Ridgeway: Day 3

• Start: The Royal Oak, Bishopstone
• Finish: The Bear, Wantage
• Walking Distance: 24km
• Total Time: 7.5 hours

Breakfast at The Royal Oak this morning was unsurprisingly pig focussed, but very tasty. Craig had a Bacon Bun and I had a Bacon Omelette.

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Then, we headed back up to the Ridgeway. We passed through an interesting little dry valley, known as a Coombe. Some research on the Internet suggested that these are particular to the chalk downlands of the South of England and are:

” Dry valleys formed towards the end of the last Ice Age. Melt water rivers ran over the surface of the chalk rather than flowing down through it. These rivers carved out steep sided valleys. Once the climate had warmed again a dry valley was left behind. “

We soon reached the Ridgeway again and continued on course. Not long later we left Wiltshire and crossed into Oxfordshire.

We very quickly noticed the difference, here the path was clearer and busier and the landscape was much more cultivated, fields of crops had replaced scrublands and sheep. The ancient landscape was also much less in evidence, though not gone entirely.

Late morning we arrived at Waylands Smithy. This is a neolithic long barrow dating from 3,700BC and (heavily restored) it is very impressive.

The remains of at least 20 people were buried in it, over the course of over 100 years. The barrow was named after Wayland, a magical smith in Norse mythology. He was reputed to have a white horse and so speculation is that the close proximity of the white horse at Uffington (see below) is why the barrow got that name. Waylands Smithy was first mentioned in historical texts in 955AD.

Shortly afterwards and after quite a lot of ‘up’ we arrived at Uffington Fort, another (you guessed it!) Iron Age Hill Fort.

This one, although not the biggest was definitely in the best repair. It is run by the National Trust, but also benefits from being on the hillside just above the Uffington White Horse. Unlike the Hackpen Horse we saw on Day 1, which was made by a late victorian trying to put his village on the map, this is the real deal! Modern dating techniques have proved that the horse is around 3,000 years old. You can’t really appreciate the Horse from the hillside, though it must have been a dominating image in the valley, probably still is!

The small flat mound you can see beneath it is Dragon’s Hill, which is reputedly where St George slayed the Dragon, hmmm. (I could have sworn that St George was supposed to be Turkish…)

Lunch was courtesy of Helen Browning’s Organic farm shop, organic wholemeal bread, local salted butter, local cheddar and ham(obviously). Very simple and very nice.

In the afternoon there was a lot of walking, and then more walking. The guide book kept warbling on about the interesting churches etc. in the villages kilometre’s below us on the plain and at one point gave up entirely and gave us the interesting fact that ‘from here it is 5.6km to the A338’ .

Now, I am as much interested in the history of roads as the next person. I have watched really interesting documentaries on the A1, M62 and A303 to name but a few. However, I struggled to find this piece of information particularly fascinating!

The last bit of the walk today, was coming down from the Ridgeway through the Letcombe valley to Wantage. This was actually a lovely walk, very interesting villages, a really pretty nature reserve and a lovely section alongside a clear babbling brook. There are no pictures however, as by this time, Craig and I were simply staring at the floor putting one foot in front of the other. The other users of the path all gave way to us as I think it was fairly obvious that if we had to stop, we might never get started again!!!

We arrived in Wantage, about which I will speak more tomorrow. We are staying at the Bear, which has a shower and a bed and so is absolutely perfect! I can tell you that the food was nice. I had chicken and pea risotto and Craig had pork belly, but it didn’t really touch the sides.

However, tomorrow is a new day – onwards!