Marlborough to Beckhampton via Avebury

About 6 weeks after we finished the Ridgeway, we returned to the area for the first leg of the Wessex Ridgeway. It was nice to start a new adventure on my birthday and we had a lovely day: the countryside was attractive, the weather was ideal for walking (dry but not too warm) and we had just the right amount of time to explore Avebury - but it did mean an early start from home. Mind you, by leaving home at 6.15 we were in Marlborough (following walk to station, train, underground, train and bus) soon after 11.15. We stopped for cake and coffee at 'Lazy Bean', a lovely coffee shop that had only been open a couple of weeks, so it was around midday when we started walking.

We walked along the High Street towards the redundant church of St Peter and St Paul, then turned right at the library and climbed up Hyde Lane. Within a quarter of a mile the guidebook came into its own, alerting us to the fact that there was a footpath running alongside the playing fields, so we didn't have to walk along the road. The playing fields were extremely well cared for and we suspect they belong to Marlborough College. Past the playing fields we followed a rough track then skirted round a graveyard, again alerted by the guidebook that we needed to turn to the right - mind you, somewhat to our surprise there was a Wessex Ridgeway sign at this point too. We'd noted back in July that the Wessex Ridgeway is not signposted at the point at which it crosses the Ridgeway, and the guidebook's introduction told us that signposting was less good in Wiltshire than in Dorset (where we had followed a short section of the Wessex Ridgeway on our own route from Lyme Regis to Charmouth back in May, and had seen good signposting).

Returning to today's walk...we reached a road and turned left, then almost immediately realised that again we didn't have to walk along the road - there was a footpath on the other side, alongside a golf course, through some scrub, then across open land with good views. We rejoined the road near the entrance to the Manton Estate and almost immediately took a path (indicated by a collapsing sign post) on the other side. This soon brought us to a rather boring grey stony track - though the path may technically be on the wide grassy verge and we walked along this when we'd had enough of the track. We were walking alongside gallops and we took the guidebooks advice and timed our progress against the furlong markers. We were doing about two and a half minutes per furlong - that's 24 furlongs (3 miles) per hour. Not bad!

At an attractive clump of trees our track veered slightly to the left - the route here was pretty obvious even though the sign in our direction had broken off completely from its post. There were lovely views back as we climbed up to the brow of the hill, and stopped for lunch at a sarcen stone in front of a reservoir in front of a conifer plantation. We ate tasty baguettes bought at Sainsburys on Paddington Station. Gallops and tracks from different directions converge at this point, and we were passed by a tractor, apparently harvesting somewhere closeby.

We entered the Fyfield Nature Reserve and as we did so, we passed a farmer with landrover, trailer and sheepdogs. I wondered what livestock they had come to tend, but Richard pointed out that amongst the 'grey wethers' (sarcen stones that are known as grey wethers because they look like sheep) for which Fyfield Down is renowned, there were some real sheep! They really do look alike. Actually there were lots of grey weathers and lots of real sheep, especially in an enclosure where the sheep were eating from overhanging bushes. The track undulated across the Down and sheep were replaced by cows - looking at me! At a mini summit, Cherhill monument came into view and we descended slightly to the cross the Ridgeway, passing two cyclists coming the other way.

After we'd crossed the Ridgeway, we descended, sometimes quite steeply, towards Avebury. Eventually we passed a farm (one of several 'Manor Farms' in the area - this one appears to be a functional dairy farm producing milk for Cadburys) and the track became an attractive wooded road. And suddenly there we were, passing the giant Earthworks into the centre of Avebury, with lots of standing stones and lots of people. And yes, one of them was hugging a stone!

We had plenty of time to explore the delights of Avebury - it's a lovely place, with pretty medieval buildings juxtaposed with Neolithic stones. However, all is not quite what it seems! So, for example, the Manor House was an empty shell until a few years ago when the BBC revamped seven rooms for the series "To the Manor Reborn", each in the style of one of the former owners. The point is that in the Tudor times, for example, the house wouldn't have actually looked as we saw it - it is just how someone, with the benefit of appropriate historical evidence and some imagination, thinks that it might have looked. Then there's the standing stones: we realised that the final owner of the Manor before the National Trust, Alexander Keiller - who inherited a fortune from his father's marmalade empire and was responsible for excavating many archaeological sites in the area in the early twentieth century - actually found most of the stones lying on the ground, and set them upright again. So we don't really know that he got it right. It is also worth bearing in mind that for many centuries - when the other buildings were being built - they probably didn't even realise that the stones existed.

Enough by way of explanation - we loved the Manor House, and the benefit is that you are positively encouraged to sit of chairs, lie in beds etc., and you come out of the whole experience with a good feeling for each of the selected owners and their time period. Similarly with the stones - at Stonehenge you are kept at arms length - here that is just not the case.

After exploring the Manor House and its delightful garden, looking around the Church, wandering around the stones and drinking tea, we walked down towards Silbury Hill, which at more than 40 metres high is the largest man made prehistoric mound in Europe. No-one really knows why it was built. It was slightly frustrating because we kept thinking that we were about to get a good view of Silbury Hill but then the trees adjacent to the path we were on got in the way. We managed the photographs in the end.