M. Thompson
During the 1970s she continued to publish and edit, including as assistant editor on the Marshall Cavendish Encyclopaedia of Gardening. She was also commissioned to write numerous affordable little gems for Shire Publications, including Discovering English Gardens, Discovering Herbs, Humphry Repton and Old Garden Tools (probably the most popular title).

From 1970 to 1974 she was the Registrar at Ashridge Management College. Later, in 1982, she returned as the archivist responsible for the estate and family records, a position she held until she retired in 2000. In 1994, she also started the very successful Ashridge Summer Schools, with attendees coming from America and Europe. When Mick Thompson arrived to take on the role of garden manager at Ashridge in 1994 it was the beginning of a great partnership: alongside the ever-enthusiastic Richard Wheeler, Kay ensured that Mick’s ambitious restoration projects came to fruition.

An ornamental herb and flower garden at Ashridge was created in the late nineteenth century probably by the 3^rd Earl Brownlow, in memory of his mother, Lady Marian Alford however by the 1980s this had long gone. Plans were put in place to create a new garden in 2005, the beds were laid to a design that Humphry Repton had intended for another part of the garden. The garden is made up of twelve teardrop-shaped beds in a circle which represents the petals of a flower with a central sandstone column and armorial sphere. As Kay had passed away earlier in the year and given her extensive work on herbs, it was seen as fitting that the herb garden at Ashridge should be dedicated to her as well as Lady Marian both significant women that left their mark on Ashridge.

Kay had a wide and varied career, and I cannot begin to list her extensive achievements in publishing, and writing, and the numerous officer positions she held in the horticultural sector. For me, her book the History of the English Herb Garden with its foreword by Anthony Huxley (1992, Ward Lock) was her most successful publication, and in my opinion, her enthusiasm for herbs is only surpassed by that of Maud Grieve herself and perhaps today by the likes of Jekka McVicar.

It was only when I started to read Kay’s archive that I realised how difficult research must have been before the internet. She had to type letters to archives and many others and maybe wait weeks for a response, whereas today we expect to get instant feedback online! I am eternally grateful that her legacy provided me with such wonderful material, which I use to spread the word about the importance of medicinal herbs through my publication on ‘Maud’ and my numerous talks to local and national groups.

Reference

The Bucks Gardener Summer 2005 pp 6–7, M. Thompson, R. Wheeler

Many thanks to Mick Thompson for lending me Kay’s archive, and Diana Savil for information on her mother.

Claire de Carle

7

Buckinghamshire’s Forgotten Women in Gardening: Margaret Ursula Mee (1909–1988)

Margaret Mee, a celebrated botanical artist whose exotic paintings of the Brazilian Amazon rainforest flora are exhibited around the world, started life in a modest but happy family among the farms and fields of early 20th-century Chesham. Born Margaret Ursula Brown on 22nd May 1909 in  White Hill, a year or so later, the family moved to Lye Green Road, their house there, Rosemead, now a care home called Culwood. She, her two sisters and brother enjoyed a carefree, rural childhood, their early education provided by an aunt living with the family on and off. Ellen (Aunt Nell) worked as a children’s book illustrator, much to Margaret’s admiration. In those times, this was highly unusual for a girl.

The family idyll was interrupted by the outbreak of WWI. Their father, George, too old to fight, was determined to help however he could and was posted elsewhere to help the domestic war effort. Meanwhile, her mother Lizbelle moved the family to Hove, East Sussex, for the duration where Margaret attended a local school. Her report showed she made good progress in botany and was steadily progressing in art, coming top of the form.

On return to Chesham in 1922, the family settled in Eskdale Avenue and Margaret took up a place at Dr Challoner’s Grammar School. Founded as a boys’ school in Old Amersham in 1624, nearly 300 years earlier, it expanded to new premises in Amersham-on-the-Hill in 1905 and became co-educational. Here, also, Margaret’s talent was noted by art teacher, ‘Benjy’ Buckingham.

A keen amateur naturalist himself, George encouraged Margaret’s early enthusiasm for wildlife. She began tentatively sketching plants but, of course, had no awareness that she would spend the second half of her life producing an extensive archive of botanical artwork which would be exhibited long after her death. Most is at Kew, while many other smaller collections around the world hold samples of her work, including that of the late Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh.

Her early career, however, took her in an entirely different direction. She spent time teaching in Liverpool and married an active trades unionist, Reg Bartlett. She joined the communist party, took part in demonstrations outside Downing Street, and spoke at a TUC Conference, receiving a standing ovation. Consequently, she was offered a job working in the office of Ernest Bevan. However, she turned it down and, what’s more, realising she was unhappy, ended her marriage. Once again, though, life was interrupted by war. Margaret spent WWII deploying her skills in the drawing office of the De Havilland aircraft factory in Hatfield where a permanent position was offered, and similarly refused.

After enrolling in evening art classes at St Martin’s School of Art in London, and meeting second husband Greville Mee there, Margaret realised that art was where her real passions lay. She began a full-time course at Camberwell School of Art tutored by renowned artist Victor Pasmore, part of the Euston Road Group which included members of the Bloomsbury Set including Vanessa Bell.

It was a trip to visit her ailing sister, Catherine, living in Brazil, however, which really changed the course of her life. She and Greville had intended to return to live in the UK eventually, but never did. They would go for long walks to the coast or forest to avoid the heat and noise of São Paulo, and Margaret began to draw the plants she found there. Fifteen plant-hunting expeditions followed during a period of over thirty years, trips which took her further into the rainforest or along the rivers of the Amazon basin.

She was intrepid in her quest to find exciting species to draw, facing dangers from wildlife, becoming lost, or being attacked by wary indigenous tribespeople. Developing a particular interest in bromeliads, as well as, to a lesser extent, orchids, she would make quick sketches and bring back specimens to work from, but also paint in the forest from the living plant. The precision of her work, its beauty, and her contributions to conservation had already gained her a reputation among botanists and other scientists.

Soon knowledge of her fearlessness, so at odds with her slight, softly well-spoken persona would do the same among the public. Newspaper articles appeared about her, and she was interviewed on Radio 4 and even on TV in America, when she would offer anecdotes describing the challenges she faced. How ironic, then, that her life should end in a car crash on a British road. She had returned for the opening of a major exhibition of her work at Kew, and publication of her expedition diaries. Tragically she died a few weeks later on  30th November 1988, aged 79.

References

Dr Challoners School, Amersham, ‘A History of Our Challoners’
<https://www.challoners.com/c/our-school/history-of-challoners/introduction> [Accessed 12th February 2022]

Morrison, T. (ed.) Margaret Mee: In Search of Flowers of the Amazon Forests (Woodbridge: Nonesuch Expeditions, 1988)

Nonesuch Expeditions ‘Margaret Mee’s Amazon’, <http://www.nonesuchexpeditions.com/margaret-mee/margaret-mees-amazon-contents.htm> [Accessed 12 February 2022]

Seabright, J., Chesham Through Time (Stroud: Amberley Publishing, 2010)

Treadgold, F. R., Challoners 1624–1974 (Privately published, 1974)

Catherine Youd

8

West Wycombe – a Garden of the Dilettanti

The second Sir Francis Dashwood (1708–1771) (left), son of another Sir Francis (above), inherited West Wycombe at the tender age of 15.

The first Francis had been a successful Turkey merchant – one of the members of the Turkey Merchants Company which became the Company of the Levant. He and his two brothers were importers of silk from the Ottoman Empire, and other goods from Madras via the East India Company. It would not be unfair to suggest that he was a wealth creator par excellence, whilst his son was a spender and bon viveur … par excellence.

This picture of the second Sir Francis shows him in his costume of the Divan Club which he founded in 1744 – for those who had visited the Ottoman Empire – which of course included Greece. This portrait of ‘Il Faquir Dashwood Pasha’ at West Wycombe is accompanied by three others in Turkish dress – his half-sister Mary Walcot, Sultana Walcotia, Lady Wortley Montagu, and the courtesan Fanny Murray, the dedicatee of John Wilkes banned (and obscene) parody of Pope’s ‘Essay on Man’ entitled ‘An Essay on Woman’.

This behaviour does not however suggest that the second Francis was not intelligent – quite the opposite. And in this regard he owed a lot to his maternal uncle and guardian, General John Fane, later 7th Earl of Westmorland. Fane had been an officer under the Duke of Marlborough in the wars in the Low Countries and had seen action at Lille and Malplaquet.

It is worth noting that in this context he would have been a fellow officer with Richard Temple, later to become Lord Cobham (left) – the creator of the gardens at Stowe, and became MP for Buckingham in 1727, a seat, unsurprisingly, largely in the gift of Cobham. Fane (right)  was a passionate follower of classical and Palladian architecture – and described himself as ‘diligent …in stone and mortar.’

He epitomised this enthusiasm by employing Colen Campbell to create a replica of Vicenza’s Villa Rotonda at Mereworth in Kent, with Charles Bridgeman designing the gardens, and Francesco Sleter (William Kent’s muralist at Stowe) working as a muralist.

This background set the scene for his influence on the young Sir Francis whom he sent on the Grand Tour in 1726 and then again, on his majority, from 1729 until 1731. During these tours Francis gained a certain notoriety for laddish behaviour – backward hopping races in the Long Gallery of the Uffizi and producing a horse-whip during the Ceremony of Scourging in the Sistine Chapel on Good Friday, where he ‘…flogged right and left quite down the chapel, and made his escape, the congregation exclaiming, ‘il diavolo, il diavolo! and thinking the evil one was upon them with a vengeance…’.

This behaviour was matched by his erudition gained from his Uncle Fane leading to an equal enthusiasm for the architecture of the Greeks and the Romans. His foundation, with others, of the Society of Dilettanti fulfilled both these, perhaps nowadays conflicting, objectives. Walpole acidly remarked that it was ‘…a club for which the nominal qualification is having been in Italy, and the real one, being drunk: the two chiefs are Lord Middlesex and Sir Francis Dashwood, who were seldom sober the whole time they were in Italy…’

This remark was probably true, but still grossly unfair. The Dilettanti were instrumental in organising and funding the works of architectural discovery amongst the ruins of the ancient world by the architects, James Stuart and Nicholas Revett, published as ‘Antiquities of Athens’ and ‘Antiquities of Ionia’. Both are still the bibles of Grecian architecture.

And Sir Francis with another Dilettanti founder, Thomas Anson of Shugborough, used these two architectural draftsmen to embellish their gardens – Stuart at Shugborough, and Revett at West Wycombe.

Thomas Pennant in his ‘Journey to Chester’ describes Shugborough: ‘…it is more difficult to enumerate the works of art dispersed over this Elysium… the lively improved front of Shugborough… the genuine architecture of China, in all its extravagance; the dawning of the Grecian, in the mixed Gothic gateway at Tixall; and the chaste buildings of Athens, exemplified by Mr Stuart, in the counterparts of the Choragic Monument of Lysicrates’, and the Octagon Tower of Andronicus Cyrrhestes. From the same hand [Stuart] arose, by command of a grateful brother , the Arch of Adrian of Athens, embellished with Naval trophies, in honour of Lord Anson, a glory to the British fleet ; and who still survives in the gallant train of officers who remember and emulate his actions…’

The painting of Shugborough’s West Front by Nicholas Dall in c1768 show the Chinese House, the remains of a classical colonnade, and the Gothicky ruins of the Bishop of Lichfield’s Palace.

Conversely, at West Wycombe Francis Dashwood employed Nicholas Revett to design garden buildings for his newly reordered gardens and park. And Revett’s commission seems to have been to produce a parody of the heavy-handed humour in the gardens of Lord Cobham and his nephew, Earl Temple, at Stowe. So each of his buildings at West Wycombe has its origins in the pompously elegant temples (or Temples?) at Stowe.

So rather than a Palladian Bridge which took the visitor both dry under the rain  and dry over the Stowe River, Revett produced a Pepperboxes Bridge over the diminutive River Wye, with a sentry box at each end to shelter from the rain.

And then to repeat the Gothicism at Stowe with its Keeper’s Lodge (later the Bourbon Tower), mock castle hiding a farmhouse (rather obviously known as Stowe Castle), and Gothic Temple, Revett produced a triptych of Gothic buildings in response.

First is a castellated farmhouse, rather delightfully doing duty as Don Quixote’s Castle, reminding us of the Don’s mistaking the local bawdy tavern as a Castle filled with grand ladies in need of rescue? The results of the mistake can only be imagined…  And one wonders whether Revett misread his instructions, for the gamekeeper’s lodge (or Bourbon Tower) was replicated at West Wycombe with the Round Lodge or Gatekeeper’s Lodge on the back entrance drive.

 Thirdly, as a mock (or mocking) re-imagination of the Gothic Temple at Stowe, a diminutive little church and steeple dedicated to St Crispin, the patron saint of shoemakers – ‘for the cure of souls’… actually a joke by William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare but recycled here at West Wycombe.

And still in ecclesiastical mode, a ruined Abbey on the side of the hill above the park and immediately below the church of St Lawrence on the top.

Perhaps invoking the idea of hell for the monks of the abbey below and heaven for the congregation above, it is a nice juxtaposition for Francis’s Monks of Medmenham or Hell Fire Club in their hellish grotto, with his enthusiasm for rewriting the Book of Common Prayer for the communicants above – ‘pious and devout persons whose age or infirmities will not suffer them to remain for hours in a cold church, more especially in the Winter season…’. In antithesis to the catholic ‘hocus pocus’ parodied in their celebrations in the cave beneath – or at Medmenham Abbey, the service was free from ‘all remnants of Catholicism.’

Stowe’s little roothouse, Augustine’s Cave, despite its obscene Latin doggerel could not compete with the earthy erudition of Sir Francis.

Finally, on West Wycombe house itself, Dashwood brought together ideas of his uncle and his best reconstruction of a classical building.

The East Portico is a replica of one of the faces of the Villa Rotunda, just like his Uncle Fane’s masterpiece at Mereworth, and the West Portico a reworking by Nicholas Revett of the Temple of Bacchus at Teos.

What a place and what a man…

Henry Lane & Son of Berkhamsted (1798-1945)

Henry Lane & Son of Berkhamsted is a largely forgotten, influential nursery. I came across Lane’s nursery in late 2019. A one-line entry in a Penn Estate account book of 1920 showed a significant purchase of rhododendrons from the firm to decorate the gateway to a new drive. It piqued my interest, especially as I have an old ‘Lane’s Prince Albert’ apple in my garden and wondered whether it was the same Lane, but I put the thought to one side. Just over a year later my study of a 20th century subject had been frustrated by the closing of galleries, their archives and the difficulties accessing more modern texts through free online resources. I had to rethink, and H. Lane & Son came back to the fore – any excuse to visit a nursery!

Local histories revealed that the company had been of great local importance both economically and socially. An uncorroborated start date of 1777 with unbroken direct family management until 1945 immediately spoke to me of clarity, focus and drive; many 19th-century nurserymen were unable to negotiate the tricky world of borrowing, growth and adaptability as land use, competition and prices rapidly rose, not to mention the demands of fashion.

Next stop the archives at Hertford. Would there be a business archive? A selection of material relating to John Edward Lane’s (the son) estate at his death in 1889 was disappointingly small but did reveal the extent of the Lane empire and trade connections at that date. He had a brewery business and a pub chain as well as a list of over 100 nursery trade contacts across Britain and Europe. However not a single account book, diary or letter surfaced. A general search via TNA Discovery at Kew only revealed one late-19th century garden plan, held at Bedfordshire Archives.

The RHS Lindley Library revealed about twenty nursery catalogues from 1845 to 1934, which were to be invaluable; one of 1866 revealed the company’s start date of 1798.

Henry (c.1781–1865) was born in Uxbridge and apart from his baptismal record and marriage record of 1807, there are very few other records. He was renting ¼ acre of ground in Berkhamsted in 1810 and adverts for John Lane (1808–1889), a seedsman, appear in Pigot’s Directories of the mid-1820s. However, by the end of this decade things had progressed. Henry Lane & Son were succeeding at horticultural shows, their customer base had extended to the Countess Brownlow at Ashridge, who bought large quantities of their (unspecified) seeds for both the flower garden and the vegetable garden in 1830, and they were increasing their land holdings.

By 1839 they were occupying 16 acres of land and running out of space in the centre of Berkhamsted. Just two miles away across Berkhamsted Common they found Martins Farm which enabled them to move to large-scale production. The census of 1851 revealed that Lane was employing 33 people and occupying 40 acres of ground. How had the Lanes achieved this success? The Victorian horticultural and local press provided the answer. Thank goodness for the online resources of the HathiTrust, Biodiversity Heritage Library, and the British Newspaper Archive.

The mid-19th-century catalogues revealed that they were selling a wide range of plants but had started to build a reputation with fuchsias, pansies, dahlias and calceolarias. John was quick to recognise that fashion and the interests of the Horticultural Society would be his platform to success. Henry enjoyed the creativity of crossing and raising new varieties of rose, but it was the large-scale growing of high-quality roses bred by others both in pots and in the ground that brought distinction to the Berkhamsted Nurseries: Lane was the first in 1831 to exhibit roses grown in pots, to the surprise of many others at the Horticultural Society. Samuel Reynolds Hole, a respected rosarian, described Lane as being one of the four most distinguished chiefs of rose growing in the mid-century along with Thomas Rivers, Adam Paul and William Wood.

As the fashion for North American trees and shrubs grew, Lane’s extended their skills to the tender azaleas and greenhouse rhododendrons (considered separately at that time). Their skills with standard roses which exemplified John Claudius Loudon’s Gardenesque style perfectly transferred to hardy rhododendrons and laurels to decorate the fashionable lawns and borders around the house, small or large. Fruits were not forgotten, grapes and orchard fruits in pots being highly profitable for them. Hundreds of medals rewarded their efforts throughout the century and into the 20th. Their nursery was not only reported on by all the principal British journals but also in European and American ones.

Their success with dessert grapes grown under glass brought them the highest accolade in 1875 at the International Exhibition of Fruit in Ghent. Lane’s grapes were unanimously judged to be so exceptional that that they were awarded a solid gold medal instead of the usual gold-plated one, much to the astonishment of the miffed Northern Europeans who had such a strong tradition of grape growing under glass. By this time H. Lane & Son’s nurseries covered 150 acres across three sites with 100 full-time employees.

Customer information is thin on the ground. It must surely have been the wealth of the rapidly expanding upper–middle classes which powered Lane’s commercial success. Only two such customers have been discovered in 1852, both from the Midlands, through their correspondence with The Gardeners’ Chronicle (1852) and The Floral World (1860). Supplier names are very rarely given in archive record descriptions, and the limits imposed on in-house archive research continue to frustrate. Apart from the previously mentioned Brownlow and Howe, only three other customers have surfaced: Delmé-Radcliffe at Hitchin Priory in the 1840s, Valpy at Champneys in the late 1890s, and Halsey at Great Gaddesden in the early 1900s. The location of the nursery so close to the Bucks border must surely have meant that many of their customers came from Buckinghamshire. Even in the earliest days of the nursery an important stagecoach route through Berkhamsted linked London to Aylesbury and beyond to Buckingham and the Midlands. If you ever come across a relevant invoice or account book entry in your garden research, please do let me know.

Why has their influence been forgotten? Their hardy trees and shrubs, especially rhododendrons, kalmias, conifers and ever-present fruit trees, were equally admired by the leading figures such as James Shirley Hibberd, William Robinson and Archibald Barron. John and one of his sons, Frederick Quincey (1841–1907), were on the RHS Fruit committees; John was a leading pomologist, becoming vice-president of the Fruit Committee, working at the same level as Rivers and Paul and in the vanguard of developing consistently high-quality new plants for sale. Unlike Rivers, Paul and Veitch, though, they promoted their business and their plants but not themselves. They did not write books or articles for magazines and spent much of their spare time (what spare time?) supporting Berkhamsted’s development and population through charitable works and infrastructure improvements. The tragic loss of five sons at an early age across two generations must have been devastating personally and also commercially. One of John’s sons, John Edward (of course), was already recognised as an exceptional horticulturalist at the time of his death. The adaptability and vision that they had in the years up to 1907 and the death of Fred Quincey (what better name for a fruit specialist?) did not appear in the 4th generation and the firm struggled on until the end of the WWII, when it was sold and disappeared by 1960.

There is so much more I could tell you. Apart from the apple, which was indeed ‘my apple’, only the moss rose ‘Laneii’ (imported from Laffay in 1846) is still available today, as is a golden cypress, Chamaecyparis lawsoniana ‘Lanei Aurea’ of their own raising, a highly rated conifer growing in Adrian Bloom’s garden at Foggy Bottom. Other apples, rhododendrons, fuchsias, pansies and cinerarias raised by them have disappeared from cultivation. The nursery grounds have also disappeared. The large trees, rhododendrons, and some fruit trees growing around Berkhamsted and Potten End in private gardens, open spaces and along roadsides continue the legacy of these ambitious and hard-working nurserymen, whom The Florist called ‘ardent lovers of good gardening’, and Shirley Hibberd likened to ‘nurserymen princes’ because of the scope and influence of their operation.Perhaps a forgotten nursery in Buckinghamshire could be brought back to life through a combination of archive and online research. Charles Turner of Slough is one that comes to mind as I have found little written about them.

Louise Kell

10

Get Walking

Wrap up warm, walking boots on and off for a spring walk in the beautiful Chilterns, my backyard!

Whiteleaf Cross

Enjoy a walk up to Whiteleaf to see glorious views of Buckinghamshire and the chalk-hill cross that Whiteleaf is known for. You can see to Wittenham Clumps and across the Aylesbury plain. There is a worthwhile climb up from the pub car park or you can take a slightly easier route to reach the viewing point, which can be found by starting at the Whiteleaf car park. Finish your walk at the Plough at Cadsden or The Red Lion on the Icknield Way. Take a look at the map and walking guides to find out the different routes you can take and explore.

Coombe Hill and Chequers Trail

This is a great walk for families which takes you through vast chalk grassland, beautiful woodland and the pretty hamlet of Butlers Cross with the pub The Russell Arms, owned by the locals. The Coombe Hill and Chequers Trail circular route will take you to the Boer War memorial which is a perfect stop for a picnic (weather permitting) and views overlooking the Chilterns.

Penn Wood is one of the largest ancient woodlands in the Chilterns. Part of Penn Wood is managed by a herd of cows on the ‘wood pasture’. There are red kites and buzzards overhead and in Spring a beautiful carpet of bluebells. There are woodland walks suitable for all ages and abilities with a choice of different routes for either a gentle stroll or something a little more challenging.