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Yesterday I walked the section of the Ridgeway between Hackpen Hill and Avebury (to the Polisher stone). Overcast and very windy, it felt very autumnal; was wonderful to be up there overlooking the Wiltshire downs. The hedgerows were laden with berries of many varieties which reinforced the autumnal feel.

Last time I was up here was in the winter and the surrounding fields were covered in mist so I missed the intriguing large sarsen stone that stands alone in the middle of a field to your left, walking towards Avebury. Not possible to get closer without climbing wire fencing so just had to look from a distance.

Was concerned to see part of the track heavily rutted and, coming back, three vechicles passed – one was towing some sort of people carrier that had people in it (they didn’t look like farm workers).

Love this ancient trackway so much; it is always different according to the time of year and weather conditions – and always an intense experience.

I came across this long barrow today more by accident than design. Was in the Stroud/Selsley area to look at Pre-Raphaelite stained glass, approaching the village of Selsley from across the Common. What a lovely place – open unfenced common land (how rare is that) with wonderful views over the Stroud Valley. The first day of September and the sun was shining.

The long barrow had a couple of families picnicing on it today, flying kites and running around. I pushed any proprietorial thoughts away and refrained from taking all but just one photograph. As with most of the Gloucestershire long barrows there are stunning views to be had; in this case across the valley, towards the river Severn. The Severn could be clearly seen today along with the hills beyond (just a little haze). The 55 metre long barrow dips in the middle as so many of them do as a result of past excavations. Today I left it to the children playing on its slopes but will go back another time to take a closer look.

Monday, 11th July 2011

Set off to ‘test’ another nine mile walk for the North Wessex Downs AONB forthcoming series of Heritage Walks. Started from Pewsey Wharf along the Kennet & Avon Canal to pick up the White Horse Trail at Pains Bridge up to Giant’s Grave Settlement.

It was a hot, humid day, I had been troubled for the past week or so by horse-fly bites. This occasion was no exception which, along with the heat, made walking uphill uncomfortable. Fortunately by the time Giant’s Grave was reached a slight breeze had sprung up.

Fabulous views over the Vale of Pewsey in one direction and the ridge of hills towards Knap Hill (Oare and Huish Hills) in the other. The nine mile walk towards Gopher Wood along the White Horse Trail (Tan Hill Way) was abandoned for a cooler day ... so it was back down hill and a walk into the village of Oare in such of refreshment.

Note: Oare and Pewsey are accessible by bus from Swindon, Marlborough and Salisbury via the Wilts & Dorset X5
wdbus.co.uk/site/uploads/publications/157.pdf

18/7/11
Another, this time successful, attempt at the nine mile walk mentioned above. Undistracted today by heat and insect bites I was able to take a better look at the rampart known as Giant’s Grave. Approached along the fence-line at the top to Martinsell Hill (the Pewsey side) it was clearer today to see it as a defensive bank and ditch, broken by the a fence driven through it. Later viewed from Tan Hill Way – a different perspective, the shape of a hill fort became clearly visible.

Due to one of life’s quirky little detours I found myself in Petersfield today visiting family of a friend. A lovely afternoon so we walked around Petersfield Heath which, is spite of having a prosperous market town right next to it, still feels like a heath. Surprisingly there are several round barrows dotted about, some hidden among the trees. Not much to add to Jimit’s fieldnote except to say that the person showing us the barrows also told us that they were aligned to the midwinter sunset between the gap in the two westerly hills which can be seen from the nearby lake (formerly marshland). One of these, Butser Hill, being the highest hill in South Downs. It would be difficult to test this theory now as there the area is quite wooded – a treat though to have a little bit of prehistory come my way without any real effort on my behalf.

My first visit to Bincknoll Castle – today as the culmination of a nine mile walk taken from a leaflet poduced by North West Downs AONB. The second half of the walk was from Clyffe Pypard to Broadtown, along to the lesser known Broad Town White Horse then following the bottom of an escarpment to the track leading up to Bincknoll Castle. Once up there, the distant sprawl of Swindon and constant flow of the M4 motorway became hidden behind trees, before me lay the Marlborough Downs and Ridgeway.

Note:
Apparently the Normans adapted the Bincknoll hillfort as a motte and bailey castle but all trace of this has disappeared.

Today I caught the 49 bus out towards Avebury, disembarking at the village of Broad Hinton; the objective being to ‘test’ walk one of the new ‘bus walks’ compiled by North Wessex Down AONB.

The first part of the walk took me onto the old trackway of Vize Lane, apparently an ancient trading route which once connected settlements now known as Wroughton and Devizes. The track comes out by the Winterbourne Bassett stone circle at Lambourne Ground and effectively forms a cross-roads; the large sarsen overlooking this junction becoming visible as I walked towards the crossroads. It struck me that on the other occasions I’ve visited this site I’ve always been in a car – walking towards it along Vize Lane gave it a different perspective. I found myself thinking that instead of being an outlier to the almost buried stone circle, the large sarsen might in fact be an prehistoric Mark Stone – as talked about by Alfred Watkins in The Old Straight Track.

Edit: Local antiquarian friend has kindly sent me this message:
The Winterbourne Bassett Stone was erected in memory of Rev W.F. Harrison who fell from his horse and died here in 1857.

Visited Sunday 22nd May 2011
Very interesting to read the field notes by The Eternal and Gladman on this one as I had no idea it came into the category of hillfort. We walked up to the top of Castle Crag on a damp morning, the first day of a week’s walking holiday in the Lake District. A lovely and relatively easy walk from where we were staying in the village of Grange; after a night of heavy rain the woodland streams tumbled downhill over their stoney beds into the river Derwent.
We saw no one until we started to ascend the hill, then dozens of people (and their dog) appeared making their way downhill from the summit – our first hint that the more popular footpaths in the Lake District can become quite busy, especially at weekends. Marvellous views towards Skiddaw on one side and over the Borrowdale valley on the other.
The top of the hill is a narrow track up through what looks like a slate mound – I didn’t do this bit as was still finding my feet and to me it looked slippery. My holiday companion went enthusiastically to the top and reported jagged slate rocks sticking up in castellations.
Later in the week I climbed the very little mountain of Cat Bells, also walked up Great End Crag at the Great Gable side of Seathwaite Fell (2000ft) so Castle Crag was a great way to start.

Visited on 24th May 2011 on the way back from Long Meg and Her Daughters.

Information board says that this huge henge has a circumference of 150 metres and was built from 5 million cobblestones brought from the nearby River Eamont many of which have now been removed for building materials. It varies in height from 4 metres to 7 metres and has no internal or external ditch. There were 4 large stones at its centre though only one remains. There were also 4 stones standing at a single 7 metre entrance to the east – these too are gone.

The nearby King Arthur’s Round Table can be clearly seen from Mayburgh Henge.

Visited 26th May 2011.
We headed towards Broughton in Furness then took the A595 towards the village of Hallthwaites taking turn-off for Broadgate, as far as Crag Hall farm. Here the track turned into a bridle way so we obtained permission to park car on a grass verge near the farm.

The stone circle is about a mile up the track towards Thwaites Fell – seemed longer as uphill and on this particular day a cold wind swept across fells making it feel more like March than late May. The stone circle is truly remote – it sits at the bottom of Swinside Fell with views towards Dunnerdale Fells in the distance to the east and Duddon estuary to the south.

There is a four stone ‘entrance’ into the circle which seems to be aligned to the eastern skyline (I wondered whether this was a solstice alignment). As observed by other TMA-ers, Swinside bears some similarities to Castlerigg though not as dramatic. It is probably the loneliest stone circle I have visited – we met no one at all along the way, just free range cattle and the odd curlew.

Note taken from David Watson’s “A Guide to Stone Circles of the Lake District”
There are 55 stones with 32 still standing. Originally there would have been about 60 stones. The stones are made of local metamorphic slate. Circle is about 28 metres in diameter. Tallest stone is about 2.3 metres

Tuesday 24th June 2011 – we drive over to Penrith temporarily leaving the Lakes and mountains behind. There is a Radio4 programme on the car radio about Bob Dylan who is 70 today so it is to the strains of “Like a Rolling Stone” we set off from the village of Little Salkend in the Eden Valley to visit Long Meg & Her Daughters. The Pennines are to our right as we walk up the track, it’s a gusty cloud-skudding day, my companion identifies the sound of a curlew.

Much has been written about Log Meg and the stone circle known has Her Daughters – its diameter is between 100 and 93 metres putting it amongst the biggest stone circles in Britain. Long Meg is an irregular four sided pillar of local red sandstone whilst the circle stones are the granite rock rhyolite. Long Meg is 3.6 metres high and is partially covered in silver crystalisations and lichen. Famously it has three examples of rock art on one side of its surfaces – a cup and ring with gutter, a spiral, and some incomplete concentric circles.

After spending some time walking around the circle and looking at Long Meg from various angles, we make our way through a couple of fields to Little Meg – a very small granite stone circle in a nearby field. Then on to the small red sandstone church of St Michael’s and All Angels, Addington which oddly stands away from any sizeable village inside a walled churchyard. A hefty shower blew across so we took shelter inside the church for a bit – I found the following passage in a booklet about the church (author not stated, though revised in 2010).

“Standing on the route towards the Tyne Gap, Long Meg is one of the eight circle henges along the 350 miles between Fife and Wiltshire which share similar characteristics. Each has a large open ring within a smallish henge and each is on a trackway of Neolithic occupation.
Some 200 Neolithic people are thought to have occupied the areas immediately around the Lake district mountains. Long Meg herself stands in the right place to relate to a midwinter sunset but only if seen from the middle of the ring with a flattened arc, making its centre difficult to determine. Yet such was the skill of the ring builders that Long Meg is aligned so that the winter sun would have set exactly over it. For this to happen its top would have to rise clear of the skyline, hence Long Meg’s height”.

I had lost my heart to Castlerigg a few days earlier so Long Meg & Her Daughters in the pastural Eden Valley didn’t make the impact I had expected – its odd how some stone circles immediately touch something within whilst others leave you pondering and puzzled.
(Photos to follow when I return home at the weekend).

Staying for week at the small village of Grange in the Borrowdale valley near Keswick. When a friend asked me several months ago to share a walking holiday in Lake District I jumped at the chance – unbelieveably I had not visited before. At last I would be able to visit Castlerigg, named by so many as their favourite stone circle.

As we approached Keswick on Saturday, the rain as forecast, had started – I spotted the sign for Castlerigg so we did a detour to make it the first the thing to be seen. I was childishly excited as I ran into the circle in the rain – with just sheep for company and surrounding hills shrouded in low cloud it, seemed a remote isolated place.

It rained all Saturday night and yesterday morning it eased a little so we walked to the top of Castle Crag, a nearby hill. By the afternoon the rain had stopped to be replaced with cloudy, sunny intervals ... so we headed back to Castlerigg to see it in different weather. Not wanting to do a long walk in case the weather changed again, my friend parked on the A591 (the road out of Keswick) and we walked from ‘High Nest’ through the meadows to Castlerigg. I became acutely aware of the surrounding fells as cloud shadows and sunlight played on their steep slopes. It was Sunday afternoon, the sun had come out after heavy rain so needless to say there were quite a few people wandering around the circle – which made no difference at all to the impact my second visit had on me. This beautiful stone circle with its small cove of inner stones – surrounding on all sides by the high Cumbrian hills blew me away. I live near Avebury, have been to Brodgar and Boscawen-un, both of which affected me deeply. Castlerigg is up there with them. It is set on a plateau above Keswick in an amphitheatre of hills including Skiddaw, Blencathra (Saddleback) and Lonsdale Fell; in some ways seems to mirror them. I stood for a long while at the far side of the field watching the shadows race across the fells all around the stone circle.

Right now, I’m typing this in the attic room which is also my bedroom in the riverside cottage where we are staying (curses, there is a computer and wifi link there too). The rain is falling in white sheets and the River Derwent has swollen to scarey proportions. The drama is spectacular ... no doubt we will venture out soon – perhaps go down to Grasmere as walking is out of the question until the rain subsides. Up here in the Lakes – almost unspeakably beautiful to this particular southerner – once again Nature rules and puts everything in perspective.

Over and out ... photos to follow when I return home.

Am a bit taciturn at present so it takes a good friend to seek out my company. My Cotswold Walking Friend with whom I spent so many sunny days last year tracking down Gloucestershire long barrows, proved their steely merit today. I was collected with a brisk “we’re going for a walk, whatever” and transported to Chavenage Green near Tetbury.

Using OS Explorer 168 we found the footpath which led to Longtree Bottom Covert – a peaceful wooded area whose resident tawny owl was making its presence heard. On to Pond Covert then uphill where my friend pointed out Lechmore long barrow to our left. Over a rickety wooden fence/stile, we found ourselves in the meadow full of wild grass and cow parsley. The song of skylark rose upwards around us; swallows swooped.

The long barrow has a single hawthorn tree on it, today in full may blossom. Cow parsley and wild grasses covered the barrow and to some extent concealed the scatter of limestones across the top of the barrow. The sun tried to shine, the rain tried to fall, the wind won the day. Lovely!

Walked up to Segsbury Camp today from the village of Letcombe Regis (having started from Letcombe Bassett).
A steep but steady uphill walk to Segsbury Castle – the narrow road is little used except for farm vehicles. Segsbury is a huge hillfort cut in two by the road and on the edge of the Oxfordshire section of the Ridgeway. The hillfort and surrounding meadows are under the Countryside Stewardship Scheme and Countryside Access Scheme; sheep graze on one side of the hillfort whilst wild flowers flourish on the other.
There is something about the downland hillforts that never fails to have a rejuvenating effect – today I walked up there under my own personal dark cloud. The clean fresh air and this grand Iron Age endeavour with its magnificent skyscapes blew my cloud away, somehow everything fell back into place. I had a strong sense that this hillfort must have once held a community of people – its massive diameter seemed far too big to be just a defensive position.
Leaving the hillfort for the Ridgeway caused a minor problem as the step to the very high stile was missing. Not blessed with paticularly long legs I had to do a bit of precarious clambouring and jumping to gain access to the Ridgeway before walking for about half a mile or so to another stile (this one fine). Then a lovely downhill walk on springy meadowland back to Letcombe Bassett. Spotted my first ever stoat which ran across across our path several metres ahead.