Beaminster to Payne's Down Cottage

I woke early and drew our bedroom curtains so that I could enjoy the early morning haze over Beaminster and the ridge where we walked yesterday. It was a warm sunny day and we had another glorious walk, with ridge walking interspersed with steep ascents and descents, and with the ridges going in all sorts of peculiar directions (including yet further to the north).

We left Quigley B&B at about 9.15 after a very pleasant breakfast, chatting to Dave and Julie (the owners) and to Dave and Chris (our fellow guests). We went to the Co-op for provisions for lunch and our evening meal, and to the Post Office for more postcards and stamps.

We left the Beaminster around 9.45, heading out to the east past the Church and soon we were in open countryside, passing a tractor collecting hay (the first of much hay-making that we saw today), a dog walker, a rather precarious-looking solitary tree, then climbing up through an enclosure of donkeys and past some cows. We were climbing up to Gerrard's Hill and it really was quite steep; however it was lovely up there and we got our breath back in the shade of the beech trees on the summit. Unfortunately, although we knew we were looking towards the sea to the south, the heat haze meant that we couldn't actually see it!

We descended towards a house in a hollow, with good views down to Stoke Abbott and close to the hollow, a colourful garden. Our route went up the hill behind the garden, and suddenly we realised why the landscape was different - we were no longer crossing fields with the light flinty soil that indicates underlying limestone, but rather the red soil we associate particularly with Devon, indicating underlying desert sandstone.

We passed through a farmyard and crossed a road, and started to climb up a track between hedges, with occasional good views down to Broadwinter to the north. Eventually we reached the woodland of Lewesdon Hill, and sat down to eat some Danish pastries we had bought at the Co-op in Beaminster. It was glorious woodland (with a lovely covering of bluebells, about which we were becoming blasé); I would have been very happy to walk this way even without consideration of the fact that Lewesdon Hill is the highest point in Dorset.

We reached a road, with a distance marker showing half a mile to Pilsdon Pen - but our route went the long way round! We took the farm track down to Courtwood Farm (home of cows producing milk for Sainsburys, so was this Sainsburys' mud?). Past the farm, our route became a sunken track between colourful hedgerows, but we knew that Pilsdon Pen must be up on top of the hill some distance to our left, and my feet were hurting, so the descent down the track was particularly depressing. We turned left across a field and stopped for more refreshments and much needed TLC for the feet!

Re-energised, we climbed gently on a track past Lower Newnham Farm to a road, then more steeply straight up the hill on the other side. Note that the route here is slightly to the left of that shown on the map, so at the top we turned right onto a pleasant level track before turning left and ascending the final few metres to the ramparts of Pilsdon Pen. It was lovely up here.

We followed the ramparts around to the right then descended past cows to a farm track, only to promptly ascend again through a field with horses and sheep. We then crossed a glorious meadow and continued on the top of the ridge on a permissive path, rejecting the temptation (shown on the ground but not on the map or described in the guidebook) to go down the hill we'd climbed to Pilsdon Pen, to Specket Cottage, and then to climb back up the ridge. The walking on the top of the ridge, by a row of trees, was glorious, with views back to Lewesdon Hill, where we had been earlier and to Blackdown Hill, our next ridge.

At the end of the ridge we took a farm track heading south-west, with clear views to Payne's Down Cottage, where we were staying tonight, only about a kilometre away - however, first of all we had a loop to follow to the north. We took a 'public route to a public path' (whatever one of those is!) then we walked along a road, taking the direction AWAY from Lyme Regis.

We took a path signposted 'Venn Hill' which took us up to the summit of Blackdown Hill and walked the length of the ridge. It was delightful, with good views to the village of Thorncombe and more hills beyond! We stopped for a while in a shade of a solitary tree, then negotiated a field of cows (one of several today) and descended through a meadow. We descended Venn Hill towards Thorncombe but turned up Saddle Lane before the village - heading South at last! We climbed up, initially on the lane then on paths around fields, emerging onto the minor road near Sadborow Pound, by another pretty bluebell wood.

We left the route of the Wessex Ridgeway here and followed the road for about a mile to the South East, with views back to Pilsdon Pen to our left and to Lambert's Castle Hill, tomorrow's first challenge, to our right - and with bluebells everywhere. We reached Payne's Down Cottage, home of Marshwood Alpacas [2020: they appear to do longer be doing B&B], though there were not any alpacas visible now (we'd thought we'd seen them when we had our distant view of the house earlier). Brenda Bugler had some difficulty welcoming us, because the front door wouldn't open, so she directed round to a side door which led us to a room with alpaca fleeces on the chairs, and in bags, and hundreds of rosettes on the walls. Brenda showed us to the 'pink' double room on the front of the house, but said that we were welcome to admire the views from the 'blue' twin bedroom on the back of the house, which we did. We had brought our own provisions for an evening meal, and we ate whilst watching the brass final of Young Musician of the Year and the final of Masterchef.

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