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This Week's Walks - Archive

Please see the Saturday Walker's Club This Week's Walks page.

This is an archive of walks done by the Saturday Walker's Club. You should only need to use this page if the SWC website is down.

Saturday 14 November 2015

Saturday Third Walk -- Tisbury

SWC Walk  251:  Tisbury Circular via Ludwell and Berwick St. John (Short Version)

Distance:  Approximately 11 Miles

Difficulty:  5 out of 10

Train:  Take the 9:20 Exeter St. David’s train from London Waterloo to Tisbury, arriving at 11:06.  Return trains to Waterloo are at 05 past the hour until 22:05.  Buy a day return to Tisbury.  For those planning to spend the night in Tisbury, remember to buy a RETURN ticket (not a day return). 
At long last, the much awaited Tisbury weekend is upon us and a nice collection of walkers are planning to spend the night on Saturday in order to partake in a second Tisbury walk on Sunday.  For those still contemplating an overnight – I understand that the Compasses Inn is full; but that there is still some availability at the South Western (www.south-western.co.uk) and possibly some other B&Bs in Tisbury. 
Saturday’s walk explores the south and westerly portions of the West Wiltshire Downs Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.  This shorter version of the walk omits the highest point of the main walk, but still includes a number of interesting features and some moderate climbs.    The walk instructions and more details are available here.
The lunchtime pub is the Forester Inn in Donhead St.Andrew (tel 1747 828 038), about 4.5 miles into the walk, which serves food until 2:00 PM.  The food is highly praised with a combination of upmarket offerings and more traditional pub classics.
Tea and other post walk refreshments can be had at the South Western (near the train station) or at one of the pubs on the Tisbury high street.  If completing the walk before 16:30 – you may also be in time to have tea at the Beatons Tearooms and Bookshop, located in the Square.

Enjoy the walk!

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

On the suggested walk (short version) stop at The Forester pub for a glass or two of Donhead Diva a sparkling dry cider cunningly disguised as Prosecco. The food is exceptional too.

Poppy said...

hi there,
nice idea and it would be good to do this walk. However, I would love to be corrected on this, but according to the train websites, the cost for a day trip is £57 WITH a network railcard. The cost for returning on the Sunday is £63 WITH a railcard.
Please tell me I have got this wrong! I came back from Cornwall recently for £22.50!
Why is it costlier to go to Tisbury than Truro? I think I may have to give it a miss!

Sean said...

Hi Poppy, not sure where you got your travel information, but the SWT website says an Off-Peak Day Return is £30.15 and an Off-Peak Return (eg. out Sat, back Sun) is £33.95, both with Railcard.

Poppy said...

Thanks. The network rail website has slightly changed. When you click on 'Network Card' option on the scroll down list, you also have to press on the number of cards (i.e 1 network card or 1 gold card etc). That seems to be newish & I haven't done that before anyway. So it was coming up with the full price as it wasn't recognising the network card.

Anonymous said...

n=8 on this walk w=rainy_and_blustery_in_morning_then_better_afternoon

Anonymous said...

I counted 9 on this walk 2 of whom bailed out at the lunch pub - they were locals and had left their car at the pub which seemed eminently sensible to one of our group who seemed to think that the offer of a lift back to Tisbury should be taken seriously but thankfully his guest persuaded him to keep walking.
A great lunch that was started around 1pm and yet didn't finish until 3pm - a bit of a mistake on our part as we had a good 3 hours of walking left but only an hour or two of daylight
Rain and grey in the morning but dryer in the avo and very mild
There were suggestions for short cuts in the afternoon but we forged on on the given route some filling their boots with water in the very wet areas.
Around 5 pm we split into a group of 4 and another of 3
Us four stumbled around in the woods for a fairwhile but torches and sat nav gradually got us back on track and out to the road where we met some poachers sorry hunters who were staying at the same pub as us so gave us a lift back with two boys bailing out at the station.
A great day but must leave the pub earlier next time or have desert and coffee there as well and then stay the night and continue the same walk the next morning.