The wind whips over the wide fields and a flock of starlings skitters across the sky, tumbling in the gusts. We lean into the weather, eyes stinging and cheeks burning. A few moments later, the squall has blown through and a glittering haze hangs in the air. The landscape is gilded and magical.
This elemental world, with huge skies and bold weather fronts, isn’t in a remote corner of Britain’s mountains – it’s in Wiltshire. And the route I’m following is an ancient one, a line cut through the landscape by pilgrims, traders, raiders and travellers for some 5,000 years.
The route is the Ridgeway. Now a designated National Trail, it follows a chalk ridgeline that rises and falls for 87 miles across southern England, from Wiltshire eastward to the Chiltern Hills north of London, via the counties of Oxfordshire, Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Hertfordshire. For the walker, the Ridgeway offers sweeping views across wide fields, through ancient woodlands, along wide droveways with wizened hawthorns, down deep green holloways and a string of intriguing prehistoric monuments. If you like geology, geography, history and archaeology,
