Salisbury to Downton
Walked by Sally and Richard, Thursday 9th August 2018
8.25 miles (3.5 hours), mostly on the route of the Avon Valley Way
For more photos of this walk, click here.
We had driven from home to Wiltshire this morning, to stay with our daughter Helen and her husband Tom in the village of Downton near Salisbury. We’d made good time and by 1pm we had reached Downton and had lunch with Helen, who had the day off. Helen kindly gave us a lift into Salisbury so that we could start the Avon Valley Path. She then returned to Downton to prepare for my sister and brother-in-law who were visiting for a meal this evening, though we agreed that she would come to meet us on the approach to Downton.
Helen dropped us off on Exeter Street, and we walked through an archway into the Cathedral precepts with pretty 18th Century buildings and we were soon at the Cathedral, with its iconic spire (the tallest Church spire in the UK). We made our way to Elisabeth Frink’s statue “Walking Madonna”, which is now recognised as the starting point of the Avon Valley Path, and a very appropriate starting point it is. We walked around the Cathedral, passing the entrance to the Cloisters (which is the way into both the Cathedral – expensive – and the Magna Carta Exhibition – free) and then headed out along Broad Walk, which brought us to De Vaux Place (more attractive buildings).
We turned right onto St Nicholas’ Road which took us over the two braids of the River Avon, with a pretty little cottage in between. The rest of the route out of the built-up part of Salisbury was less exciting, but remarkably soon we found ourselves at “Harnham Slope”, a long thin corridor of woodland on a north-facing escarpment to the south of the City Centre. We’d climbed a fair bit and there were nice views to the Cathedral from the entrance to the corridor then we climbed up further and walked along the top edge of the corridor, and when the trees had been cleared to give views back to the Cathedral, these were spectacular.
The next section of the walk was perhaps the least good of the day, though mostly only because the views were very limited and the route zig-zagged about rather aimlessly. We turned to the south, expecting to climb further, but we actually we actually gradually descended Harnham Hill (…I must learn how to read a map) then turned right along a track. At the end of the track there was a pile of rubbish which we had to climb over before turning back along a minor road to the A354, and over the other side of the road, although we could see that there was open countryside to the right, the grassy track we were walking on was rather overgrown, and enclosed by hedges. However, partway down this track we saw a deer - things were improving!
We turned right from the track onto a footpath and things definitely improved. We were now crossing rolling agricultural land where a cereal crop had recently been harvested. We passed under the same power line for the third time in about a mile then skirted Dogdean Farm, notable for its friendly welcoming notice rather than reminding us to put our dog on a lead or somesuch.
We descended to the river, with good views to the hills on the other side of the valley, and the river when we got there was braided into several pretty little streams…but it is not the River Avon, rather the River Ebble, a tributary of the Avon. We followed a footpath through woodland and across the various streams. Certainly at the beginning of this section there was an Avon Valley Path sign, but when we reached an open field with a warning that there were cattle grazing (which there were), there was no sign of the Avon Valley Path and the obvious footpath was going in the wrong direction. Time to get the iPad out; it is possible that we had taken the wrong path, but it is also possible that the route on the ground and on the map are at variance, and the signs are just missing. There was a (less obvious) path heading roughly in the correct direction, to the left, and this gave us the confidence to set off, relying solely on OpenStreetMap, passing under the power line for the fourth time.
It felt slightly strange to turn sharply to the right with no indication that we were on the right route other than what we could see on the iPad, but by then we had the reassurance of the buildings of Odstock visible in the direction we were heading, and as we got closer we could even see that we would emerge on a bend in the road, as both OpenStreetMap and the OS map said that we should. There were some interesting looking buildings on the road straight ahead, so we decided to follow the obvious route on the road through the village rather than turning right then taking a footpath. We turned right at the cross-roads, passed the attractive thatched pub then turned left onto a footpath, back on the official route.
The path took us behind Odstock Farm (some room for confusion here as a result of a slightly misaligned sign, but we got it right) then a short distance from the Odstock to Nunton road, with a particularly photogenic church about half-way between them. The path joined with a minor road for a short distance through Nunton, then left by way of an attractive tree-lined track. As we passed Nunton Farm, the gates were just being opened to allow cows from the milking parlour to our right (where we could hear them) across to the fields to our left, where we could see lots more cows grazing. Perhaps we drank milk from some of them, as Nunton Farm sells milk from a machine in the car park of the Radnor Arms Pub in Nunton village, and we bought some the following day.
For now, we continued on the track, past farm buildings and a tractor, now following a runners' route labelled with bright yellow posters. We were following a level-ish route part-way up a hill (which we later discovered is topped by Clearbury Ring Fort), above the confluence of the River Ebble and the River Avon. So what was required was our route down to the A338 and the River Avon. We found a signpost indicating a 90 degree turn to the left, which was exactly what we were expecting. But were we to turn left before or after the hedge? We walked through the gap in the edge and although the runners' route was shown turning right at this point, the continuation down what looked like a track to the left appeared to be very overgrown, so we returned to the other side of the hedge and followed walked down along this side of the hedge...to be greeted by a barbed wire fence with no way through. Back we went...This time we walked through the hedge and over a style and then turned left and followed the field-edge down to the corner of the field where there was a route through onto the road, just by a pylon supporting the same power line.
We crossed the road and rang Helen, who was going to walk out to meet us for the final part of the walk. We followed a blissfully clear path across a field to a minor road and then past Matrimony Farm, with an interesting hexagonally-shaped building. We were now close to the River Avon but couldn't see it. At a corner we took another footpath across fields, watching an interesting machine loading bales of straw onto a trailer. After further route-finding confusion we took another path across the fields from which the straw had been harvested to emerge by the Church in Charlton All Saints. We could just make out the big house at Trafalgar Park on the other bank of the river.
As we walked through the pretty village we saw a familiar figure walking towards us, our daughter Helen. We were now on familiar territory for Helen (and we have walked this way too) as her house is just a mile to the south. We made rapid progress across the fields.
On the approach to Downton there is a choice of routes, with the one signposted as the Avon Valley Path following the river to the centre of the village whilst the one shown on the OS map, goes straight past Helen and Tom's house - obviously we took that one, though for the sake of completeness, the following day we went for an evening stroll around the loop made by the two routes.
