@lindsaydoering 

If you can find George Sayer's  biography, Jack, there's some information and description in the chapter called The Kilns. 

He also describes Jack coming to walk with him in the Malvern Hills, in 1951.

(This is considered by Doug Gresham to be the best bio, if you're looking for one)

Message me if you can't access it, and I'll send you some bits!

@coracle Yup - thank you - I just reread the Kilns chapter - he goes over all the annual walking vacations - including locations. But not really the actual trail - like from where to where.  I wonder if someone has done this research - I am sure the info is out there. 

I had forgotten Sayer's biography - and now I can't put it down!

Does anyone else here take long walks through the countryside like Lewis did?  I walk while birding in the local parks. The parks are about a hundred to two hundred acres in size. Can you picture Lewis identifying birds or was he content with not knowing the species?   Birdwatching might have been a bit too technical for his taste. He might have used field guides for birding since he loved books on nature. I don’t know if the hiking Lewis did was on private property, but perhaps the owners at that time did not mind people walking on their land. I think it probably would have been different today when often the owners wouldn’t trust it. I wonder if he walked on trails or along roads, which might not always be considered safe today. 

I think of some of the county parks that I walk in which have their trails in loops. I don’t know if Lewis would have liked to walk in areas of only about one hundred or two hundred acres. But to walk outside of them may not have been safe today. At the time that Lewis lived walking from one village or town to another was generally safer.  Probably rural areas in England have shrunk as they have here in America, and there are fewer open spaces.  Even the property around the Kilns is not nearly as large as when Lewis lived there.  I remember that during an online tour the guide said it was only 1 1/2 acres!   It’s very sad that so much open space is lost to development. Places like Narnia are getting harder to find. 🙁

I'd like to throw the rather non-American term of rambling into the mix as a potential descriptor for Lewis' walks. 

To continue on the thread of Narnian78's thought above, I think a lot of that depends on the area you are living in--rambling is quite popular in Europe, and many of the cities (like London) either have green/forested areas woven into the the layout of the town where you get those pieces of nature, or it is a very short trip to green/forested areas (Cork, Ireland springs to mind). I've found that U.S. cities tend to be much denser, so folks without their own vehicle have a much more difficult time getting to green/forested areas. There's also the differences of being able to ramble across open fields in at least several European countries, whereas in the U.S. that is more likely to fall into trespassing (especially since wanderers often don't have a strong concept of how their actions impact agricultural practices). Having done some exploring in both countries, I can say with certainty that I do a lot more preparation for anything in the U.S., often with the expectation that if anything goes wrong, I have to be able to get myself to safety by myself. In the EU, all I really had to do was get to a road and wait (though on a more modern note, I don't remember ever having my cell phone not have service in the EU either).

All that to say, I think the idea of Lewis as a rambler, which is more of a European concept, rather than a hiker, might help better understand the idea of walking to enjoy nature, with no particular set preparations, versus hiking with a pack and the expectation that you will be far away from potential assistance. I think the idea of rambling also lends itself to philosophical/religious reflection, too, and is easier to work into a daily/weekly routine.

This is not to say Lewis didn't do more pack-based activities, but I think his daily walking and the discussion in Surprised by Joy lends itself more to rambling than hiking.

@wren good comments.

Yes, in England (and probably the rest of UK) there are paths that are designated for the public to walk along on land that is either privately owned or part of National Parks.  I understand there is a risk to any path if it doesn't get used enough, and the owner of the land may be able to keep hikers/ ramblers off it.
For this reason the Ramblers (and probably others) try to keep pathways and tracks in regular use.
https://www.ramblers.org.uk/

Lewis presents his character Ransom as a man walking in the countryside, on a holiday alone, at the start of Out of the Silent Planet. He will have known exactly what was required, and the risks to a middle aged academic on his own - although he himself was never whisked up into space!  Ransom was, of course, based on Tolkien.