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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 23 April 2016

Saturday Third Walk - Tisbury Circular (via Ludwell and Berwick St. John)


SWC Walk 251 – Fine views in the undulating Upper Nadder Valley, Wardour Park and its ruined Castle, a long ascent to Win Green, views to the coast and nearby valleys, White Sheet hill and ridge, a rough descent, a jump over a boggy brook, a bluebell wood (at least one, anyway)

Length: 26.3 km (16.4 mi) [shorter option available, see below]
Ascent/Descent: 710 m; Net Walking Time: ca. 6 ½ hours
Toughness:  10 out of 10

09.20 Exeter St. Davids train from Waterloo (Clapham J. 09.27, Woking 09.46), arrives Tisbury 11.06.
Buy a £15 day return to Tisbury on the SWT-website or at the station ticket office (but not the machines) before midnight the night before.
Returns are at xx.01, last train 22.03.

The 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 breathtaking 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, a boggy brook crossing and some smaller copses are followed by the descent back into Tisbury, a remarkably unspoilt village.
A Shortcut (17.2 km, 440m ascent), limiting the effort to 5/10, is described.

On the full walk the lunch stop is The Grove Arms in Ludwell (10.6 km/6.6 mi), just before the ascent to South Wiltshire’s highest point.
On the short walk the lunch stop is The Forester Inn in Donhead St. Andrew (7.3 km/4.5 mi), an excellent yet welcoming pub restaurant. Pre-booking is advised
Back in Tisbury the options are the highly recommended Beatons Tearooms and Bookshop for tea, or one of three pubs – in (my) order of preference: The Boot Inn, The South Western or The Bennett.
For walk directions click here. For summary, route map, height profile, photos and gpx/kml files click here.

Get Hill Fit for Ullapool – The Schedule
23/04 – SWC 251 Tisbury Circular (via Ludwell and Berwick St. John)
30/04SWC 239 Halnaker to Chichester (via Cass Sculpture Park and Goodwood)
07/05SWC XXX (New Walk) Haslemere to Midhurst
14/05 SWC 068 (Revised) Rowlands Castle Circular
T=swc.251

4 comments:

tartanrug said...

Short cut version of this walk for me (and a few others) with lunch at The Foresters Inn. Very nice walk, and not too challenging, for those who don't feel like doing the the main walk. We say good bye to the main group at the first lunch pub, and will be back in Tisbury to have a drink with them at the end, if they are not too tired.

Anonymous said...

22 off of the train and then 2 at the early pub having lunch as we arrived so n=24 w=sunny-spells-quite-mild.
There were some occasional small bluebell patches and primrose displays on the short option on this walk
7 of us only did 10.7 miles lunching at The Forester Inn which was okay but nothing to shout about.
Lots of firm mud underfoot churned up by cows so it was ideal break a leg country and thankfully none of us did but we were all so elated to get off of a particularly steep slope that when we came to a very muddy track ( say 400mm deep and full width ) one of our party took a dive into it and had to wash off with bottles of water and then wait for the mud to dry on the clothes. Not sure of it was done for a laugh or just lack of concentration.
The long walk people met us at the pub at the end having tea - how did they do that ?
A lovely walk, though even the short version wasa bit too long for me.

Muddy Brown

Thomas G said...

n=25 w=cold-with-sunny-spells
21 off the train, 1 had driven from Windsor, 3 on an earlier train (the intention of those haveing been to taste both the short walk and the long walk lunch pub).
The total includes a couple of first-timers and a couple of very occasional SWC-Walkers, who usually hang out with Met Walkers.
6 did the short walk, and reported a disappointingly average experience at The Forester lunch pub, let's hope the kitchen just had a bad day...
Standard length walkers were treated to decent if not outstanding pub food at The Grove Arms and superb far views all day, best I've seen on this route: from Win Green all the way to Bournemouth and the Isle of Wight, 50 km away ...
Else it proved again to be a challenging and very varied walk in beautiful and remote countryside (no villages were walked through, no church passed, no other walkers encountered). Strenuous yes, but with so many visual delights to keep you going, that both the short walkers and the majority of the standard walkers caught the 18.01 train.
6 others hung around in Tisbury for a drink or two at the South Western, then working their way up the village for another one at The Benett, and then for a meal at the Boot Inn. 21.01 train for those...
Bluebells were not as far 'out' as they are in closer-by parts of the Southeast.
Mud in the main nothing too serious in the scheme of things of this 'wettest winter on record', but for the one pretty shocking stretch of deep, gooey mud along a longish stretch of deeply rutted farm track close to the end. This was passed almost without incident though.

Anonymous said...

Lovely walk through beautiful countryside and all the walkers I have spoken with at the end of the walk were of the same view. Many thanks Thomas!