A new documentary, Wild Water, celebrates a hardy group of enthusiasts who hike up boglands to swim year-round in a remote mill pond built during the Industrial Revolution

Gaddings Dam was built as a mill pond in about 1833, when the Industrial Revolution positioned West Yorkshire and the north of England as the centre of the developed world’s cotton-spinning and weaving mills. It sits above the market town of Todmorden, out of sight on the moor of Langfield Common, with a sandy beach that claims to be the highest in England.

The Gaddings Dam Preservation Company bought the deeds to the reservoir in 2001 for £1,500, on the condition that it was preserved for the people of Todmorden. These days, with restricted access to water in lakes and reservoirs, Gaddings has become a much-valued and popular local swimming spot.

The Gaddings Dam Preservation Company bought the deeds to the reservoir in 2001 for £1,500 on the condition that it was preserved for the people of Todmorden

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New exhibition showcases photographs of real locations inspired by American film director’s whimsical trademark style

Think of a Wes Anderson film and the muted greys and browns of a rain-soaked day in London are not the first things that spring to mind. But the UK capital is about to host the first European exhibition of photographs inspired by the vibrant aesthetic of the American film director.

Accidentally Wes Anderson: The Exhibition, which opens in South Kensington, London, on 8 December, is the latest incarnation of a phenomenon that began on social media six years ago when self-confessed “nerd” and “Anderson fan-boy” Wally Koval started an Instagram account with the same name. He envisaged it as a personal “travel bucket list”, on which he’d share pictures of places he wanted to visit. However, it quickly snowballed to become an online community sharing photographs of locations that reflected the distinctive, colour-saturated look of films such as The Grand Budapest Hotel and The Royal Tenenbaums.

London’s brilliant parade (clockwise from top left): Buckingham Palace (@oksanaskora); Woolwich Town Hall (@steven.maddison); Kew Palace (Andrew Afram); JAS Smith & Sons Umbrella Shop (Eric Reichbaum)

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The vandalism at Sycamore Gap may have hogged the headlines, but walking the length of the national trail puts these borderlands into thrilling historical context

Hadrian’s Wall has perhaps the most single-minded personality of all the National Trails, tracing as it does the 84 miles from Bowness-on-Solway to Wallsend, which represented the north-west frontier of the Roman empire for nearly 300 years. It was built by the Roman army (the soldiers dug the ditches, quarried the stones and laid them) on the orders of the emperor Hadrian after his visit to Britain in AD 122.

The Hadrian’s Wall path celebrates its 20th birthday this year. I’ve now walked all 17 National Trails, including the Coast to Coast path and King Charles III England coast path (officially opening in 2024 and 2025 respectively). I’m not sure why it took me so long to get round to walking the Hadrian’s Wall trail; perhaps it was a perception that it was too busy or that there was too much road walking. All my concerns proved unfounded.

‘The wall was built from east to west, but I’d decided to go west to east so the prevailing wind was behind me and my load of camera and camping gear’

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