Garston Wood to Chase Woods and return near Sixpenny Handley

We had arranged to meet with Helen and Bertie at 2.15pm at Cranborne Manor Gardens, so wanted a relatively short walk that was somewhere in the right direction. and Helen and Tom had mentioned bluebells in Garston Wood, so a walk starting from there seemed a good plan. We headed by way of Shaftesbury. Zig-Zag Hill and Tollard Royal to Sixpenny Handley then took the minor road to the parking at the RSPB reserve at SU004195, confusingly labelled as being at "Pribdean Wood" on the OS Map. The map shows a wiggly dashed line crossing the road just to the north of the car park. This is the Wiltshire (to the north)/Dorset border, but what we had only been able to see by looking at the online version of the map is that there is a right of way along here too, and this looked a good route by which to head to the west, towards and into Chase Woods.

There is a fence around the nature reserve and we took the gate through from the carpark. From here, there was a map showing lots of paths heading off in all directions through the reserve - with lots of bluebells to tempt us - but it was Richard who realised that the path we wanted was more likely to be outside the reserve, so we went back through the gate, walked a short distance along the road, and there it was. It was a good job we'd done this as there were no obvious ways through as we walked along the edge of the wood. It was an absolutely delightful walk, with a masses of bluebells with occasional patches of stitchwort (I think!) and wild garlic. Through the hedge to our right, there were occasional views of open farmland

We weren't really aware when the nature reserve ended to our right (we just kept walking on a lovely woodland path, with outstanding wild flowers) but slightly beyond the extent of the reserve, near the point marked as Sessions Gate on the OS map, there was a choice of paths and we needed to make use of the OS maps app to ensure we were on the right one. We passed the mound of an ancient Earthwork on our left and, later, descended slightly to Shermel Gate. This was a much more distinctive landmark, with a couple of buildings, more open country to the north and a road to the south. It appears that there is some parking here, indeed some walking groups seem to use this as a meeting point

Our route climbed again, now in Chase Woods. This is a large area of woodland, with different types of trees in different areas. We were mostly walking through very attractive deciduous woodland, though at one stage there were conifers just slightly to the north. There were fewer bluebells than there had been in Garston Wood, but there were still some, especially in the more open sections. Every so often we'd encounter a "ride", which usually involved a descent followed by an ascent - and the rides tended to have permissive paths running through them. This could have provided us with any number of circular walks through the woods, but unfortunately the permissive paths were all approximately parallel and we had no way of telling how we might be able to get across from one permissive path to the next, so we kept going on our wiggly path along the county border. It was lovely.

Our route had been joined by the Hardy Way, and the map now gave a name to the path we were on: Shire Rack. The "shire" is an allusion to the county boundary (from the old English for a "shearing" i.e. a division); "rack" is apparently a narrow hillside path. We continued in similar fashion until we emerged on the edge of the Rushmore Golf Course. Right at the end our route became a bit overgrown, we had no desire to walk across a golf course, and we would soon need to turn round in order to get back to the car in time - so we turned around here. We didn't intend to return by exactly the same route, but we did did retrace our steps to the point at which the Hardy Way left it.

We turned right on the route of the Hardy Way, a track which soon led us out of the wood. Some logs at the side of the path provided a good place on which to sit and east our lunch. Just before Snowpuddle Farm, we turned left across a field of cows then continued across attractive rolling countryside to the hamlet of Deanland. Here we turned right towards Sixpenny Handley. On the outskirts of Sixpenny Handley, we turned left (away from the village), parting company with the Hardy Way. There is space at the junction where you could park a car, which might be useful if we want to walk more of the Hardy Way or indeed to complete another "Cranborne Circle". The point we were at here is only about two and a half miles from Pentridge on the Hardy Way, and this could link with where we are planning to walk on Friday.

For today, we walked back along the road to Garston Wood. Fortunately, there was a gate into the nature reserve at the southern end of the wood, where the road first passed it. We turned in here and followed one of the tracks through the nature reserve, again admiring the glorious display of blue and white from the bluebells, wild garlic and shitchwort. We correctly identified where we needed to turn right in order to head straight back to the carpark, passing a birdwatcher with an impressive array of cameras. Then we drove on to Cranborne Manor Gardens. The phone app attempted to send us down the main drive towards the Manor, but we decided that Viscount Cranborne would probably not appreciate that, so we drove on to the Garden Centre carpark which is where we were meant to be. We didn't have to wait long for Helen and Bertie to arrive, though we did have to go straight to the cafe for tea and cake in order for Bertie to have his lunch. He'd overslept in his morning nap and then not wanted to eat at home. We all very much enjoyed our afternoon.