This walk was posted on Oct 2, but had no walk report, so let's try again...
Length: 26.3 km (16.4 mi) [with a bus option to shorten the walk, see
below]
Ascent/Descent: 607 m
Net Walking Time: ca. 6 ½ hours
Toughness: 7 out of 10
or
Length: 17.2 km (10.7 mi)
Ascent/Descent: 340 m
Net Walking Time: ca. 4 hours
Toughness: 4 out of 10
Take the 09.20 Exeter St. David’s & Bristol Temple Meads
train from Waterloo (09.27 Clapham J, 09.46 Woking),
arriving Tisbury at 11.06 (you have to be in the front 3 cars)
Return trains: xx.01 (from 108 mins).
This walk explores parts of the Upper Nadder Valley (also known
as the Vale of Wardour) in the south westerly parts of the West Wiltshire Downs
Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, which is spectacular walking country with
some breath-taking views. Heading west from Tisbury, initially it broadly
follows the valley, while never being flat for long, before routing through Wardour
Park with its large neoclassical mansion and romantically ruined 14th
century Castle to then bypass the Donheads via a hill crossing.
After lunch in Ludwell it is a long and steady ascent to South Wiltshire’s
highest point: Win Green Hill, providing for 360°-views to the coast and
the inland valleys. After a stretch along the Cranborne Chase ridge
a steep descent into the Chalke Valley is followed by a re-ascent up
Berwick Coombe to White Sheet Hill, followed by a steep and rough
descent from the chalk escarpment. A few woods, an often-boggy brook crossing
and some smaller copses are followed by the descent back into Tisbury, a
remarkably unspoilt village.
Bus Option: The number 29 bus (Shaftesbury to Salisbury) stops
outside the lunch pub on the main walk (13.33, 15.18, 16.33), as
well as in Berwick St. John later in the afternoon (15.25, 16.40,
17.55), it gets you to Salisbury Bus Station (a 10 minutes’ walk from the train
station) in just over an hour.
Lunch: The
Forester in Donhead St. Andrew (7.3 km/4.5 mi,
food to 14.00) on the short walk (Michelin Bib Gourmand every year since
2013); The Grove Arms in Ludwell (10.6 km/6.6
mi, food all day) or The Talbot Inn in Berwick St. John
(17.6 km/10.9 mi, food to 14.00) on the main walk.
Tea: Plenty of options in Tisbury; check page 2 of the walk directions
pdf.
For summary, walk directions, map, height
profile, photos and gpx/kml files click here. T=swc.251
3 comments:
If getting advance tickets, is the 1903 the one to go for?
Yep. Assuming normal pace (5 km/h on the flat), it is 6 1/2 hours walking plus your lunch break
There's something very satisfying about leaving home in a heavy downpour, heading for a walk far away, where the forecast promises rain to lunch, then an overcast afternoon, and then to see the clouds breaking round about Basingstoke way and clear blue skies reigning all the way to the destination.
Thus we started in sunny weather, with ample clues though on the ground of the heavy rain of the last hours, days and weeks. It took 2 and a bit hours to the lunch pub, a nice but not necessarily sensational stretch, just picturesque valleys, villages, country piles and woods. A table had been booked by one walker, and exactly the booked number of people wanted to have a pub lunch, as luck had it. Order taking took a while and was of the officious kind (drinks first, then 10 minutes later food orders), and food delivery took a while (the pub was busy, mind). So we left 20 minutes behind my schedule for beating darkness. [The one picnicker had already moved on and ended up on a train hoke an hour ahead of us.]
The rest of the walk? Just fantastic, I have to say (ok: it's my walk, my posting, but still...): excellent far views from the tops (Isle of Wight and Bournemouth, Purbeck Hills one way, Alfred's Tower/Stourhead Estate and the Mendips the other, as well as most of the walk route), remote lush coombes, some deer encountered in a high pasture (and staying remarkably unfazed by our presence), the previously 'precipitous' descent down a chalky/muddy path now largely grassy, the 'jump over a boggy stream' now a boardwalk and a raised bridge, plenty of autumnal leave colours, late-on some mist rising from the fields, and some pink glow on fluffy clouds as sunset approached. In one large pasture there was a 50-strong herd of young horses in a far corner. Initially at least in the far corner. Then they started to slowly move. And gain some pace. And start to gallop towards where we were. Then stampede towards where we were. Then they raced through and around us to the other far corner. Magical, in a way.
There had been a conveyor belt of sheeting rain followed by rainbows to the left and right of us early afternoon when we were on the ridges (some double rainbows amongst them, some accompanying us for about 15 minutes each). Where we were though, there was only ever one hard 15 minute shower as we started the ridge route from Win Green along the Ox Drove, and another short and not so hard shower a bit later, else the afternoon was sunny with passing clouds.
We got to Tisbury at 18.20, with the last light, just as planned, which left good time for a stock-up at the Co-Op before the 19.03 train.
n=7 very fortunate people getting the rub of the green, as far as the weather was concerned: w=sunny-then-sunny-with-clouds-and-two-showers
Post a Comment