Ilchester - Monarchs, mud and the meaning of life

This was our first Chester walk in Somerset.  The South West isn't exactly famous for Roman settlements and Ilchester is one of the 'big three', which includes two other Chesters we've already visited, Exeter and Dorchester.  It's hard to believe that this little village in South Somerset was once a major Roman town and, for a while, in medieval times, the capital of Somerset.  Somerset itself is quintessentially English - posh schools, rolling hills, abbeys, floodplains, cheese and tacky seaside resorts!

As we do more of these Chester walks, we're starting to see a bigger picture emerge that somehow connects different parts of England together.  For example, Ilchester lies on an ancient Roman road called the Fosse Way, which links Exeter to Lincoln and also passes through Leicester, where we walked in November 2012.  Ilchester is linked to Dorchester, not by a road, but by a shared history, as the two main capitals of the Celtic Durotriges tribe.  It sometimes feels like a big historical jigsaw piece falling into place.

Transport, Lodging and victuals

Our trip to Ilchester started in the rather insalubrious setting of Hammersmith bus station!  We generally get the train to whichever Chester we're visiting but, oddly enough, it was more convenient to get a bus this time, the delightful Berry's coaches, which dropped us right in Ilchester village.

Road into Ilchester village

Coming from Ireland, I'm much more used to coach travel than train travel (actually, my home county, Donegal, no longer has a train service, so I first saw a train when I went on a school trip in my last year at Primary school!).  I'm also used to having a range of private companies, which often offer more competitive rates than the national/state provider.  Berry's coaches was my first experience of private coach travel in England and I have to say it was very comfortable and convenient.  It's a shame that travel is so dominated by the bigger companies who often charge us a small fortune for the journeys we make.

We were also very lucky with our choice of accommodation, the wonderful Liongate House B&B, just across the River Yeo, run by Liz and Graeme, a retired couple who are originally from Surrey.  They do a mean breakfast and provide a great welcome in their lovely converted barn house.  We had a pleasant dinner at the Ilchester Arms, as we had a glass of wine and caught up on the events in our lives.

Ilchester to Limington (1.2 miles/2 kilometres)

For various reasons, I'm writing this blog post a few weeks after we did the walk, so we actually did this walk at the beginning of April and the weather was incredibly gloomy and reminded me of previous walks we did at this time of the year in Shropshire and Worcestershire. I'd just come down with a cold that weekend, so the name 'Ilchester' seemed particularly apt, as that was exactly how I was feeling!

Ilchester Market place

Ilchester High Street

It was raining lightly as we walked down Church Street towards St Mary Major, then backtracked along Free Street, before heading out into the fields to the east of the village.  We followed part of the Monarch's Way for our Ilchester walk.  The Monarch's way is a 615 mile long-distance footpath, which runs from Worcester to Shoreham (just outside Brighton) and seems to zig-zag rather erratically through Somerset, as though the Monarch wasn't quite sure which direction he should be going in.

St Mary's Major, Ilchester

Marker showing the Monarch's Way

The Monarch in question was, of course, Charles II, who was fleeing Cromwell's army and eventually made his way to his Mummy in Paris.  We could feel his despondency, as we set off in the rain, trudging through the mud until we got to the little village of Limington.  Our route passed quite close to the village of Yeovilton, which is home to a major Navy air base and the military connection wasn't lost on us, as it's not the first time we've passed a modern military site which is built near an old Roman settlement!

Limington to Ashington (0.8 miles/1.3 kilometres)

Limington is a pretty little village in the Hundred of Stone. We've come across these hundreds before, notably 'the Hundred of Hoo' when we walked in Kent.  Hundreds are smaller divisions of counties and the distinction has mostly fallen out of use, which is a pity, as the names of the hundreds are often cute and amusing, like the Hundred of Chew or the Hundred of Catsash (I know, I also had to read this twice!), both in Somerset, or the Hundred of Willey (Bedfordshire), the Hundred of Puddletown (Dorset), the Hundred of Ham (also Kent), the Hundred of Holdshot (Hampshire).

Mill Stream near Limington

Other old-fashioned sub-county level divisions, include Baronies, Wapentakes, Ridings and Liberties and I find these names very quaint and, somehow, fitting for a place like Somerset, even in the 21st century! Bizarrely, Sussex was divided into Rapes and then Hundreds - so you could live in the Hundred of Steyning in the Rape of Bramber!

Limington St Mary's Church

Talking of rape, the dullness of a wet spring morning was lit up by the appearance of a field of rapeseed, just outside Ashington, a welcome splash of bright yellow, in an otherwise dull, green landscape.  I'd never seen fields of rape, before I moved to England and I'm still fascinated when travelling at this time of the year, to see the countryside transformed into a patchwork of green and gold.

Green and gold landscape outside Ashington

Ashington to West Mudford (0.6 miles/1 kilometre)

We had a little rest at Ashington, before following the road to the hamlet of West Mudford.  Ashington is part of a larger village called Chilton Cantelo, which is home to one of Somerset's many private boarding schools, this one being run by the Cognita group.  I'm not sure why Somerset has so many private boarding schools, but I guess it's far enough from anywhere to allow pupils to focus on their education, without access to the amenities of town life?  It's a part of English culture that I struggle to understand, but I sense it's every bit as important as Roman sites, military bases or hundreds and wapentakes!

The Parish Church of St James in Ashington

West Mudford

West Mudford to Mudford Sock (0.8 miles/1.3 kilometres)

From West Mudford we headed uphill, along a track called the Droveway Lane, almost reaching the A359, before turning left up Sock Hill, in the direction of Mudford Sock.  It definitely was quite muddy around Mudford, although easier walking on the country lanes than it had been through the fields.  Mudford Sock is a dairy farm and the cows eyed us up hopefully as we passed, mooing disappointingly, when they realised we hadn't come to feed them.

BAM walking on Droveway Lane

Sign post for Sock Dairy Farm

Mudford Sock to Yeovil (1.3 miles/2.1 kilometres)

From Mudford Sock we climbed a fairly steep hill along Stone Lane, turning left at the top, along the main Mudford Road, then right downhill along St Michael's Avenue.  Yeovil is a strange kind of place and I couldn't quite get my head around it, the dampness of an early afternoon shower, added to our confusion at the existence of a place like Yeovil.

Field of rape beside Stone Lane

Our conversation turned quite philosophical as we wondered about the meaning of life for people in Yeovil, and in countless other places like Yeovil - family dramas and passion, loss, sadness and joy - people whose lives will never touch our own, people we'll probably never know or meet, unless we bump into them in a bar in Maspalomas or Limassol.  It's hard to imagine the myriad of other lives in the world, with people living them as best they can but, in a way, being irrelevant in the grand scheme of things.  It's not the first time we thought about this, as we've walked through different towns in England - the sheer number of lives being lived in the world is something I still struggle to get my head around!

A wet Saturday afternoon in Yeovil

Middle Street, Yeovil

Yeovil to the Fish Tower (1.1 miles/1.6 kilometres)

Perhaps it was karma that we got lost just outside Yeovil, no doubt Yeovil's revenge for our apparent apathy!  But it's confusing when you come into Yeovil country park, with all of the local walking routes and signposts, we lost the Monarch's way and ended up going the long way round Ninesprings to the Dorchester Road.

Rock formations in Ninesprings country park

We met a lovely woman who was walking her dogs and pointed us back in the right direction, towards the Fish Tower on Two Tower Lane.  The park alongside Two Tower lane contains, what could only be described as an assault course for dogs.  I can safely say that I've never seen so many dog walkers in one place and, along with the two follies (the Fish Tower and the Rose Tower) that give the lane its name, it was turning into a very surreal afternoon!

The Fish Tower

Doggie assault course

The Fish Tower to Stoford (0.7 miles/1.1 kilometres)

We left the Monarch's way again at the Fish Tower and followed a really lovely path through a majestic field leading to Barwick House, one of the most elegant country houses I've ever seen.  There's something quite feng shui about the location of the house, what with the lake curving around in front of it and the protection of the hills around.  It once housed prisoners of war, then delinquent teenage boys from England's inner cities - nowadays the house is privately owned.

Barwick House

There is another folly in the grounds of Barwick House which has the unusual name of Jack the Treacle Eater - apparently Jack was a messenger boy, who sustained himself on treacle!  From the end of Barwick House Lane we turned right into Rex's Lane and made our way through the village of Barwick and into a hamlet called Stoford, where we finished our walk.

Jack the Treacle eater

We ended our walk at The Royal Oak pub in Stoford, the name being a nod towards Charles II, I guess. As it was the day of the Grand National, the main bar was pretty packed with convivial locals, so we retired to the solitude of the lounge, where we had some food and a couple of drinks before making our way to Yeovil Junction station and the train back to London.

Stoford village green

Access for wheelchair users:

It was a bit muddy around Mudford!

The first part of the walk, from Ilchester to Ashington, was through fields and, therefore, not accessible - however, there is a country lane linking Ilchester, Limington and Ashington, which covers more-or-less the same route.  From Ashington onwards the route was completely accessible, except the path through the field from Fish Tower to Barwick House.  Alternatives to this path would be via the Newton or Dorchester Roads.  Wheelchairing along roads which also contain traffic is, of course, at your own risk, however, the roads seemed fairly quiet on a wet April afternoon!

Image credits: All photos were taken by me - please feel free to reuse them under the following Creative Commons license:

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

Dorchester - Durnovaria

Sign at South Dorchester Rail



Thomas Hardy statue in Dorchester

 The walk we did yesterday in Dorchester was our first foray into the Chesters of South West England.  I've been a big fan of Thomas Hardy since my teenage years and I've read almost all of his novels, including Tess of the D'Urbervilles and The Mayor of Casterbridge, both of which are set in Dorchester, fictionalised by Hardy as Casterbridge.



The Military Keep Museum



I'd been in Weymouth and Portland before, but this was only my second trip to Dorset and the walk we did was one of the most beautiful walks of the Chester series thus far.  Dorchester is an interesting enough town to spend a day.  Whilst BAM couldn't make it down from London until the evening, I arrived in the late afternoon and took a walk around the town, browsing in the shops of South Street and exploring the sights of the High Street, made famous by Hardy's novels.  I also walked around the old Roman fortifications and walked as far as The Keep Military Museum.  Dorchester seems to have a lot of museums - as well as the Keep, there was a Teddy Bear Museum, the Dorset County Museum, a Tutankhamun Exhibition, a Dinosaur Museum and an exhibition on the Terracotta Warriors (one of the few permanent exhibitions outside China which is devoted to the Terracotta Army!)

I overheard two ladies on South Street talking about an upcoming dramatisation of Tess and local posters informed me about Friday night's ceilidh, although we missed the Ghost Tour which took place on Thursday!  It's always a bit of a culture shock coming from London and dipping suddenly into the life of a rural town, like many of the Chesters we've been visiting.  By the time BAM arrived at Dorchester South Railway station, it felt as though I were one of the locals and as though I'd been in Dorchester for years, rather than hours!

 Lodging and Victuals

Visiting the Chesters isn't just about walking, of course - food and accommodation play an important part as well and we were really lucky to stumble upon a lovely little restaurant off Trinity Street which was called Billy's Fish Restaurant.  It has a very unassuming entrance and could be easily missed, but once you get inside, the decor is great and the food was absolutely amazing!  I had King Prawns with potatoes and I'd highly recommend Billy's place, if you ever find yourself in the locale.



King Prawn's at Billy's



We stayed at a B&B called The White House on Queen's Avenue, which was very good value for money, incredibly clean, with a spacious room and lovely red tiles in the bathroom.  Queen's Avenue is rather a grand driveway, planted with lime trees, leading up to The Thomas Hardye School.  I've learned this weekend that there was more than one Thomas Hardy, this one being a 16th-century merchant who founded the school to educate local boys. 

The B&B owners, Mr and Mrs Lees were very welcoming and have been running the B&B for 26 years!  We met an interesting older couple at breakfast who moved from England to Adelaide more than fifty years ago and had come back to meet some old friends their daughter had managed to contact through the Internet.  We got a bit distracted listening to their story and set out on the walk later than expected. 

In previous walks, I had been using pen and paper to try to measure the distances between one point on the map and the other.  However, it always seem to be longer than we'd expected and most of our previous Chester walks were around 12-16 miles, rather than 8-12, which is more comfortable (especially when you get chatting over breakfast and set out late!)  Not to be outdone by my erratic cartography, BAM invested in a small piece of technology, a kind of map measurer, which made planning this walk much more straightforward (and accurate) than previously.  It definitely made a big difference and we felt less rushed towards the end, which was a contrast to past walks when we were racing along the countryside outside Sleaford so we would be on time for our train, scrambling up over the Portchester downs in the failing light and finding ourselves plunged into the darkness of muddy fields in the Hundred of Hoo!

Dorchester to Maiden Castle (1.7 miles/2.7 kilometres)



A sheep at Maiden Castle

 After stocking up on water and chocolate on Maud Road, we made our way down to the Maiden Castle Road and a very pleasant walk out of Dorchester to the site of this Iron Age Fort.  The area that is now Dorset, Somerset and south Wiltshire was originally inhabited by a Celtic tribe called the Durotriges - it's from this tribe that we get the Roman name for Dorchester, Durnovaria and the Saxon name for the county of Dorset.  It's one of the best preserved Iron Age forts in Britain and I thought it was fantastic, especially the steep ramparts, which still look incredibly formidable.  It's mostly inhabited by sheep these days, but the view from the top is wonderful and it was a great start to our day's walking.  It's the kind of landscape you could imagine Thomas Hardy's characters to be roaming around in and I think this part of England is very beautiful, with its roly-poly hills and views down to the sea. 




BAM walking through Maiden Castle




Maiden Castle ramparts

 Maiden Castle to the South Dorset Ridgeway signpost (1.6 miles/2.6 kilometres)



Bridleway to Higher Ashton Farm

 When I'm planning these walks, I usually 'cheat' a little bit, by getting us on to one of the National Trails - partly because it's easier to follow a way-marked trail, but mostly because the way-marked trails go through some of Britain's most spectacular scenery.  Dorchester doesn't lie on any of the way-marked trails, so I improvised the 1.6 miles from Maiden Castle to the South Dorset Ridgeway, using a combination of public bridleways to make sure we didn't stray onto private land. 



South Dorset Ridgeway signpost

 There's a bridleway that runs to the west of Maiden Castle and it was really easy to follow this until it came out onto a small country lane and then a slightly bigger road (the B3159) which runs between Broadwey and Winterbourne Abbas.  We crossed the B3159 at Higher Ashton Farm and took another bridleway running diagonally uphill through two fields and then along the eastern side of another field until it meets the South Dorset Ridgeway with a handy signpost outlining your options!  The options at this point are east to Bincombe or west to the Hardy Monument, so we turned west, as planned and in keeping with our general direction. 



South Dorset Ridgeway

 I've done quite a bit of walking in England and have walked more than half of the South West Coastal path, which also runs along the Dorset coast not far from our Dorchester walk.  The Ridgeway is an interesting alternative to the coastal path and one that I'm getting very interested in.  There are quite a few ridgeway walks in the south of England, the most famous one being in Oxfordshire/Berkshire (reputedly Britain's oldest path).  The South Dorset Ridgeway is a 17-mile walk from Osmington Mills to West Bexington and can be walked as an additional stage or an alternative loop in the South West Coastal route.  It was certainly a very pleasant walk and the views over Portland and Chesil Beach were second-to-none!

The South Dorset Ridgeway signpost to the Hardy Monument (2.3 miles/3.7 kilometres)

It's quite windy on top of the Ridgeway and the shadows over the landscape added a dramatic tone to early afternoon light.  You can see the Hardy Monument in the distance, as you're walking and, at 239 metres (784 feet) above sea level, it was the highest point of the day for us. 



The Hardy Monument, Portesham



Blackthorn

 The monument was built in honour of yet another Thomas Hardy, the Vice Admiral Hardy who was a commander in the Battle of Trafalgar, famously close to Admiral Nelson and remembered in (one of) Nelson's dying phrases Kiss me, Hardy! Myself and BAM had a discussion about the significance of Nelson's words and how they could be interpreted so differently in the modern era of gay rights and recognised relationships between men.  We concluded that it was a very different time and that, perhaps, it would be a little bit unfair to apply a modern interpretation to Nelson's words.  It's an interesting thought, all the same and no-one seems to know whether or not Hardy kissed Nelson on the head, the cheek or gave him a good old-fashioned snog!  I guess we'll never know . . .

Unfortunately for us, the Monument is undergoing repairs and the bottom half is currently covered in scaffolding.  Nevertheless, it was an apt compliment to our Portchester walk, when we rested in the shadow of the Nelson Monument on Portsdown Hill. 

The Hardy Monument to Abbotsbury (2.9 miles/4.7 kilometres)



Benecke Wood

 From the Hardy Monument we went downhill through Benecke Wood, then followed a stone wall running along the bottom of three fields until we reached another small road at Portesham Hill.  We crossed the road and passed Hampton Barn, sticking to the top of the Ridgeway with sweeping views over Abbotsbury Plains we could see parts of Chesil Beach, in the gaps between the low-lying hills of the coast.  Eventually we crossed Bishop's Road, which links Abbotsbury to the Hardy Monument and then we turned downhill again, leaving the South Dorset Ridgeway to follow a small valley down through fields full of sheep, until we reached the road again and continued into Abbotsbury.  



Abbotsbury

 The weather was glorious with a late-afternoon sunshine and Abbotsbury was full of daytrippers, eating ice-creams, walking their dogs and shopping in the local gift shop.  It was a nice way to end the trip and Abbotsbury has a lot of quaint thatched cottages, as well as a famous swannery and tropical gardens, just behind Chapel Hill. 




View of Chapel Hill and Abbotsbury Plains




Gable-end cottage in Abbotsbury

 Disabled/Wheelchair Access



Bluebells near Abbotsbury

 As my sister is disabled and has one of those clunky motorised wheelchairs, I've promised to include information about wheelchair access (if any) in our Chester walks.  Unfortunately, most of this route was completely inaccessible to wheelchair users, the only exception being the walks around Dorchester and the road leading to Maiden Castle (although wheelchair users would find it difficult to get into the fort itself). 



View of Portland Bill

 It's always dangerous walking or wheelchairing along country roads, even quiet ones like Maiden Castle Road, but an alternative to this walk might have been to continue along the cycle path from Maiden Castle to Martinstown (although I'm not sure if the cycle path is completely accessible) and then along Bishop's Road from Martinstown to the Hardy Monument and down in Abbotsbury.  Maybe some day, wheelchair users will have access to routes like this one, without too much interference from drivers (who, let's face it, have lots of other options!). 



Thatched cottage in Abbotsbury

 The landscape is the same as the one we passed through, although I imagine that wheelchair users, especially people in motorised wheelchairs like my sister's, which are dependent on electric batteries, might want to limit their journeys to shorter stages such as Dorchester-Martinstown, Martinstown-the Hardy Monument or the Hardy Monument-Abbotsbury. 

Image credits:

All images were taken either by me or my Best Aussie Mate (BAM).  Please feel free to re-use these under the Creative Commons license for Non-Commercial, Share Alike and Attribution (especially to this blog).