Ramblers are the scourge of the countryside They are noisy, obnoxious, tedious – what ever happened to the Wordsworthian ideal of enjoying our own company in inspiring solitude? 21 April 2021 • 11:28am A horde of ramblers makes its way to the Ribblehead Viaduct in North Yorkshire Credit: Getty Long before everyone got hung up about loneliness, the word “solitude” was used to describe remote, quiet, unspoiled places. The word had an extreme, sometimes testing connotation, but not necessarily a negative one. After all, for the Romantics, country hikes that transported a person far away from the cares and connivances of others were a balm to the soul as well as a cure for the ills of industrialisation that was taking over towns and cities. To spend time in a solitude up in the mountains was to commune with oneself, or God, or nature. Wordsworth wandered lonely as a cloud so that he could dream up poetry, think up lines to the beat of his steps. The “bliss of solitude” inspired the “inward eye”; the depth of a landscape was mirrored in profound emotions and meaningful thoughts.