An autumn walk in Britain's best woods

A wild ramble followed by a snug pub: what better way to celebrate autumn, asks an apple-cheeked Vincent Crump

Late September, and in country inns nationwide, landlords are stoking up a fire in the inglenook, unstopping the cider barrel and popping a saddle of venison in the oven. They're doing it because autumn's coming, and they know it's the time of year Britain does best. It's the season when our countryside gets sensual: the scrunch of leaf litter underfoot; the sweetness of wood smoke on the wind; the plump savour of blackberries picked straight from the bramble.

NI_MPU ('middle'); We've collected a windfall of crisp autumn ambles across Britain, all with the guarantee of a seasonal colour show, and all just energetic enough to get you apple-cheeked and thirsty for that first sip of conker-brown ale at the end of the trail. So, get your boots on and get out there - Britain's innkeepers are depending on you.

DUNKELD, Perth & Kinross Scotland is predominantly a place of parade-ground pines, quick-marching across the hills. But Hermitage Wood, at Dunkeld, is nothing like that: its beeches and larches switch to red and amber in autumn, in a display so traffic-light bright that Queen Victoria once made a special stop to see them change.

Crammed into a steep gulley beside the River Tay, Dunkeld must be Britain's cutest cathedral town. Pick up the walking leaflet from the information centre and cross the river to examine Birnam Oak, a remnant of the forest that menaced Macbeth. It's just as gnarled and witch-like as you'd hope.

Next, aim a mile west through Little Dunkeld to reach the Hermitage trail. From here, a path plunges headlong into the glen of the River Braan, canopied with copper beeches and Douglas firs - one of them, at 212ft, claims to be Britain's tallest tree. Soon you'll reach Ossian's Hall, put up by an 18th-century duke as a kind of royal box for viewing the cacophonous Black Linn Falls.

The National Trust is about to reopen it in original trim, with mirrors to magnify the majesty of the view. Turn north through lemony larch woods to Rumbling Bridge and back along the river to the Tap Inn, at the Birnham House Hotel - castle-like, cosy, perfect for a post-walk dram.

Autumn spectacular

The lake has been performing its autumn spectacular since Georgian times, when the district's first tourists rowed out to watch its mirror surface soak up the flaming bracken on the fells of the Fairfield Horseshoe and the scarlet ashes cladding Claife Heights.

That's the way we're heading, too: cross on the car ferry from Bowness, park up and find the steps to Claife Station, a forgotten turret built in 1790 so the visiting gentry could lord it over the lake. It's now ruined and oddly creepy, but the lookout tower has lordly views over russet-coloured beeches and oaks that splash down to the western shore.

Now crunch north on the lakeside track to Belle Grange, where red squirrels skitter, and climb steeply west to burst out of the woods onto Claife Heights, with catch-your-breath views of the Langdale Pikes.

This is the haunt of the Claife Crier, whose spectral shriek can kill a man at 500 paces, and you've a better chance of hearing him in autumn - though it could just be the bark of a stag, busy with the rut. Complete your circuit via Near Sawrey village, once home to Beatrix Potter, where the Tower Bank Arms still looks just as it did in The Tale of Jemima Puddle-Duck. It serves staunchly Cumbrian beers and beef, sausages and sweets. Don't ask for rabbit, whatever you do.

The textile town of Hebden Bridge is a beauty for autumn ambles. Gritstone mill-workers' houses, spick and stolid as any Victorian cotton baron, stack up steeply against the terraced flanks of Calderdale, with a rag-rug of motley woodland thrown across every step and a rich pattern of old packhorse routes weaving into the wilds.

The town has long since traded the clatter of looms for a new, vaguely bohemian atmosphere - art-house films at the Picture House, world music at the Trades Club - and there is an all-purpose buzz in the Pennine air. From the National Trust car park near New Bridge, ferret out the path north beside Hebden Water, tucked up tight in its sleeping bag of gold and green woods.

The valley has a real fairy-glen feel - lovebirds hold hands; children splash in the dappled shallows. After a mile, you'll see a shapely chimney climbing among the beeches and oaks: it's 200-year-old Gibson Mill, which has undergone a right-on restoration and now tells the story of Calderdale cotton in eco-friendly style.

Beyond the mill lie Hardcastle Crags, a sort of ogreish rockery smothered in autumn colour. Keep going, branch right to climb out of the woods and, at Walshaw, take a path east across brisk moorland.

Soon you'll duck down into Crimsworth Dean and back along the beck to town, where the White Lion, in Bridge Gate, is a coal-fired coaching inn serving tasty local lamb sausages and mash.