I am the archetypal anglophile and remain, like Ruskin, ever faithful to “blind, tormented, unwearied, marvellous England”. For me it is the most beautiful country in the world . . . I use England like other people use psychiatrists. It’s my comforter and my reassurance. Sometimes, when my life gets to breaking point, I take off with a horse, saddle bags or a cart, a dog, cash, Ordnance Survey maps and a vague plan of direction. Once I am on the road I begin to feel all right.

Using lanes and tracks as much as possible, I have come on many of the places in my book Unwrecked England by chance and sometimes I have found the magical pockets of landscape that Roger Deakin describes in Notes from Walnut Tree Farm, “a little envelope of country that is unknown to anyone else, which feels as though it is your own secret land”.

Speeding in a car through landscapes, towns and villages, you might often dismiss places at a glance as being dull, but if you are travelling slowly they seldom are. I ambled through Stanhope, for instance, a plain, grey-stoned Weardale town in Co Durham which, on the face of it, seemed commonplace. After ten minutes sitting in the market place, dipping in and out of a hardware shop and the church, finding out about the stalwart bravery of Stanhope’s early lead miners, I began to feel the warmth and the strong spirit of the place and didn’t want to leave. I was happy there.

For as long as I can remember I have been on a quest for the romance of England, not so much through its open spaces but through the men who have worked the land over thousands of years and built the henges, barrows, castles, cottages and cathedrals, the bridges, railways and canals. The passion was instilled in me by my mother, Penelope Betjeman — whose love of prehistory and nature and riding along green lanes became part of me — and by my father John’s deep love of unregarded and obscure England reached down winding lanes or mean streets. The back of England rather than the front, as it were.

The vast conception of time that England affords puts things in perspective for me. I like that the origin of the Uffington White Horse remains a mystery. What moves me is that it is still there after nearly 5,000 years. Whatever belief system has been in place, the horse has been maintained and that sense of continuity is consoling to me. Though Ely Cathedral, Beverley Minster, Dorney Court or Ightham Mote may be obvious choices to include because of their unassailable beauty and uniquely English architecture, ordinary England can be just as noble and just as beautiful, but you have to look for it.

I love the thrill of the journey in unknown territory and not knowing what I will find around the next bend. I love wandering through villages and watching other people’s lives. Visiting a church, seeing the names on the gravestones, the grand or humble memorials, the current flower rota in the porch, brings home the continuance of things like no other. I find it anchoring.

I have discovered half of Unwrecked England by horse, a bit by train or barge and the rest with my husband, Rupert, who shares my love of exploring along the way. On long journeys we try to travel as the crow flies, avoiding motorways and main roads and never without Ordnance Survey maps and Shell Guides. Our friend John Wells composed a song for a musical — a recurring anthem with our family — “Sticking to minor roads and leaving our cares behind us, where nobody hopes to find us, we go. Happily making tracks and turning our backs on, things we know.”

I never stop being surprised at how wonderful England is. In the past its people, buildings and landscape have survived turbulent change — devastation by the Danes, the dissolution of the monasteries, the Enclosure Acts, the Industrial Revolution, the 20th-century onslaught of motorised transport. Today the delicate fabric of its towns and villages is being eaten away: pubs, post offices and independent shops are dying every day and church congregations are slipping away.

But much the most disquieting threat of all is the loss of our traditional farmland. Travelling by horse, which I have done for 50 years, I notice every change in hedgerow vegetation and that roadside rubbish has increased a hundredfold (a sad and depressing reflection of our lazy national character: nobody chucks rubbish out of cars in Germany). And I am alarmed by the disastrous loss of wildflowers and the depletion of bird, butterfly and bee numbers in rural areas.

That said, I err on the side of hope that England’s extraordinarily strong and fighting spirit will overcome injustice in the end and adapt towards new things, as it always has.

Unwrecked England by Candida Lycett Green is published by Oldie Publications at £25. To buy it for the special price of £22.50 with free p&p, call 0845 2712134 or visit timesonline.co.uk/booksfirst

Ten secrets shared

It is almost impossible to do justice to the richness and variety of the landscape of England — the shifting palette of colours, its local building materials, the styles of its local craftsmen, the skills of its stonewallers and hedgelayers (each county has a different way of doing things), the pride of its suburban front gardens, the splendour of its show-stoppers such as Chatsworth. These are only the tip of the iceberg of what I love about England.

Ashdown House, Berkshire

Ashdown’s remote downland setting stirs the soul as much as the chalk-white perfection of its architecture.

Appleby, Cumbria

The Eden valley is England’s Arcadia, with Appleby and its 1,000-year-old annual horse fair set in its midst.

Clun, Shropshire

Clun is a quiet, unassuming little town among huge hills scattered with bilberries and Neolithic earthworks.

Kensal Green Cemetery, London

A moving and often grandiose record of varied London lives — of cads, circus performers and great men. Brunel lies here.

Sapperton canal tunnel, Gloucestershire

When built, it was the longest tunnel in England.

Winterborne Tomson, Dorset

A place that makes you believe in God — and a hymn to its saviours, the Churches Conservation Trust.

Chatterley Whitfield, Stoke-on-Trent

Once the greatest colliery in Europe, it remains a noble monument to the men who mined it.

Liverpool Cathedral

Britain’s largest Anglican cathedral reflects the spirit of this lion-hearted city, and the fact that it does nothing by halves.

Bredon Hill, Worcestershire

The hill harbours the ghosts of scores of generations among ancient earthworks, standing stones and castle remains.

Salthouse, Norfolk

In my father’s words: “What would you be, you wide East Anglian sky, / Without church towers to recognise you by?”

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