Ebbesbourne Wake, Ansty Down, Berwick St John and Ox Drove circuit

Last time we were here, we had spotted a suitable lay-by in which to park, on "Top Road" in West End, Ebbesbourne Wake, at ST984244. Getting here was something of an adventure, given we are used to driving in a much flatter landscape. I didn't fancy driving up the steep and twisty road that joins Alvediston with the A30 and which we had walked down towards Ansty yesterday - and the first choice of directions that the app selected also took us from the cottage to Ansty by a cross country route. Instead, we opted to drive by way of Shaftesbury and onto the A30 past Ludwell (which we had walked through on the Wessex Ridgeway) then to Berwick St John, Alvediston and Ebbesbourne Wake. This route didn't involve any steep hills or tight corners, but the roads were distinctly narrow.

The parking place was good, as we'd remembered it, and we took the track from West End towards North Hill Farm. We climbed, then took a grassy track around to the west of the farm, with Ebbesbourne Down to our left. A path led across a large meadow to the byway we'd been on yesterday, by an un-named but very attractive area of open access land which fell away to the south-east. It was only a short distance along the byway, past the sheep field, to the exact same spot where we had been yesterday, at the crossing of the byway with the road that goes down to Alvediston to the south and Ansty to the north. So that was "Cranborne Circles" (with links via the Avon Valley Path to Salisbury, the Clarendon Way to Winchester, the South Downs Way to Eastbourne, and the Wealdway to Gravesend) joined up with the Wessex Ridgeway (with links to Land's End, the east coast, and Scotland).

The next section on the byway, through the band of woodland, was as delightful as it had been yesterday, but after passing the place where we had climbed up to the byway yesterday, it was perhaps a little less interesting, though the views in all directions were lovely. After about a mile, we were looking for a track across the byway, onto which we would turn left, initially through woodland. The reality on the ground was not quite as shown on the Ordnance Survey map, but we knew we were somewhere close to where we wanted to be and we could see various ancient earthworks, including the cross dyke shown on the map. There was an attractive open access section to our left and we knew we wanted to pass close to the top of this, then head across Woodlands Down. We were slightly anxious that we needed to be on the other side of a barbed wire fence with no obvious crossing point, and then we felt we were going slightly further west than shown on the map, to avoid a fenced off area of meadow. But there were no problems in the end.

The downland was a mass of cowslips with lovely views into the wooded Berwick Combe, and we joined a more prominent track and descended steeply to the buildings shown as "Woodlands". There were some men working near the buildings and, as we followed Woodlands Lane (an attractive tree-lined avenue), we passed a woman out walking her dogs. We were soon in Berwick St John, and a pathway led to the churchyard. We followed this in the hope that there would be a bench here, on which to sit and each our lunch, and our strategy was duly rewarded. I think we gave rather a shock to an elderly dog-walker who presumably walks through the churchyard regularly, and never sees anyone sitting on the bench - until today!

After lunch we continued through the churchyard then took a lane out of the village past Upton Farm. The next mile, along Ashcombe Lane, was rather nicer than I'd expected; I'd expected a hard-surfaced track, but it was a grassy lane. We reached the wooded Ferne Hollow and climbed steeply, with the expanse of Monk's Down to our left. At the top, we reached Ox Drove, an ancient drovers' route which now forms part of the Cranborne Droves Way, which is another way of linking from Win Green to Salisbury. The signposting is reasonable, but from back home I was struggling to find its route (the website is not the best and it isn't shown on our paper OS Map) until I looked at the online OS map - and there it is!

A road lies along the route of Ox Drove we were going to follow now (to the east), but the route of Ox Drove from Win Green to here (which we'll be following tomorrow) is a track, slightly offset from the road. My obsession with joining everything together led me to walk the few steps to the track before we set off along the road. There is a strip of woodland to the south of the road and it may have been possible to follow a path through this, but we walked along the road itself. It wasn't exactly busy. The through road left us to descend across Easton Hollow to Berwick St John, and there were good views down to the village. We continued straight ahead through the Bridmore Belt (of trees), and the road we were on deteriorated into a track. We saw movement ahead, and initially thought it was a deer but it was actually a hare, ambling its way across the track. Later, we did see a deer.

Once we were out of the wood, in addition to the views to the Ebble Valley to the north, there were good views to the south (our right) where, unbeknown to us as we were walking, Chase Woods, where we would be walking later in the week, were only 1-2 miles away, but we continued straight ahead, ignoring various possible descent routes to the left and the right. After passing Pincombe Down, there was some slightly higher ground to the left, so we lost the view in that direction (though we gained some sheep). Eventually, shortly after Bigley Farm, we turned left onto a route which descended across Ebcombe Down and into Abcombe Hollow. The track became a road and led to Alvediston, but unfortunately before we got there my knee started playing up. Although I could blame the rather large amount of today's walk that had been on a hard surface, this would probably be unfair as the problem was not the usual aches and pains that (sadly) reflect my age, but rather a slight weakness in the joint which has probably been there all my life and which I first became aware of in my 20s when walking across the Town Moor in Newcastle upon Tyne. It is as if the knee socket doesn't quite line up, just very briefly, leading to a short period of intense pain. It hadn't happened for ages. It's back to the knee-strengthening exercises for me, in the meantime I hobbled into Alvediston, and indeed for the rest of the day.

We crossed the "main road" (well, the road we had driven along) and set off on the road which would eventually lead back to the ridge to the north of the valley, and to Ansty. Fortunately we weren't going far enough to need to climb, though with my inability to move fast, I was rather scared by a yappy dog which came out of a house barking at us. All my woes were forgotten when we crossed a stream (the mighty River Ebble) and took a turning into a field by the pretty church, in front of which sheep were grazing. From here the path continued close to the river to the pretty cottages and bridge at West End, Ebbesbourne Wake, which I had photographed when we were here in March, and photographed again today (shown at the top of the page). We returned to the car, but turning it round would have been a bit of a challenge on the narrow road, and I didn't much fancy driving on the narrow roads again, so we drove on Firfield Bavant and then north to the A30 from there and so to Shaftesbury to shop for groceries and for a 10th wedding anniversary card for our son and daughter-in-law.