Aug

The old Walking Gang come down

It’s been a fantastic couple of weekends out and about recently. Most of Webtogs have just returned from a trip to the Alps to traverse the Vallee Blanche – more about that at a later date with the photos. The weekend before last though saw my old walking Gang come down from London. I can honestly say I do not miss London one bit, but what we do miss about the place is our friends, so it was lovely to see them all. For all the routes we go on over the coming weeks, although we can’t upload an OS map which is what we use to plan a walk, we’ll upload a google map route instead which you can see below. All you need to do is grab your OS Map and transfer the key points we have marked and voila, you’ll be able to stroll in our steps.

View Berwick St John round walk via Ebbesbourne Wake in a larger map

Not having had a decent yomp for a while, I decided to head out to an area we had not explored before, namely the downs on the other side of shaftesbury heading along to the badges at Fovant. We didn’t actually get that far this time as starting at Berwick St John, we folowed the path up on to the Wiltshire downs. The day started with what my fellow walker Andy calls Mizzle, it’s like drizzle only more misty and we were soon suitably moist but not uncomfortable as the day was still quite warm. Berwick St John is stunning, the villages in between the downs being quite beautiful, with narrow lanes and a forgotten air about them.

Reaching the top, the Sun, slowly started to play a bit of hide and seek with us, more hiding than seeking to start off with. We came across a couple of green laners who usual inspire ire in all of us but these guys actually parked on the side to let us all through which put us in an unusually good humour. Coming off the hills and down to Ebbesbourne Wake, the village welcomed us with thatch cottages, verdant lawns and houses that looked like they had come from a film set. We finally got to the lunchtime pub called the Horeshoe . Decent beer, a timeless feel and no nonsense food soon had us on our way for the afternoon on the top of Cranborne Chase.

The afternoon saw us going heading up the Ox Drove track back to Berwick St John, the Sun gracing us a little more before we stumbled tired and satisfied back in to Berwick St John for the drive back to Gillingham.