British Parks

From the Downs to the Sea – Day 1, Apr 2017

Our second cycle tour of the UK took us to the South Downs. We followed South Downs Way, a 100 mile (160km) off-road National Trail that connects Winchester, the Saxon Capital of England, with the white cliffs of Eastbourne. With a total of 3,800 metres, or 12,600 feet of ascent, it normally takes 7–10 days to walk, or 2–4 days to ride. We set out early one Saturday in April to do a one day tour, starting in picturesque Petersfield and ending in Emsworth, via Buriton Chalkpits and Limeworks, West Dean Wood and Kingley Vale National Nature Reserve.

The trail through Buriton Chalkpits and Limeworks was shady and quiet. A couple busy roads intersect it, which seemed a bit dangerous. West Dean Woods was spectacular with hazel coppices and fields of purple violets. It’s also the home of the Andy Goldsworthy chalk balls, located along the aptly titled Chalk Stones Trail. Kingley Vale Trail takes you through an ancient yew tree reserve. Some of the reserve’s yew trees are the oldest living things in Britain!

The grassy, round hills were a treat to ride. The ascents and descents were gentler than those of The Ridgeway, although I will say that we thought we’d hit the final hill five times before we actually climbed it. We saw quite a few mountain bikers and backpackers, but, strangely, no other female cyclists. And we added another word to our British lexicon: “hiya.” Unlike in the US, where the same expression sounds the way it is written, over here it sounds like “howareya”; it means the same thing, though. My dad, an Australian and long-time resident of the US, says hiya like the British do and always gets the response, “Good thanks; how are you?”

Petersfield

Brilliant graphism. These labels very effectively placed us in space, time and history.

This little fellow entertained us as we at our lunch.

This was our view from Harting Down as we ate our lunch.

Andy Goldsworthy chalk stone

Notice the hazelwood fence

Yew tree

Chichester in the distance

Racton Monument, completed in 1775; a folly (i.e., not a real ruin) commissioned by the 2nd Earl of Halifax, possibly as a summerhouse or a lookout so the Earl could watch his merchant ships dock at the nearby port village of Emsworth.

A bridleway overlooking Racton Monument took us through a small paddock full of sheep.

Resources consulted
Chalk Stones Trail
Guide to the South Downs National Park
Kingley Vale Trail
Racton Monument

Cycling The Ridgeway Trail – Day 3, Apr 2017

902 ft maximum height
National Trails The Ridgeway Trip Planner

The time between our brains receiving the message “Ache in bum region” to the time the message changed to “What heavenly surroundings,” was once again very rapid. The ascent up the side of the ridge was steep and wild and the trail rutted and crumbly. Gauthier carries Ollie in the basket except when riding up hills. Here’s how it works: I generally follow behind; when Gauthier stops at the base of hills to remove Ollie, he yells, “Go Emily, go!” at which cry I whiz past and Ollie tears after me.

A racehorse gallops!

The section of The Ridgeway between Wantage and Goring is a dream to ride. It has large stretches of grassy hard-pack, hardly any ruts, and few if any steep hills.

We stopped to have a snack atop a derelict GWR tunnel. “I remember riding this line with my dad before it was shut down in 1963,” a passing hiker told us.

leaving The Ridgeway
Before we knew it we were saying goodbye to The Ridgeway and turning our bikes towards Goring, a village of 3,200 inhabitants with a Norman church.

Goring village with view of church

Goring was recently in the press for being the home of and place where George Michael passed away. It’s also Wind in the Willows country.

Goring Lock

The homes are old, posh and lush. Goring Lock (above) is situated in Goring Gap.

mossy roof of Catherine Wheel
Catherine Wheel is Goring’s oldest inn, dating back to Elizabethan times. It serves traditional British food (i.e., a variety of roast dishes) and real ale, hosts live jazz, has a predilection for all things French…

French safari-inspired wallpaper at the Catherine Wheel

and a sign at the bar informs guests that “Witches are welcome.”

Goring Gap with boats
Our final stop was Reading and to get there we took the Thames Path, which cuts through The Ridgeway just north-west of Reading at the Goring Gap.

Norman church

We followed a quiet, gently descending road, canopied by trees and intermittently littered with horse droppings. The soundscape was fantastic: birdsong, burbling brook and the distant clip clop of horses’ hooves. Hidden behind the dense foliage was a large estate with another lovely Norman church.

donkeys
Ollie loves donkeys. These friendly fellows ambled over to say hello. Ollie gave one of them a little lick on the nose.

Ollie gives the donkey a lick
After taking us through the countryside, the Thames Path took us up a pine-scented hill with a wonderful view of the river.

Thames Path with view of Thames
The trail was narrow.

narrow path

and hilly.

steep descent
Can you picture Mr. Toad careening down this hill in a motor car? “Oh, pooh! I’m not afraid of heights! Silly, boyish fear! Sheer waste of time! Toot, toot!!”

steep ascent
It took a bit out of us to carry our bikes up this slope. Parts of the Path front lavish homes.

grazing cattle

and other parts take you past farms.

And a very short detour takes you to Mapledurham, a tiny village of 317 inhabitants named after a 12th century family estate with one of the largest Elizabethan houses in Oxfordshire.

water mill

Also on the estate is the only water mill on the Thames to be in commercial production; the same water mill that graces the cover of Black Sabbath’s first album.

Mapledurham
Among the films and television programs filmed here are The Eagle has Landed, Miss Marple and Midsomer Murders.

Thames Path in Reading
Thames Path brings you almost to the doorstep of the Reading train station. With only minutes to spare until the next train left for London, and loath to wait an hour for the next one, we raced through the large station with Ollie at our heals and reached the train just in time. As Gauthier swung his bike aboard, Ollie leaped on after it, hopped up onto an empty seat and curled into a little ball. He was not about to be left behind!

To read more about our experience cycling the Ridgeway Trial, see our posts for Day 1 and Day 2.

Resources Consulted

BBC News: Wind in the Willows used in Goring Weir court plea, 18 November 2016

Cycling The Ridgeway Trail – Day 2, Apr 2017

902 ft maximum height
National Trails The Ridgeway Trip Planner

We were a lot more psychologically prepared on Saturday. Our bums ached a bit when we first set out, but the pain was quickly forgotten. We stopped again at Three Trees for scotch eggs and Belgian buns and then headed back up the side of the ridge. On the way we saw hang gliders!

This section of the Ridgeway is hillier than the section between Swindon and Avebury, but the hills are far gentler. We were treated to endless vistas, cows and sheep.

Uffington Hill Fort was a must-see and, conveniently, on the way. It’s one of several Iron Age hill forts built along the Ridgeway. Today it is believed that, contrary to popular belief, hill forts were not primarily used for defensive purposes, but rather were community centers in which Iron Age tribes or clans gathered for worship, feasting and to trade livestock, crops and other goods. Feast we did, nestled in Uffington’s ditch where we were protected from the wind. Grateful I was for my neck warmer and wind breaker. The wind up there was fierce! There were lots of kites and lots of dogs.

View from White Horse Hill; White Horse is out of view to the right

The Uffington chalk figure, known as the “White Horse,” was originally made by cutting a trench into the hillside beside Uffington Hill Fort and filling it with chalk blocks. For centuries local people have cared for the figure by “scouring” the surface and renewing the chalk infill to keep the horse white. In the 18th and 19th centuries, the Lord of the Manor provided food and entertainment for the scourers, which became a great annual celebration called the “Pastime” that attracted thousands of people. The White Horse is such a recognizable landmark that it was covered up during the Second World War to prevent it from being used as a navigation point by enemy aircraft.

Wayland Smithy’s Long Barrow

Chalk figures were popularly created by landowners two centuries ago to add a sense of timelessness to their country estates. More recently they were created to commemorate a regiment or war. However, excavations during the 1990s established that the White Horse dates from between 1,400 and 600 BCE.

The trail also passes by Wayland’s Smithy Long Barrow, a five-thousand-year-old, communal burial chamber. It originally contained fourteen people, but by the time the chambers were examined in 1920, they had been ransacked. Legend has it that if you leave your horse here overnight, it will be magically reshod in the morning.

St. Michael and All Angels Church graveyaurd

Shortly before reaching Letcombe Bassett, our via-point to Wantage, we had a wipeout. My bike was fitted with grippy, fat tires built to handle uneven terrain, but Gauthier’s bike was not. The deep ruts, combined with the extra care needed to safely chauffeur the chien in his front-rack basket, resulted in the bike’s tire getting trapped in a rut. Oliver jumped gracefully from his basket before the bike hit the ground, but Gauthier fell with the bike. We learned an important lesson, which is that flint rocks have no problem slicing through human flesh. Go figure.

Letcombe Bassett

Letcombe Bassett was idyllic. St. Michael and All Angels Church, dating from the 12th century and now held by Corpus Christi College, Oxford, is an adorable building and the folk we met there – scrubbing the floor, mowing the lawn and braiding flower wreathes of every color – couldn’t have been kinder. Many times we had to decline the invitation to return home with them to dress Gauthier’s bloody knee. The man scrubbing the floor was also a bell ringer and told me all about full circle ringing.

Letcombe Bassett map

Outside the church, grazing sheep formed a backdrop to leaning grave stones, and horses in jackets like Ollie’s were grazing in paddocks framed by thatched farmhouses and stables. We followed a narrow footpath that followed a brook to the base of the hill where the brook had once been used to farm watercress. A sequence of similar footpaths delivered us to Wantage. On the way we met a retired farmer with a beautiful Shetland sheepdog who reminisced fondly about the intimate relationships that are formed between sheepdogs and their sheep.

Former watercress farm

We arrived in Wantage about 4 pm. Alfred’s Lodge, where we stayed overnight, was clean and tastefully decorated. The owner recommended we wet our lips at Shoulder of Mutton before dinner. The pub dates back to about 1830 and is known for its good selection of real ales. Dinner was at The Lamb, the only restaurant in town that allowed dogs.

Wantage town centre with back view of statue of Alfred the Great built 1877.

Wantage, population 10,000, was originally a Roman settlement and is famous for being the birthplace of King Alfred the Great in 849. Weekly trading rights were first granted to the town by Henry III in 1246. Markets are now held twice weekly on Wednesdays and Saturdays. St. Peter and St. Paul’s Church dates from the 13th century. Its size indicates the importance of the town as a trading center.

St. Peter and St. Paul’s Church dating from 13th century.

That night, I dreamed a ghost in mortal form fell in love with a young socialite named Willow Ash. He gave her gifts of clothing that had once belonged to his deceased wife, and when an epidemic swept through town, the clothing protected her by concealing from the grim reaper that she was mortal.

Tomb with rounded top and skull sculpture at St. Michael and All Angels Church, dated 1690.

To read more about our experience cycling the Ridgeway Trial, see our posts for Day 1 and Day 3.

Resources Consulted
Photographer’s Resource: Uffington White Horse
Walking World: Ridgeways
Wantage (Wikipedia)

Cycling The Ridgeway Trail – Day 1, Apr 2017

902 ft maximum height
National Trails The Ridgeway Trip Planner

We spent a lot of time at the public library when we first moved to the UK, and one day we checked out a travel guide about the ancient Ridgeway trail, Britain’s 5,000 year-old road. Captivated by visions of neolithic pilgrims, Roman soldiers, Viking and Saxon invaders, drovers and traders, we promised ourselves we would cycle it as soon as the weather warmed up.

Originally a complex of braided tracks along the 400-mile chalk crest of the North Wessex Downs and The Chilterns, some as much as a mile wide, with subsidiary ways diverging and coming together, today the exact course and width of the tracks is defined by earth banks, thorn hedges and barbed-wire fences. This change occurred over two-hundred years ago during the local Enclosure Acts of 1750, which saw common land transferred into private hands.

In 1972 the 87-mile central section was approved as The Ridgeway National Trail. Most of the remainder has been way-marked, however, and is shown on Ordinance Survey maps under different names. Some local landowners objected to the Trail, so in 1987 the Countryside Commission charged all local highway authorities with ensuring that every footpath be unblocked by the year 2000. Lawsuits were filed and today access to the Trail is unfettered.

Spectacular, bright-yellow fields of rapeseed were in bloom everywhere.

The streets were eerily quiet on Good Friday morning when we cycled to Paddington Station via Hyde Park to catch the 0927 to Swindon. We were glad we’d made bike reservations as space for bikes is limited on GWR trains and some cyclists were turned away.

We had a thorough ride itinerary that considered routes, weather, accommodations and food for both ourselves and Ollie. Our route avoided car traffic as I can’t enjoy cycling with cars whizzing by. The plan: day one we would cycle Swindon to Avebury and back to Swindon (25 miles), day two we would cycle Swindon to Wantage (25 miles), and day three we would cycle Wantage to Reading (25 miles) where we would take the train back to London.

We used four mapping websites: 1) Sustrans provides a map of the National Cycle Network, or NCN, which is a series of safe, traffic-free paths and quiet on-road cycling and walking routes that connect to every major town and city in the United Kingdom; 2) CycleStreets caters to the needs of both confident and less confident cyclists and provides an exceptional map of bridleways and footpaths, some of which are all but hidden from the naked eye; 3) Walk4Life, originally government funded, provides trail characteristics, such as surface (flat, firm), barriers and hazards; and 4) GoogleEarth street-view helped us visualize the route.

Ollie patrols the perimeter at Three Trees farm shop.

We packed light. We carried 12kg, including Ollie and a thermos full of tea: Ollie – 5kg, Ollie’s bag – 800g, tea thermos and water – 2kg, change of clothes – 1.5kg, bike lock and tools – 1kg, food – 1.5kg. We used front racks rather than panniers as front racks distribute weight more evenly. Packing light was important because my bike has only three speeds.

The M4 pedestrian/cycle overpass.

NCN 45 connects to the Ridgeway and is well-marked and easy to find from Swindon Station. It’s a 30 to 40 minute cycle from the station to the trail. If you plan on taking this route, note that this section of NCN 45 follows both footpaths and minor roads, so pay attention to signposts.

We stopped at Three Trees farm shop, where we snacked on delicious scotch eggs and Belgian buns and picked up some Wiltshire blend tea. From Three Trees we took the NCN 45 northwest to some minor roads that took us through scenery out of a story book until we reached a track that led up the side of the down.

The track was paved for about three miles and then turned into a multiplicity of dirt-based surfaces for the duration of the ride to Avebury, which was to be our destination before heading back to Swindon for the night. We stopped several times to inflate or deflate our tires to adjust to trail conditions. There were few other cyclists, but many hikers. The trail is intersected by roads, so it is easy to ride or hike small sections.

Birdsong followed us throughout the trip as we passed through Marlborough Downs before reaching Avebury.

“In 2012 the Marlborough Downs farmers formed a unique partnership and began to work together to make space for nature on their farms. Originally government funded, the partnership involves over 30 farms covering 25,000 acres of Wiltshire countryside.”

“One of the most important geological sites in Britain. Natural events have created valleys with spectacular quantities of sarsen stones, which now support rare and unusual lichens. The remains of settlements, field systems, burial mounds, ancient tracks and the widespread working of sarsen stones show that people have worked and lived in this downland landscape for over 7,000 years. The reserve is part of the Avebury World Heritage Site.”

What we found most striking about the chalk grasslands of Fyfield Down were the giant, yellow-flowered broom bushes and the large, silicious sandstone boulders (i.e., sarsen stones) that were transported to the area through glacial action during the ice age.

Fairly significant sections of the trail are sadly deeply rutted by motor vehicle traffic, which is very detrimental to walkers and cyclists alike, as well as being ugly and unnatural-looking, although it does provide an outstanding opportunity to practice some technical riding. Riding the rutted parts in sustained rain, with puddles and mud, would be hellish, so it’s important to pay attention to the weather forecast.

It’s also uphill for a good third of the way. The combination of ruts, ascents and an 18 mph wind in our face made the ride challenging, but it was totally worth it.

Ridgeway trail terminates a few miles before Avebury in a gigantic mound complete with standing stones. The sarsen stones were dragged from the surrounding hills in the late Stone Age. We found it interesting that whereas henges with defensive purposes have ditches with external banks, Avebury Henge, like Stonehenge, has an inside ditch. We also found it interesting to note how well protected the Henge was from the wind, situated as it is in a valley.

Standing inside the bank, looking at the massive stones, contemplating the incredible amount of labor needed to create such a monument was awe-inspiring. English Heritage points out that henges such as Avebury’s “bear witness to the existence over many hundreds of years of a great civilisation in this part of Wessex. […] The sheer amount of labour required to excavate the huge ditches, to gather, transport and erect the massive stones, and to raise the strange mound of Silbury Hill, indicates the availability of a substantial population, and the quality of the work, particularly in the latter stages, shows their considerable skills.”

Apparently, by the 1930s many of the stones had fallen over and the site been disfigured by buildings. English Heritage explains that “the appearance of the site today owes much to Alexander Keiller, heir to a fortune made from the famous Keiller marmalade, who bought the site and cleared away buildings and re-erected many stones in the late 1930s.” I found out a little more about Alexander Keiller’s role from some documents stored at The National Archives.

In addition to exploring the Henge, we ate at the Red Lion where we were entertained with stories about thatch rooves and hidden rooms by a retired historic building conservation consultant, and admired St. James Church, the earliest parts of which date from 1,000 CE.

Lichen covered gravestones.

We did not have enough time to do Avebury justice. That would have taken at least four hours. Also, bringing a dog placed limits on what we could do. We would have liked to visit the 16th-century manor house (you can actually touch the furniture and lie on the beds!) and the Alexander Keiller Museum.

With the wind at our backs and a mostly downward journey, the trip back to Swindon was swift and fairly painless. It would be a lie to say we weren’t suffering a bit by the time we arrived at our hotel around 7pm. Among other aches and pains, I had somehow acquired a sunburn on my lips. We stayed at TravelLodge. It was clean, quiet, well-located, had a bar and 24 hour restaurant and, most importantly, accepted dogs and bikes.

Swindon is an interesting city rich in railway heritage. Swindon’s rail workers received health care that became a model for the NHS, and access to personal enrichment programs that included xylophone lessons. It also had the UK’s first lending library. Today it is home to Oxford University’s Bodleian Library book depository, which contains 153 miles of bookshelves. It also has the English Heritage National Monument Record Centre and the headquarters of the The National Trust. And apparently you can see iconic punk-rock bands, such as the U.K. Subs, play live at local dive-bars for £8 (if only we’d known this sooner)!