Wessex Ridgeway

The Wessex Ridgeway follows the chalk downland from Marlborough in Wiltshire to Lyme Regis in Dorset across the ancient kingdom of Wessex. It's glorious countryside rich in archaeological sites and literary associations. It's also an unspoilt landscape (well, if you exclude the firing ranges on Salisbury Plain) and the route is generally away from towns and villages. There is bracing ridgetop walking, with lovely views to the plains below, but the route does not simply follow the ridge top: there are plenty of descents and ascents, to the extent that Anthony Burton's guide 'The Wessex Ridgeway' (Aurum Press, 1999) describes the route as a 'strenuous switchback'.

There is some uncertainty over the length of the Wessex Ridgeway; the Aurum Press guide gives the length as 127 miles whilst the Ramblefest website gives it as 138 miles. Adding my totals for the distance we walked on the path on each of our 12 walking days gives a total of 137 miles (rather further if you add in the extra distance we walked in getting to and from B&Bs etc.).

The path is more clearly signposted in Dorset than in Wiltshire, though it is sometimes confusing when the walkers' route and the riders' route go in opposite directions. There are signs in Wiltshire but they have a tendancy to turn up in random places, not necessarily where they are helpful for direction. And the signs only rarely include directional arrows. So the maps (Ordnance Survey Explorer series 143, 157, 130, 118, 117 and 116) were very useful. We had some difficulty finding a guidebook. There is supposedly a Cicerone guide to the whole of the Greater Ridgeway (which includes the Wessex Ridgeway, The Ridgeway, the Icknield Way Path and the Peddars Way) but it appears to be out of print. There is also a guide to the section of the Wesex Ridgeway in Dorset on the Dorest County Council website. But in-print guides to the whole path seem to be in short supply. The 1999 Aurum Press is out of print too but we bought a second hand copy of it from Amazon (withdrawn by Calderdale Libraries) and I would advise anyone wanting to walk the path to get hold of this guide too; it is proving extremely helpful and the fact that it is 14 years old only caused occasional difficulty.

Our ex-library copy of the guidebook had hardly been used and this reflects the fact that, certainly in Wiltshire, the path seems under-walked and little known; even the owners of B&Bs close to the path seemed not to know about it. Even on the better signposted Dorset section, just a few miles from the coast and on glorious sunny days in May, we were able to walk for a whole day without seeing any other walkers. Lyme Regis's busy-ness on a warm and sunny Saturday in May was a bit of a culture shock! I almost want to keep the Wessex Ridgeway a secret but I should probably admit that this lack of popularity surprises me. It is a delightful path, with more varied scenery than The Ridgeway. We had hardly visited Wiltshire previously, and can't claim to know Dorset well. We loved it!

We completed the Wessex Ridgeway in three walking holidays; a four-day adventure in late August/early September 2013; a three-day walk in October 2013 and a five-day walk in May 2014. One of the challenges of walking through this delightful landscape away from human habitation is the paucity of public transport - certainly between Wessex and East Anglia! We managed to get to the start in Marlborough (by bus from Swindon), to and from Warminster (which has a railway station) and home from Shillingstone (by bus to Gillingham (Dorset) which also has a station). We returned to Shillingstone by catching a train to Poole, a bus to Blandford Forum, then on our feet (though there is a relatively good bus service between Blandford Forum and Shillingstone) and at the end of our final holiday we caught the bus from Lyme Regis to Axminster, from whence we caught the train home.

There is also something of a shortage of accommodation in places, which led to one train trip within our final holiday (from Maiden Newton to Dorchester - where we had an excellent B&B - and back) and also to the delay in completing the path until May, when we could be sure of sufficient daylight for long days of walking. Towards the end of the path, the number of ascents and descents meant that walks of around 12 miles took us all day. But I'm not complaining; this was one of the nicest long distance paths that we've walked. Completing the Wessex Ridgeway also means that we are able to boast that we have walked all the way between home, or the North Norfolk Coast, to Lands End (via the Peddars Way, the Icknield Way, The Ridgeway, the Wessex Ridgeway and the South West Coast Path), an achievement of which I am very proud.