• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

There was much else to learn about the area from the map. In stark contrast to the popular image of southern England, the names of Starveall and Skeleton Farm hinted darkly that these downs are a barren prairie, where little would ever grow. And so it is: the fields we passed looked like ethereal installations at the Tate, so full were they of flinty rubble. As a result, much of the area has been given over to horse gallops and, over the next few days, it was a pleasure to watch them flying by, the horses sleek and sinewy, their riders red-cheeked and intent. On the map, it looks as if the day’s walk would be entirely dominated by the great hulk of Didcot power station, sat belching in the Thames valley below. On the ground though, it doesn’t much intrude, at least not in the foreground. I’d caught my first glimpse of the cooling towers two days earlier as I was crossing a field just south of Watlington, and they remained part of my horizon for four days, eventually vanishing in a blue-sky haze near Uffington. They never offended me, though; quite the opposite. It was good to see real life chugging onwards as I glided indulgently across the landscape, and better still, the power station, and its changing position from my viewpoint, gave me a powerful sense of my own locomotion.

The Streatley to Letcombe Regis stretch, where there really is nothing to break the flow, was my longest day’s walk, and it was great to have such good company. I love walking alone, going at exactly the pace that suits only me, but it is quite possible to have too much of your own company. It was a blazing spring Saturday, and the chalk track dazzled phosphorescently. You could often see it miles ahead or behind, a pale corduroy ribbon across the green swells of downland. Far below to our right, the vale shimmered in a gentle heat haze. In the fields at our side, skylarks trilled and hares squared up to each other as we strode by, laughing and gulping lungfuls of freedom.

Up here, it was far easier to raise the spirits of long-gone farmers and drovers, merchants and messengers. Walking ancient paths is hugely powerful, for it places us directly in touch with our ancestors (‘Foot of Briton, formal Roman/Saxon, Dane and Sussex yeoman’, as Andrew Young had it on the South Downs Way). This is very much part of their magic, for we share these ways with the pounding feet of countless unknown others. It is a sensation that we will only ever get on foot, for not only are we on exactly the same routes as our forefathers, we are also travelling in precisely the same way and at the same speed as them. And it is the perfect speed for contemplation and revelation.

Along this prehistoric motorway that winds its way through the voluptuous curves and swells of the downs, great hill forts punctuate the way like ancient service stations. Segsbury, Uffington, Liddington and Barbury are all on the lip itself of the ridge, while the track generally held back in its lee, unseen from below. There’s little evidence that they were ever used defensively, and it was far more pleasant to imagine them as gathering places for travellers and pilgrims, somewhere to refuel, stock up, pay respects and swap news or gossip. Uffington is the overlord of the clan, the mighty ridges of its fort visible for miles either side, and its indeterminately ancient chalk ‘horse’ (or dragon, or cat, or serpent) a fine example of early advertising to the lowland tribes.

A mile or so beyond Uffington is Wayland’s Smithy, the most powerfully atmospheric neolithic relic on the entire Ridgeway. Usually described only as a burial chamber, it is so much more than that. People may indeed have been buried there, but it is no municipal graveyard, for this has long been a place of celebration and ceremonial focus, a point of power for all time. Look at it on Google Earth, and two fields further along the Ridgeway you’ll see another of Wiltshire’s famous features, a crop circle. This one is in the shape of a gorgeously geometric jellyfish,