This week, with the long Easter weekend coming up, it's hiking, rambling, or simply walking in the countryside. The early 1930s saw an explosion in the popularity of weekend walks amongst young people in particular, and Hiking (c1936, Laing Art Gallery) by James Walker Tucker (1898-1972) captures this nicely. Dorothy Whipple - a great lover of the outdoors in spring - describes the exhilaration and freedom of similar walks taken by Jane, Maggie, and Wilfrid in High Wages (1930) at an earlier time, just before the First World War.