Horatio Clare takes on the four highest peaks in the UK for this year’s Christmas Walk on BBC Radio 3

By Freya Parr

Published: Wednesday, 03 November 2021 at 12:00 am

Horatio Clare returns to Radio 3 for his annual Christmas walk, this time climbing the four highest peaks of the four UK nations: Ben Nevis in Scotland, then to Northern Ireland for Slieve Donard, onto England’s Scafell Pike and finally to Wales for Snowdon. As well as the sounds of birds, wind and descriptions of the landscape, interwoven with music by Bach, Janáček, Ólafur Arnalds, Sibelius and Richard Strauss. 

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Sound recordist Andy Fell captures recordings from his surroundings during his walk with Horatio Clare

Writer and journalist Horatio Clare’s Christmas walk on Radio 3 has become something of an annual tradition. In recent years, he has explored the concept of the winter wanderer with a walk in Germany’s Black Forest; travelled through Greenland – one of the most remote regions on the planet – to walk the Arctic Circle Trail; walked across various locations on the east coast of the UK at sunrise; and followed in the footsteps of Bach’s 250-mile journey from Arnstadt to Lübeck.

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Horatio Clare and studio manager Richard Andrew on their 2017 walk in Germany, retracing Bach’s steps

Clare’s travels this year will explore our enduring relationship with the outdoors, particularly in the wake of the pandemic with its various lockdowns. Listeners will travel with Clare as he spends time alone and with the hundreds of people he meets on the paths up the UK’s highest peaks.