Travelling around Wiltshire to find those hidden places
One of the questions we're occasionally asked is whether Hidden Wiltshire is, in fact, doing the exact opposite of what its name suggests. After all, every time we write about a forgotten lane, an overlooked woodland or a little-known earthwork, we're shining a light on somewhere that many people may never have heard of before. In a sense, we're "unhiding" Wiltshire. It's a fair point, and one…
Hidden Wiltshire NEWS Summer Walks Hello everyone, Glyn Coy here. Welcome to the first Hidden Wiltshire newsletter for quite some time! You may have noticed I have been a little quieter over the past year or so. I had to take a bit of a step back to deal with multiple different priorities that life sometimes throws in the way. Thankfully, Hidden Wiltshire didn't disappear. Throughout that period,…
As we walk around the Winterbournes and Figsbury Ring, we muse on the peaceful atmosphere of the villages and the wild and strange nature of the Neolithic earthwork that has been a literary inspiration of E.M Forster and William Golding. Could there be a mysterious force there that brings out imaginings of the worst in human nature and the horror associated with that?
A walk from Win Green to the Ox Drove and Berwick St John. This walk gives you wonderful vistas of Cranborne Chase that are rich with earthworks, secret footpaths and stories of the past and doomed love.
There isn’t much hidden about Cley Hill. How many people travel past it every day and gaze up at this peculiar lump of a hill. Or maybe they don’t look at it all as it’s so familiar. I must admit every time I’ve driven past it I’ve thought that I really must go up there one day. So on this walk I had the opportunity to do just that.
Once again I am indebted to Louise Powell of Circular Wiltshire Walks for this route. Usually I adapt her routes but on this occasion I have followed it turn by turn as it was exactly what I was looking for. I’ve been meaning to visit St Katherine’s church for a long time and when I was asked to photograph it as part of a bigger project, Louise’s route was the perfect way to combine this with a…
Salisbury doesn’t exactly meet the criteria for Hidden Wiltshire, and yet there are a number of pockets around the city that few visitors are aware of. These areas can contain unexpected hidden gems and history. So in this blog, I would like to introduce you to one such location and why, at the time of writing, getting to it by foot is on the minds of local residents.
In the space of 8 miles/13 kms this walk includes a Neolithic causewayed enclosure, a little known stone circle, a windmill mound, three Medieval churches, (a pub), and the site of an abandoned Medieval village. It was a lot to cram in during the short daylight hours available to us.
This winter's walk around the village of Chilmark and the Monarch's Way had a profound effect on me. Perhaps it was due to the history of the place, its wonderful views and the fact that the stone used in the building of Salisbury Cathedral was quarried from this place. The area is well worth a visit.
This is an area we’ve covered several times before at Hidden Wiltshire and you will find links to earlier blogs below. But I wanted to focus more on the natural landscape and the Ridgeway in this blog. For that reason this will be a slightly shorter blog as there were no churches or historic buildings to crawl over.
For the purists amongst you, you might want to look away as this walk spends much of its time outside of Wiltshire. But it starts and finishes in our county and for part of the time crosses countryside where the borders were frequently moved, such that places found themselves changing county over the years. But to help you make your decision whether to continue reading we will be visiting…
This is a wonderful and diverse walk with lots of interest and varied history across the ages. It explores the village of Netherhampton and its famous hoard, Salisbury Racecourse and the lost tragic village of Washern.
I’ve been meaning to explore the downs to the north of Mere for years. The many folds in the landscape caused by man’s presence over millennia combined with the forces of nature make this an enticing landscape. And on the day we visited, the low autumn sun on a bright clear day just served to highlight the profile of the countless earthworks, ditches and ripples even more.
I very nearly didn’t write this blog for reasons that will become apparent. I’ve long intended to visit the New Forest in autumn but since it is mostly in Hampshire my commitment to writing for Hidden Wiltshire meant it was always on the back burner. But then it dawned on me that part of the forest does just creep into Wiltshire.
Just like Tolkien's hobbit, I have been on a journey. A discovery of belonging and an increase in my desire to ensure accessibility and maintenance of the Wiltshire public rights of way. For it is only when walking them do you see the true beauty of the area and find a deep connection to the place.
Looking for inspiration my walking buddy and neighbour Stu mentioned a walk he’d seen in Country Walking Magazine. The starting point was the village of Giddeahall, a place neither of us had heard of. Having studied the map we knew exactly where it was but neither of us could remember seeing a village, despite having driven past many times. We recalled seeing a pub at the side of the A420 west of…
A wonderful and thought-provoking visit to Marlborough. Taking in Merlin's Mound, the White Horse, the Merchant's House and pondering on many things along the way.
North Bradley is a village I know well. My sons went to the primary school there. For some years we attended the Baptist Church as a...
I’ve long wanted to do a walk in this area as it’s somewhere I used to cycle a lot. Our bike club would often ride up the long climb through Gare Hill and a hush would descend on the group, not just because we were struggling for breath, but because it always felt slightly eerie – there never seemed to be any birdsong. The countryside here is quite different to much of the rest of Wiltshire. No…
We revisit to Stourhead and the mysterious Selwood Triangle in order to find a lost byway and a location of where a miracle took place.