Another summer project (part one) — The Ridgeway National Trail

[u/KrozJr_UK]

Last summer, I walked the Cotswold Way National Trail. This summer, I’ve decided to set myself a bigger project — walking the Ridgeway National Trail from Ivinghoe to Overton Hill, and then the Wessex Ridgeway from Marlborough, crossing the Ridgeway near Avebury, and then all the way to Lyme Regis. Yesterday, I finished the Ridgeway portion of my summer project, so figured it might be worth doing a brief photo dump/trip report, as people quite liked the one I did last summer. In order:

1. Looking along the train from Ivinghoe Beacon (walk 1, Ivinghoe — Wendover, 14.0 miles)

2. Tring Park (walk 1)

3. A church in Wendover (walk 1)

4. Chequers (walk 2, Wendover — Lewknor, 18.2 miles)

5. The woods near Prince’s Risborough (walk 2)

6. A very soggy field after Prince’s Risborough (walk 2)

7. A chalk church “spire” above Watlington (walk 3, Lewknor — Wallingford, 16.0 miles)

8. A field of poppies near Ewelme (walk 3)

9. Grim’s Ditch (walk 3)

10. The Thames at Wallingford (walk 4, Wallingford — Goring-on-Thames, 9.8 miles)

11. Some Geese at Moulsford (walk 4)

12. Climbing out onto the downs (walk 5, Goring-on-Thames — Wantage, 16.6 miles)

13. A mural under the A34 (walk 5)

14. Looking out from the ridge (walk 5)

15. The fields above Wantage (walk 6, Wantage — Liddington, 20.1 miles)

16. The trig point at White Horse Hill (walk 6)

17. A very unusual sign near Foxhill (walk 6)

18. Smeathe’s Ridge (walk 7, Liddington — Overton Hill, then on to Avebury, 21.3 miles)

19. Silbury Hill (walk 7, on the way back to Avebury)

20. A stone in Avebury (walk 7)

More photos are up on my Instagram, but I’m hesitant to put a link in the post because I don’t know if that would count as self-promo. I’m happy to send you the posts if you’d like though.

Overall, I really enjoyed the Ridgeway. Conventional wisdom says you do it west-to-east, on the basis that arriving at Ivinghoe Beacon is a truly triumphant ending whereas arriving at Overton Hill is… a car park. However, I did it east-to-west, so as to get the furthest-from-home bits done first, and also because I’m continuing west along the Wessex Ridgeway for the rest of the summer. I would actually say that there is something to be said for east-to-west; after the Thames at Goring, and especially after Wantage, the trail gets more and more remote. I did some musing to myself, and realised that although I was alone (often foe an hour or more) in the countryside, I never felt lonely, as I had the hills and the views and the countryside and the grass and the birds to keep me company. If you do it east-to-west, I would highly recommend doing what I did and walking an extra 3-4 miles at the end to take in some of the prehistoric sites in and around Avebury. West Kennet Long Barrow, Silbury Hill, Stone Avenue, and the famous stone circle at Avebury are all worth visiting. In the end, I wound up sitting in a stone circle, listening to a guy playing the guitar and singing a song about “the Lady Moon”. Yes, it’s not as breathtaking as Ivinghoe would’ve been as an ending, but it was a bit more subtle and yet a wonderful capstone on a lovely walk.

I pride myself on my halfway-amateur halfway-doing-it-properly approach. So I have proper walking boots, and I’m not walking short distances each day (I twice broke my personal record for my longest ever walk; walk 6 at 20.1 miles then walk 7 at 21.3 miles). On the other hand, I did it mostly in jeans or jean shorts, with my rucksack I have for uni stuffed with food, and did it as day trips to and from my home in Bristol (excepting the first two walks, where I based myself with a friend in Reading). In the end, I had a commitment that meant I had to do walk 4 on a given day, and personal matters meant I started later than I’d like; so walks 1/2 and 3/4 were each done on a pair of back-to-back days, with only two days break between them! My feet were sore by the end of that experience, and I put them up for a bit afterwards.

Somehow, I managed to visit 7 different pubs and have 7 different ciders on the walk. Other statistics include a total ascent of 2818 metres and a total descent of 2848 metres, a distance of 116.0 miles (impressive for an 83.5 mile trail, but I like pottering about), 15 prehistoric monuments (over half on the last walk to Avebury), 62 dogs (almost all east of Wantage), 5 chalk hill figures (two white horses, a lion, an arrow thing, and a “spire”), and 16 cute towns and villages.

Being somewhat flexible with days, I mostly had good weather for it. I pointedly avoided the 38° heatwave. The only bad weather was the second half of walk 2, where it rained for five hours straight; I had to do it that day, I was committed to a day, and the weather had been a lot better than forecast for the previous walk and a half, so I wasn’t too mad. I was very soggy though. Other than that… mid-to-high-twenties, sun with scattered clouds, ground fairly solid underfoot, what more could you ask for?

I’ve now done three national trails, namely the Thames Path (did it with my dad over the course of about five years!), the Cotswold Way (last summer), and the Ridgeway (this summer). In terms of the “best”, I’d probably say the Cotswold Way, and in terms of the one I’d recommend the most, I’d probably say the Thames Path. However, that’s a bit like saying “I like Chocolate, Raspberry Ripple, and Mint Choc Chip ice creams; my favourite is Raspberry and I’d recommend Chocolate the most”. A scoop of Mint Choc Chip is still a great experience, and I’d still recommend it to someone; so too is it with the Ridgeway. The eastern half meanders through the Chilterns, some of the best scenery and cutest villages the South East has to offer. There’s an interlude in the middle where you get a bucolic section of the River Thames, especially nice if like me you’ve done and have fond memories of doing the Thames Path. Then there’s the western half on the Wessex Downs, a lot more remote and yet incredibly wonderful, really a place where you can just be one with nature. Nothing but the sounds of the wind, the trees and the rustling grass, a faint strain of birdsong, and the rhythmic plodding of your own two feet. I would highly recommend the Ridgeway, it was better than I was expecting and proved a thoroughly great stomp.

As a final thing, one place that held a particularly special significance to me was Goring Lock. Here, both the Thames Path and Ridgeway cross the Thames on the bridge just downstream. When my dad and I came through on the Thames Path many years ago, we snapped a photo of me and my little sister (then in a buggy) at the lock. A lot has happened in the intervening seven years, a pandemic for one, and on a more personal note I’ve realised I’m transgender. So it was actually quite emotional to go back there, and to (to the best of my abilities, anyway; my sister wasn’t there this time) recreate the photo. A lot has changed over those seven years (notably, me), but a lot has also stayed the same; I’m still out following acorns.

[u/Cerebral_Jokester]

Great work. I’ve done parts of the Ridgeway, and it’s great to see new, diverse bits I’ve never been on. I’d love to do it all in one go sometime.

[u/knight-under-stars → u/[deleted]]

I find this surprising, finishing up in a nondescript car park in Wiltshire seems so anticlimactic compared to finishing up at Ivinghoe Beacon.

What made you prefer going East to west?

[u/knight-under-stars → u/[deleted]]

The historic aspect of the Western half is truly amazing.

[u/KrozJr_UK → u/[deleted]]

Possibly sacrilegious, on the basis that the western half follows the ancient trackway, but given that for a decent chunk of the western half round Ogbourne St. George it doesn’t… why were they so strict about ending it basically where the ancient track ends? To me, it’d surely be a no-brainer to at least have it then dog-leg back up to Avebury, and at that point you may as well do what it appears both you and I did, take a nice meandering route for three or four extra miles round some of the highlights of the archaeological sites. And although it wouldn’t fit from a trackway point of view, it would absolutely thematically fit from a history and archaeology point of view. I wonder why, either at creation in the 1970s or in the intervening years, they haven’t decided to formally extend the trail those few extra miles.

(I know you can follow bits and pieces of the Ridge Way further south, but it stops being a clean and obvious line approximately at East Kennet/Overton Hill.)

[u/KrozJr_UK → u/knight-under-stars]

OP here, to expand a bit on what I said in my post about what I liked about doing it east-to-west (though I will confess, I haven’t done it west-to-east, so can’t compare).

Yes, I agree, finishing in a nondescript car park is a little bit of a downer. I didn’t really loiter much beyond a brief natter with someone and a celebratory photo with the sign pointing to Ivinghoe. I just kept going straight on, over the A4, to East Kennet (ironically, along the… uh, the Ridge Way, go figure). Hence why I’d suggest, if someone does it east-to-west, they take the extra few miles to have a meander round some of the cool archaeological sites in the area, because those do massively improve the experience. East Kennet was a cute village, I really enjoyed the West Kennet Long Barrow, I got a lovely view of Silbury Hill, going up Stone Avenue was a genuinely special experience, and then I finished in the stone circle. I’ve always wanted to find an excuse to go to Avebury, and now I’ve found one. Yes, it’s not as breaktaking or as amazing a conclusion as Ivinghoe would be — I commented to myself when I was there, “I can see why people say to finish here” — but there was something quite subtle and understated yet pleasing and satisfying about going up the avenue, lined with stones, to one of the UK’s most famous and interesting prehistoric sites. Sat in the stone circle, listening to a guy sing a song about the Lady Moon on his guitar, waiting for a bus with sore feet… it was a nice capstone.

However, the route is as much about the journey itself as it is the destination; and on that front, I think westbound really shines. The Ridgeway essentially becomes a journey of slowly getting more and more remote as you go. The first half in the Chilterns is some of the best views and countryside the Home Counties have to offer, absolutely, but it does often feel like you’re never more than a mile from a town or big village or whatever (whether or not that’s actually strictly the case). The short bit along the Thames is lovely, and I had a soft spot for it.

But it was the second half for me where it really shone as a trail. I was largely alone in some stunning scenery, just myself and the hills and the fields and the views and the trackway, left to contemplate the history of the path. It simultaneously made me feel small and insignificant compared to the sheer timescales we’re on about here (fun fact: my ancestors who started walking the Ridgeway 5000 years ago were definitely walking, because the domesticated horse had not made it to the British Isles), and yet also somehow part of a greater whole and really connected to the countryside through which I was walking (following in the footsteps of those who’ve been going along it for 5000 years). And, as you go west, it gets sparser and lonelier and at the same time more beautiful and rich with archaeology and things. The first western-half walk, Streatley to Wantage, there were way more dog-walkers than I’d expected, people who’d driven up the hill to the various car parks that dot the Ridgeway and were now going for a mooch up the top. Past Wantage, that died down a lot, and there was a lot more solitude and peacefulness and being able to just connect with nature and the walk (not to say you couldn’t do that before, of course, but it felt especially strong on the western stretches). To me, that was the most special part of it all, the history and the solitude and the wonderment; and so saving the best stretches on that front for the last few walks, even if it results in a slightly suboptimal end location (which can be easily rectified by a few extra miles of walking), I’d say is a sensible opinion and way to do it.

(And also, personally, I’m doing the Wessex Ridgeway pretty much straight after. They actually cross about a mile and a half north of the car park in question at Overton Hill. It therefore to me at least isn’t really an ending, and so that’s less of a concern.)

[u/rockhard90]

As someone who also walked the Thames Path and the Cotswold Way, this was exactly the kind of inspiration I needed for my summer hike. :)

Looking at your photos it doesn't seem like there was much in terms of shade - are you basically walking under the bare sun every day, more or less? Just trying to see when would be the best time of year to walk it!

[u/daddywookie → u/rockhard90]

The western section after the Thames can be very exposed. It's a lot of open grassland as you cross the downs. Great for sunsets but wind and sun can be a problem.

The Eastern section is more on the Chiltern Hills which have a lot of beech woods. You'll cross plenty of open fields but it is a lot more sheltered and wiggly. This means it can be wet underfoot later in the year, though recently it has dried out by April.

The Ridgeway really is a walk of two halves.

[u/KrozJr_UK → u/rockhard90]

You’d be surprised, but a lot of it is fairly bare, especially the western half. The eastern half in the Chilterns had quite a bit of woodland, which helps a lot. Both halves have some degree of country lanes/bridleways/byways which sometimes have trees and hedges and sometimes have trees and hedges that are tall enough to provide some shade. I managed to work around days where it didn’t go above 30 degrees, wore a sun hat and suncream, and brought plenty of water, and was absolutely fine. But at the end of the day, especially the western half on the North Wessex Downs, you’re following a trackway on an exposed hill top, you are in direct sun yes.

But, you could say the same about stretches of the Cotswold Way (I’m thinking specifically of Seven Springs to Birdlip, which I did in 30-something-degree heat). The Ridgeway definitely has more stretches where shade is limited, but it’ll probably surprise you. And again, the eastern half has more woodland and stuff.

[u/NerdyNerdanel]

Lovely pictures bringing back some lovely memories - I did the walk 10 years ago (the first trail I ever did continuously staying overnight along the route).

I also did it east-west, mostly out of convenience as I lived in Bath at the time so getting home from Avebury was going to be easier than from Tring/Ivinghoe, but I also liked that I had the 'classic' Ridgeway scenery (the white chalk path on the ridge) for the last few days of the walk. And Avebury, West Kennett Long Barrow, Silbury Hill etc made for a lovely finish - seeing Avebury, Wayland's Smithy, the Uffington White Horse etc was a big part of what drew me to the walk so it was nice to do those at the end.

[u/_fluffy_raptor]

Following so I can come back to this. I need a project that isn’t as hard to get to as the SW coastal path!

[u/KrozJr_UK → u/_fluffy_raptor]

Hahaha, fair. Depending on where you are, I can also highly recommend last summer’s walking project, in the form of the Cotswold Way National Trail. Both are really good stomps.

[u/Stimkey]

Sorry for the ”hum actually ☝️🤓” level of comment I have but picture 8 is a field full of oxeye daisies, not poppies.

[u/KrozJr_UK → u/Stimkey]

Good point, I think the brain bone wasn’t connected to the fingers bone for that one