Chesterton, Shropshire

This was our second trip to the West Midlands in our series of Chester walks.  The countryside we were walking through lies between Wolverhampton and Bridgnorth, which is on the Severn.  Usually, myself and BAM (Best Aussie mate) find the nearest long-distance path and follow this, but that wasn't practical this time round, so we invented our own path - a rather circular one, at that - which is more in keeping with the concept of trailblazing! 

It was difficult to know, just by looking at a map, whether our chosen route would be a mucky slog through difficult countryside, or a pleasant stroll through wonderful autumnal colours.  Luckily for us it was mostly the latter!

Lodging and Victuals

The Old House at Hilton

Chesterton is just a small village and the nearest lodging we could find was at a neighbouring village called Hilton, which lies on the A454, the main Bridgnorth to Wolverhampton road.  The nearest train station to access this Chester walk was Wolverhampton, but we were lucky enough to get a lift to Hilton with a lovely lady called Fifi Sharplin, who is the owner of The Old House in Hilton, where we spent the night. 

The Old House is a beautiful building and we stayed in the main ground-floor room in the cottage.  It was an incredibly peaceful place and Fifi gave us a lovely welcome and talked to us about her time spent living overseas, in faraway places like Botswana and Sri Lanka.  She is also a wonderful artist and produces her own floral drawings which can be bought as prints or cards. 

Hilton to Claverley (2 miles/3.2 kilometres)

Hilton view, November morning

We were incredibly lucky with the weather during yesterday's walk and were treated to the most glorious November sunshine, as we set out from Hilton in the direction of Claverley.  Turning right on the main road outside the Old House, we headed back in the direction of Wolverhampton, before crossing the Hilton Brook and turning right through some buildings to follow a public footpath that follows the brook all the way to Hopstone.

The distance from Hilton to Bridgnorth is only 4 miles by road, so we started off walking away from Chesterton, rather than towards it, as otherwise the walk would have been too short and we would have missed out on some amazing countryside.  The path alongside the Hilton Brook is pretty clear and soon brings you to an interesting area of rock formations, known as The Clouds. 

The Clouds, rock formation

Shropshire has a particularly diverse geological make-up and this area, to the east of the River Severn, has a lot of red sandstone rock formations, which date back to the Triassic period, so they are around 240 million years old!  I've certainly not seen rock formations like this before in England and they reminded me of the rocks I saw on a recent trip to Wadi Rum in Jordan.  They give the landscape a very 'romantic' quality, which is more 19th-century Black Forest than 21st century England!

Once we'd passed the rock formations of The Clouds we came out onto a small country road which took us past the hamlet of Hopstone, downhill to the village of Claverley.

Claverley to Ludstone Hall (1 mile/1.6 kilometres)

Claverley

Claverley seemed like a nice village.  I bought some chocolate at the Post Office shop and saw a very touching sign on the village noticeboard about the local Women's Institute, which was forced to close down, after 61 years of continuous existence.  I don't usually get sentimental about change, but you could sense the genuine disappointment of the person who wrote the notice. 

The demise of Claverley's WI was due to falling membership, which could only be turned around by an influx of young members.  The notice was posted in 2008, which also served to give the village an aura of timelessness - I don't think life moves as quickly in Claverley, as it does here in London!

We walked through the village, past the pubs and turned left before the local school, to follow a small path that runs along the back of the village. This eventually brought us to a wider path, where we turned right into a birch coppice, which is more or less on the grounds of Ludstone Hall. 

Path through the Birch coppice

The public path continues to the left of the birch coppice, but we got a bit lost here, going through the trees to a small meadow and some artificial ponds, where we stopped for some chocolate and banana.  There was one magnificant tree by the upper pond, which had turned bright orange, shedding half of its leaves and looking spectacular in the afternoon sun.  Rather than retrace our steps to the right path, we continued across a field to meet a small road, then turned left towards the gates of Ludstone Hall.

Ludstone Hall to Rudge Heath (1.25 miles/2 kilometres)

Ludstone Hall is a fine building and has a long history, having been part of the monastic lands of medieval Bridgnorth.  The current building is Jacobean (ie from the era of James I, early 17th century).  It's privately owned, but is open to the public once a year and has a small museum which is also available for private viewings.  You can find out more on Ludstone Hall's website. 

Ludstone Hall

We continued along the public path to the left of the building, crossing a couple of fields until we came to the B4176, the secondary road between Dudley and Telford.  We didn't cross the road at this point, but backtracked towards Hopstone before turning right onto the Rudge Heath road, a small country lane which passes Rudge Heath farm.  This brought us back to the main Wolverhampton to Bridgnorth road (the A454), which we crossed to access a small lane between a shop and a plant nursery. 

As I'm sure you can imagine, crossing all of these roads was the least intersting part of the walk, but the most convenient way of getting from Ludstone back towards Chesterton. 

Rudge Heath to Chesterton (1 mile/1.6 kilometres)

Meadow near Ludstone

For some reason, we didn't really make good time yesterday.  I guess all the stopping and checking of maps delayed us somewhat, as yesterday's route was a lot more 'involved' than merely following a national or long-distance trail.  Also BAM was a little bit slower than usual, being covered in bruises from a recent kayaking experience! 

Crossing the B4176 at Rudge Heath, we entered a field with some horses and then came to a diversion sign, which was telling us to go up-hill to Littlegain, rather than along a small valley to the Littlegain footbridge, as we had planned.

BAM investigating the footbridge

I'm not sure why the diversion around Littlegain is in place, but I do know that Littlegain is very aptly named, as we lost a lot of time trying to figure out where to go next.  We eventually found the foot bridge via the diverted route, but the sound of gunshots and the sight of birds flying upwards from the forested area at the end of the footbridge put me off following the public footpath to Chesterton.  BAM was much braver than me, as usual, and she was prepared to stick to our original route, but we hadn't factored in 'getting shot' as part of our walking plan, so I managed to convince her to divert back to the dreaded B4176.

We followed the road again to the turn-off for Chesterton, but we never made it to the village.  Time was pushing on and the sun was slowly making its way downwards, so we decided to pick up our route again at the crossroads and avoid an unnecessary diversion to the village itself.

Chesterton to Worfield (1.7 miles/2.7 kilometres)

House near Lowe Bridge

Crossing the road again, we climbed a stile to enter a long field following Stratford Brook, then went uphill across a ploughed field to meet another country lane just outside Bradney.  At the country lane we turned left and continued downhill to a triangular junction, taking the road on the right to reach Lowe Bridge and the edge of Worfield village.  We got a little bit lost here, taking the footpath to Wyken, but we soon realised that we'd taken a wrong turning, so we backtracked to Worfield and found the correct path which led uphill past Davenport House.

Worfield to Rindleford (1.6 miles/2.6 kilometres)

Wheel in the River Worfe

The rest of the walk from Worfield to Bridgnorth was stunningly beautiful.  Davenport House is an example of English Baroque architecture and has a long, winding drive, which we crossed twice on our way to the River Worfe.  The river is crossed by a footbridge and there is an old mill wheel still standing near the footbridge, which was no doubt put to good use during the Industrial revolution. 

The signposting around Burcote House is really good and we often remark that farmers who make sure public footpaths are well-signposted around their land, ultimately have less problems with walkers getting lost and inadvertantly trespassing.  At Burcote, we turned right to follow a narrow path above the River Worfe and alongside the Burcote Rocks.  Like The Clouds over at Hilton, the Burcote Rocks are made of red sandstone and have interesting formations. 

Mist at Rindleford

After about 15 minutes, we crossed the river again, over a footbridge and continued along a small open valley towards the village of Rindleford.  The temperature was dropping at this time of the day and (hopefully) you can see, in the photograph, a wonderful mist over the Rindleford valley. 

Rindleford to Bridgnorth (2.5 miles/4 kilometres)

At Rindleford we crossed the river again and backtracked on a small, sodden path before turning uphill through a fantastic wooded valley towards Batch Lane.  I think this was my favourite part of the whole walk and I've never seen so many pheasants in one place in my entire life!  It's an incredibly secluded valley, which makes it really peaceful and the walking was easy up through Batch lane to a small country road.

Secluded valley

Crossing the small road we took a path uphill past Woodside Farm.  At this stage, it was dark enough to warrant using a headlamp and, as BAM rustled around in her bag, I looked backwards towards distant ridges and the ghostly orange glow of the West Midlands conurbation. 

After Woodside Farm, we entered a steep wood called Hollybush Coppice, picking our way carefully along the top of the ridge, before taking a small path downwards to meet the A442, which is the main Bridgnorth to Telford road.  We stumbled out onto the road by the impressive sight of Fort Pendlestone, an old textile mill, which has been converted into a modern apartment block.

Bridgnorth signpost

It looked quite imposing in the dark and our imaginations were running riot as to the building's fort-like attributes!  From Fort Pendlestone, we had wanted to join a path along the Severn, which leads into Bridgnorth, but it was too dark by the time we got there and a very inviting roadside path became our preferred route into town.

Bridgnorth looks like an interesting place.  We climbed up the Cartway to the High Town, had a wander around the High Street, looked at the Town Hall and made our way back to the Low Town via the Stoneway steps.  I wish we'd had more time to explore Bridgnorth (or at least seen it by day!), but time wasn't on our side yesterday, so it was back to Wolverhampton and our train to London. 

I've calculated that the walk was around 11 miles (17.7 kilometres) in all.  It definitely felt longer than that and, in a way, distance of little relevance during a walk like this, it's the landscape you cover that matters most.

The Stoneway Steps, Bridgnorth

Access for Wheelchair Users

The nature of yesterday's walk meant that it wouldn't be very well suited to wheelchair users.  The walk involved lots of country lanes, which are dangerous because of traffic and climbing over stiles, which would make the walk inaccessible for wheelchair users.  The only accessible bit might be the route from Rindleford to Batch Lane, although, even here, the terrain was  incredibly rough. 

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All photos were taken by me - please feel free to reuse these images via the Creative Commons License, Attribution (especially to this blog), Share Alike and Non-commercial. 

Chester-le-Street - Concangis

This was the first time our Chester trip brought us to the North East of England.  Chester-le-Street is a market town in County Durham, just to the south of Newcastle, it lies on the Roman road which ran up the east coast of England to Wallsend.  This trip certainly had a very different feel to it and I think it's fair to say that myself and BAM are now thoroughly familiar with the east coast route, due to the delays and difficulties we had getting there and back! 

Lodging and victuals

Tribley Farm near The Moorings

We might have arrived in Chester-le-Street two hours later than we'd expected, but our accommodation at the Moorings Hotel in Hett Hills, just outside the town, more than made up for the long journey to get there.  Unfortunately, because of the delay, we didn't get a chance to eat at the hotel restaurant, the Prime Rib, which has great reviews.  Apparently, it's a really popular spot for Sunday lunch and people drive there from miles around to sample their famous Yorkshire pudding! 

We'd found it hard to get accommodation in the town itself and we now know this was because of the one-day International between England and India at Chester-le-Street's Emirates Durham International Cricket Ground.  That would explain why every room in the town was booked out!  By all accounts, tickets for the match had sold out in December of last year!  We couldn't have ended up in a better place than The Moorings and I'd recommend it, if you're ever up Durham-way. 

The Moorings Hotel to Edmondsley (2 miles)

Horses at Tribley Farm

Weird sculpture on the ground

We didn't intend to visit Edmondsley on this walk!  Whilst we have, on occasion, got a little bit lost in previous Chester walks, this time we got spectacularly lost and somehow walked in completely the wrong direction, away from Chester-le-Street rather than towards it!  In our defense, I have to note that the landscape between the Moorings hotel and Congburn plantation looks completely different to what you see on the map.  It feels as though they have been tearing chunks out of the surrounding fields and re-creating the landscape to turn it into something else.  There were lots of eerie pieces of wooden sculpture, like the one in the photograph, which seemed to have been run over by a digger. 

Congburn Plantation

The myriad of paths through Congburn plantation are also partly to blame, as well as the interesting conversation we were having about hostage-taking, which led us to take that fateful right turn, when we should have gone left!  In case you're not already aware of it, I have a sister blog to this one called Learning about the World, which recounts my armchair travels to different parts of the world.  I'm currently blogging about Yemen, which is why we were talking about hostages in the first place!  I guess the path to Edmondsley had taken us hostage and, although it seemed like a nice enough place, we were keen to get to Chester-le-Street and back on the track of our intended walk. 

Place of the horse people

I'd managed to convince myself, before this trip, that, in true English fashion, Chester-le-Street should be pronounced something like Chester-l'Estrey or something equally pretentious, but no, in true North East fashion it's just Chester-le-Street!  The accent in this part of Durham is fascinating - not quite Geordie, definitely not Yorkshire, but somewhere in between. 

Front Street, Chester-le-Street

After all of our Chester walks in the south of England, the North East was suddenly very exotic, like being in a different country - the place names are very different - Ouston, Birtley, Kibblesworth, Nettlesworth - definitely not southern English names.  Then there were curious names, like No Place and Pity Me and North American names like Washington, Canada, Philadelphia and Quebec, as though the Americans had colonised England and not the other way about!

The Romans called Chester-le-Street Concangis, which was their approximation of the original Celtic place name, which meant something like 'place of the horse people'.  It's also the name of the small river Cong which runs through Chester-le-Street and the plantation where we got lost!  Interestingly, the Russian word for horse is also конь kon'.  The name Chester-le-Street was used to differentiate this Chester from all the other Chesters in England, ie. this was the one on the Roman road (or street) to Wallsend.  Chester-le-Street's Roman history isn't very visible these days, because the town was built on top of the Roman fort, so everything Roman is underground. 

The Pilgrim's Way

St Mary and St Cuthbert's

Signpost for Cuddy's Corse

We restarted our walk on the main street, which is called Front Street, with a view of St Mary and St Cuthbert's, Chester-le-Street's main church.  St Cuthbert seems to have been phenomenally popular in the north of England and his body rested in Chester-le-Street for 112 years in the 9th/10th century, before being moved further south to Durham cathedral.  It turns out that the walk we did from Chester-le-Street is actually part of a pilgrim's route known as Cuddy's Corse (ie. the path that they carried St Cuthbert (Cuddy's) body (corse).  The route runs from the Farne Islands (north of Newcastle) to Durham, but it's not exactly a direct path, as it goes via Edinburgh and Carlisle in a highly circuitous loop. 

Chester-le-Street seems to be a popular stopping off point on the way from North to South and it was also the first stop on the famous Jarrow March of the 1930's, when 207 protestors marched from Jarrow in South Shields to Westminster Palace in London, to highlight the extreme poverty and unemployment faced by people in the North East at that time. 

Chester-le-Street to Great Lumley (2 miles)

England v India at the Emirate Durham ICG

The first two miles of our walk took us past the Emirates Durham ICG where we could hear the cheers of 75,000 spectators and we could see the stadium draped in English and Indian flags.  As we were passing, the weather was fine and everything was going well, but I heard on the news later that they had to call the match off because of the rain which fell at around 3pm.  We crossed Lumley Bridge, then turned right onto the Weardale Way, passing the magnificent Lumley Castle Hotel (rooms starting at 185 GBP for a twin.  Hmmm, maybe next time!) The way followed the River Wear for a little bit, then turned left to pass Lumley Riding, skirting a hedgerow and wheat fields which brought us to Great Lumley. 

Horse at Lumley Ridings

Front Street, Great Lumley

All of this land was once part of the Lumley estate, the Lumleys being a prestigious local family of Anglo-Saxon origin.  Great Lumley was also known for its coal mines in the 19th century.  Intriguingly, we spotted a pub on Great Lumley's Front Street called The Warriors Arms. 

Fields outside Great Lumley

We often hear the sound of gun shots on our walks through the country, usually a regular sound created by machines to scare away birds.  This time we heard real gunshots, down towards the river and it reminded me of a great Spanish movie I've seen recently called El rey de la montaña. If you've seen the movie, then you'll know why. If you haven't seen it (and you like thrillers) then it's well worth watching!

Inside Finchale Priory

Great Lumley to Finchale Priory (1.4 miles)

The entrance to Finchale Priory

We continued following the Weardale way, through some fields and onto a small country road called Cocken Lane, which brought us back to the river, crossing a pedestrian footbridge to reach the ruins of Finchale Priory.  This one is pronounced differently than it's spelled, so it's pronounced Finkle not Finchale.  The priory is really beautiful and reminded me of Bolton Abbey.  Like Bolton Abbey the priory was abandoned during the dissolution of the monasteries in the 16th century.  Walking around the ruins, I couldn't help but feel appalled at the ruination of such a wonderful site.  It's now managed by English Heritage and maintains an atmosphere of dignified contemplation. 

Finchale Priory to Brasside (1.1 miles)

The lonely road to Brasside

Finchale Priory lies at the end of a very lonely road, which brings you down to the village of Brasside, the location of two Category A prisons, Low Newton womens' prison and Frankland mens' prison.  We've seen a few fortified buildings on our walks, notably Fort Nelson in Portchester, but nothing as frightening and impressive as the prisons at Brasside.  The Weardale way, rather nonchalantly, goes right between the two prisons and we crept along, in awe of the prison walls, as the clouds burst suddenly and the rain pelted us angrily.  I've found out since our walk that Rosemary West is currently being held at Low Newton and that Frankland holds the child-murderer, Ian Huntley.  It makes me shiver just thinking about how close we were to such evil minds!

Brasside to Durham (2.3 miles)

View of Durham cathedral

The rest of the walk to Durham was pleasant enough, despite the rain, and we could see Durham cathedral in the distance, romantically lounging in the mist on top of the hill.  I'd never been to Durham before this walk, but I'd heard a lot about it and it certainly lived up to my expectations.  We arrived with about an hour to spare before our train, so we walked around the city, through Market Place and up Saddler Street and Owengate to Durham Cathedral.  The cathedral is a fantastic structure and we walked around inside, listening to the choir singing and reading about the history of the building.  We also visited the shrine to St Cuthbert, thereby ending a pilgrimage that we didn't know we'd started!  

Access for Wheelchairs users

Durham castle

The part of this walk that I would recommend for wheelchair users is the Weardale way from Finchale Abbey to Durham.  If you don't mind wheelchairing through a prison(!), this part of the route is fairly accessible, with a few bumpy bits coming down Frankland Lane and a slightly steep slope down from Frankland Farm.  Durham has a new pedestrian bridge which is wheelchair-accessible and will bring you to Market Place via the Gala Theatre.  Alternatively, you could get an elevator to street-level in the Gates Shopping Centre and cross the bridge at Leazes Road, just as we did. 

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All photos were taken by me - please feel free to use them under the Creative Commons license:

Attribution (especially to this blog)
Share alike
Non-commercial

Silchester - Calleva Atrebatum

Signpost for Roman Silchester

Like Wroxeter, which we visited in March of this year, Silchester - known to the Romans as Calleva Atrebatum - didn't really take off as a settlement in modern times.  Most people would be hard pushed to pinpoint Silchester on a map and myself and BAM (Best Aussie Mate) were no exceptions, before we did this walking trip!

The modern-day village of Silchester is located in the north of Hampshire, in the countryside between Basingstoke and Reading, just outside a town called Tadley.  Although there is a hotel in Silchester, the reviews were off-putting, so we did some research and decided to start our walk in Stratfield Mortimer in Berkshire.  Mortimer station is located, quite handily, on a small branch line that runs between Reading and Basingstoke.  Although it's a small line, it dates back to the early days of rail travel and the station and line has been in operation since 1848!

Reading to Basingstoke line

Like a lot of railway stations around Berkshire and Oxfordshire, Mortimer station is quite far from the main village of Mortimer Common.  It might seem a bit incongruous to 21st century travellers, but I believe this is evidence of a stubborn compromise for 19th century villagers who weren't all that interested in having steam-driven technology ploughing through their idyllic lives.

Victuals and lodging

We travelled down from London Waterloo, via Basingstoke, arriving at Mortimer just in time for a delicious curry at a popular local restaurant called The Cinnamon Tree.  Time-travelling 19th century Mortimerians might well be bewildered by a restaurant in their village specialising in Bangladeshi and Indian cuisine, but we were well-pleased, feasting on Misty Lau and Murgh Jalfrazi.

Our room at the B&B

Little Park Farm B&B

BAM had booked us in to a lovely B&B called Little Park Farm, which is in a 19th-century farmhouse, a short distance from Mortimer station.  We stayed in a Twin room in the loft, with lovely views over the surrounding countryside.  For city-dwellers like us, it's great to wake up in the countryside, with the smell of bacon being fried in the kitchen and the sound of birds twittering in the garden.  Once we'd had our fill of food and coffee, we ventured out into the countryside and set off in the direction of Silchester.

Little Park Farm to the Devil's Highway (1.2 miles)

BAM walking through a field of wheat

Like most Roman settlements, Calleva Atrebatum had a Roman road, which ran from modern-day Silchester all the way to London.  As it passes through this part of Berkshire, the Roman road is known as the Devil's Highway, although I couldn't quite find out why it's called this.  Perhaps, it was related to the fact that the road brought Roman invaders to what was a regional Celtic capital?  Perhaps, the name comes from a later time, when weary travellers along this road would have journeyed in fear of footpads and highwaymen?  Whatever the reason, the name in itself was enough to attract our attention, so our first 1.2 miles involved a loop from Little Park farm, walking down the farm driveway to the main Beech Hill road (known, oddly, as The Forehead).  Opposite Perrins Farm, we turned onto a public footpath leading through some beautiful wheatfields, which eventually brought us onto the Devil's Highway at the Home Farm, just outside Fair Cross.

The Devil's Highway

Yesterday's weather was a bit unsure of itself and our arrival at the Devil's Highway was greeted with a shower of rain which, in the nature of English showers, decided to finish, as soon as we'd got our raincoats out of our bags.  We noticed a group of young people with maps standing at the junction to Fair Cross, looking a bit uncertain as to whether or not the Devil's Highway was the right option for them.

The Devil's Highway to Calleva Atrebatum (3 miles)


Roman roads are very easy to walk on!  They're straight, for a start, so no chance of getting lost and, unlike most of the main Roman roads, which have been superseded by national highways and motorways, the Devil's Highway to Calleva Atrebatum is, blissfully, devoid of modern phenomena such as trains, planes or automobiles!  We passed south of Little Park Farm again, then through Butler's Land, where we passed another group of young people with maps and then crossed onto a small country road leading to a railway bridge.

Field full of cornflowers

We were quite startled when a silver-haired lady called Ann suddenly appeared from a gap in the hedge.  As it turned out, she is a local leader for the Duke of Edinburgh awards and had been looking for some of the same young people we'd seen wandering around the area with maps! We had a quick chat, then crossed the railway bridge, coming to a T-junction, where we left the road and crossed a hilly field full of the most amazing cornflowers, daisies and poppies.  The end of the field brought us onto the road again and the amphitheatre of Calleva Atrebatum.

Calleva Atrebatum to Silchester (0.8 miles)

The Amphitheatre at Calleva Atrebatum

The Roman name for the settle Calleva Atrebatum could possibly have been adapted from a local Celtic name that translates something like, 'wooded place where the Atrebates tribe live'.  Calleva sounds like a Romanisation of the Celtic word for wood/forest, if you compare the Irish word coillte or the Welsh coedwig.  I wonder if the origin of the name Silchester, also has its roots in the Latin word for wood/forest Silva? The Atrebates occupied most of modern-day Berkshire and they were unusual in that their culture seems to have more in common with Belgic tribes living in (modern-day) France, than the other Celtic tribes that were living around them in Britain.

The churchyard at St Mary's

Wedding guests

One mystery surrounding the Celtic settlement at Calleva Atrebatum was the fact that a stone with Ogham script was found on the site.  Ogham is mostly associated with Ireland and there are very few examples of Ogham script in England, the others being found exclusively in Cornwall in Devon.  The presence of Ogham in Silchester is attributed to a lone Irish settler, so perhaps, with its Belgic and Irish connections, Calleva Atrebatum was an ancient melting-pot of Celtic cultures?

Another mystery surrounding the site is the reason for its having been abandoned.  During the Roman times, it's believed that several thousand people lived in Calleva Atrebatum.  The site not only contained an amphitheatre, which you can still see today, but also Roman baths, temples, a mansion and a Forum Basilica.  According to The Guardian's Heritage writer, Maev Kennedy, in her article from 1999, the site might have been cursed by the Anglo-Saxons, evidenced by ritualistic remains involving a dog's bones!

Silchester Town Life Project

Excavation at Silchester Roman site

Whatever the reason for its abandonment, Calleva Atrebatum has an air of otherworldiness about it.  Just inside the walls of the site is a beautiful church called St Mary the Virgin.  We stopped for lunch in the churchyard and watched wedding guests milling around the church, congratulating a newly-married couple.  We then continued our walk through the heart of the ancient settlement, passing a group of young excavators from the Department of Archaeology at the University of Reading, who are currently working on the Silchester Town Life Project.  Eventually we came to a road at the edge of Silchester, where we turned around again in the direction of Mortimer.

Silchester to Mortimer (1.4 miles)

Sign post for Wall Lane

We had to walk along a fairly busy road, past Catthawlands Farm, before turning onto a quieter road called Wall Lane and back-tracking past the Roman walls and onto a public bridleway that took us all the way to Mortimer.  We had intended to take a smaller public footpath to Mortimer, rather than the bridleway, but I'm glad we went the way we did, as the bridleway passed through some lovely countryside, full of sheep and horses, past the Nine Acre copse and Simms Stud Farm, which is on the outskirts of Mortimer village.

Horses at Simm's stud farm

The wedding at St Mary's and the bridleway passing a stud farm has us thinking about all kinds of horsey-matrimonial connections we'd never thought of before.  It's interesting that the word groom is used mainly in two contexts, ie. a man who is getting married (or has just got married) and the person who looks after a horse.  It's also interesting that the word bride is very similar to the word bridle, ie. the idea that young, free women are bridled by marriage and reigned in by their new husbands, who are, by definition 'house bound'.  Horses were incredibly important to the development of modern technologies and societies, but it's not very flattering for a young woman to be described in language usually reserved for horses! 

Boundary marker

Another thing that caught our eyes on the way into Mortimer was an old boundary post, which marked the border between Hampshire and Berkshire.  I'd seen references to these on my Ordnance Survey map, but this is the first one we've spotted!

Mortimer to Wokefield Common (2.3 miles)

Wood for the signs?

The rain came on again as we sat at the church in Mortimer.  Mortimer seems like a nice place - quiet Berkshire village life went on all around us, as we sat munching our chocolate Koala bears!  Passing a playing field, we skirted around the north of the village and then took a path through Starvale Woods, eventually leading us to Wokefield Common on the edge of a village called Burghfield Common.  The woods were really beautiful, but it's always harder to orientate yourself in woodland and the bewildering array of signs for public footpaths and bridleways meant we couldn't see the wood for the signs! 

We got a little bit lost, but eventually made it to a crossroads, where DoE Ann spotted us and stopped her car to give us an update on her groups and an interesting history lesson about Mortimer Common and the Silchester Roman site.  We would loved to have spent more time talking to her, as she seems to know her local history really well, but time was pushing on and we had a train to catch.

Wokefield Common to Mortimer Station (2 miles)

Wheat fields

The last two miles brought us down Lockram Lane, then through some amazing wheatfields and hilly country, passing over Lockram Brook, we took a wrong turning and detoured down to Mann's Farm, then walked along the road to Wheat's Farm where we joined our original path, going downhill to Mortimer Station, just in time for our connection to Basingstoke and back to London.   

Access for Wheelchair Users

Wokefield Common

Again, I'm basing this on someone using a heavy, electric wheelchair.  I would start this walk at Beech Hill, rather than Little Park Farm or Mortimer Station.  The second part of the walk I've described above, along the Devil's Highway, is completely accessible and relatively smooth-going, until you get to the T-junction before Calleva Atrebatum.  At the T-junction you could turn left along a small country lane, then right to the gates of St Mary's Church.  The Roman site seems to be, for the most part, wheelchair accessible.  We didn't walk on the walls of the site but, from a distance, they looked really inaccessible to wheelchair users.  

Church at Stratfield Mortimer

I wouldn't recommend wheelchairing along the roads around Silchester and the bridleway to Mortimer was also not accessible.  Some of the paths in Wokefield Common seemed accessible, but the rest of the route described above, especially the last two miles, would not be accessible, unfortunately.  




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