Stourpaine to Shroton (Iwerne Courtney)

On 30th April, we had spent most of the day celebrating our daughter's birthday with a trip to Old Wardour Castle (a paradise for our two and a half year old grandson; lots of steps to go up and down and lots of places to play hide and seek) followed by lunch at The Forester, Donhead St Andrew.  They headed home after lunch and we returned to the cottage, before going out again for this short walk (shown in purple on the map below). We were initially on a route we'd followed before, on the Wessex Way as it heads up Hambledon Hill to the west of Shroton. As when we walked this leg in October 2013, we turned left away from the Iron Age fort at the top. However, whereas the Wessex Ridgeway then takes a right-hand fork, eventually descending to Handford House and Handford Farm, we took a left had fork on the route of the Stour Valley Way. This continued on a ridge above Coombe Wood and Coombe Bottom, heading towards an attractive barn. 

 Near the barn* there was a choice of route, either straight ahead or turning right. Both would have led us to the White Hart Link, the straight ahead option more directly so, but I wanted to explore the car park shown on the map close to where the right hand option would take us. So we turned right, still on the route of the Stour Valley Way,  and descended steeply down towards the minor road that links the A350 to Child Okeford. We couldn't see the car park from the path, so we turned right (west) when we got to the road, and climbed up the road until we could make out the parked cars ahead, thereby establishing that giving us that the the car park really is here. We never actually needed the car park, but I'm still pleased we came this way - as we'd descended, Richard had spotted patches of blue in the wood on the other side of the road, and when we got there, there was indeed an excellent display of bluebells.

From the road, there was a choice of paths heading approximately straight ahead, up Hod Hill. However, that wasn't where we were going. After our short walk along road to  the west towards the car park, we turned around and headed to the east. Just before the main road, the White Hart Link was signposted both to the north and the south.  We verified that the path to the south looked OK (it did, though it looked as if, heading in this direction, we'd either have climb a distance up the lower slopes of Hod Hill or to walk on the road) then we set off on a good track heading north. We'd expected to climb slightly between here and Shroton, but after half a kilometre or so, we reached a very obvious track heading to the left and straight up the hillside. Were we really going to have to climb all the way up there?  The answer, as you may have guessed, was "no"; as we got closer we saw that there was another track heading straight ahead, and the other option (which is where we would have descended had we taken the straight ahead route from the barn at * above) was probably only so obvious because there was work, probably forestry operations, taking place on it. That barn is a real landmark, we had good views up to it as we continued our walk, and we later realised there are also good views of it when you're driving along the A350.

Although we didn't have the steep climb that we'd feared we might, we were definitely going uphill and to our right was a long wall. I idly wondered what was on the other side of it, but it wasn't until I came to write this walk up that I realised that on the other side of the wall is what the OS map calls "The Scrubbery", which is actually the limit of the Ranston House estate. At the brow of the hill, we completed a circuit, joining up again with the Wessex Ridgeway at the point at which it turns and climbs seriously towards Hambledon Hill.  Shroton was beneath us and that was where we were going, with the route of the White Hart Link sharing the route of the Wessex Ridgeway across the playing field then on a track/path that runs parallel with the village's Main Street (so behind The Cricketers pub) to emerge at the junction of Main Street, Telegraph Street, The Cor (where the White Hart Link continues) and Frog Lane. Our cottage was a very short distance along Frog Lane. 

On 3rd May, we were on  a much longer circuit, shown in red below and described here. This had incorporated a section on the Wessex Ridgeway, a section on the Jubilee Trail. and plenty of delightful walking on unnamed paths. We'd reached the village of Stourpaine where we pottered about a bit - and we realised that we'd been here before, when on the North Dorset Trailway in 2014,  now also the previous leg of the White Hart Link.  However, from the centre of the village, our onward route today (in 2023)  was not back to the North Dorset Trailway, but rather out of Stourpaine to the north.  From the imposing Holy Trinity Church. we headed along Manor Road, noticing some an attractive old houses. 

At the end of the road, we continued along a track which led us to the River Iwerne and then an a delightful path alongside it.  A path headed off to the left to ascend Hod Hill, but we'd already decided that this wasn't necessary (we'll do it if we walk the Stour Valley Way - which we definitely want do); for now we continued straight ahead. In this area, we also passed an information board describing the route of the White Hart Link. We  knew that our route continued close to the river until we reached the A350, but we hadn't been sure what would happen then; the map on the information board was helpful in that someone had drawn in a permissive path, so perhaps we wouldn't need to walk along the road after all. 

When we actually reached the road it took us a little while to work out that the permissive path skirted a farm building then followed the edge of the field and up through woodland, close to the road but definitely on the field/wood side of the boundary, which was a relief.  We emerged onto the minor road from the A350 to Child Okeford, the same road on which we'd seen the bluebells when we were here a few days early. We returned to Shroton on the same route that we had followed on that occasion, climbing slightly to the Wessex Ridgeway, then descending into Shroton and round the back of the village to return to  our cottage, 

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