Martin Down to Pentridge circuit

We seem to be in the middle of a run of wet weather with occasional glorious days and weekends where walking plans get altered at short notice, sometimes because of the weather and sometimes for other reasons. Today we were heading to our daughter's house and the only change in plan was that we walked this morning (while our grandson was at a birthday party) and spent this afternoon with the family, while we'd expected to do it the other way round. It had rained in the night and continued for the first part of our journey from Milton Keynes, and the first named storm of the winter was due tomorrow, but it was dry for our walk, if muddy underfoot. We drove by way of Salisbury to the Martin Down car park by the A354, at SU036202, where Helen and Bertie met us following our walk from Broad Chalke a few weeks ago. It's a big car park, but we parked between two other cars, and while we were getting our boots on, the owners of both returned from a walk together, with their dogs.

The car park appears to be surrounded by rather overgrown scrubland, but we took the path through this at the northern end of the car park and soon reached a vast open area of downland. Finding the "right" route across this was challenging (as we'd also found when setting off from the carpark at the other side of Martin Down, heading for the Jubilee Trail towards Cranborne) and as others have found too. The issue is caused, not by a shortage of paths, but rather by the fact that it is open access land, with many routes across it. We we on a good track,  but somewhat further to the east of Bokerley Dyke than we'd intended.  When another couple of walkers, following what looked to be a copy of instructions taken from a magazine, asked us where Bokerley Dyke was, we could point them in the right direction, but we couldn't tell them which path to take. Then we reached an electric fence so had to take a diversion around to the right. 

We could now see the track we were following on the map and we knew that this would lead us to the extension of the track known as Bowling Green Lane at SU048191, from where we could continue alongside the route of the prehistoric Grim's Ditch, as shown on the map, and so to Bokerley Ditch. Bokerley Ditch is a linear Earthwork, believed to have originated in the Bronze Age or the early Iron Age and it now forms part of the Dorset/Hampshire border. We reached Bokerley Dyke just as a couple of dog walkers walked past along it, so we let them get slightly ahead.  Close to SU050187, we turned right to cross the ditch (with the dogwalkers continuing straight ahead). The Jubilee Trail starts here, at the point where we entered Dorset; we'd been here before!

The path runs alongside a little area of woodland. It was rather muddy in places and we almost missed the Jubilee Trail sign on a gate, indicating that we should go through, rather than continuing on the track we were on. We climbed as we went around the edge of a field, with lovely views opening up back to the little wood we'd walked past and also to Blagdon Plantation and some pretty rolling countryside with nice autumnal colours beyond. Richard commented that he remembered the climb from last time we were here. I didn't remember it, but I was pleased to be reminded that we'd noticed the climb before, because I was definitely noticing it today! At the far side of the field, we crossed the field boundary, turned left, and continued to climb, still with good views to our left.

At the top of Blagdon Plantation, Richard again remembered a discussion from last time we were here, over whether we should stay on the official route of the Jubilee Trail, which turned left and followed along the top of the wood for a while, before heading back at an angle across a field, or whether to take a short cut over the open access land straight ahead. JordanWalks failed to write down which way we went then, but later inspection of our tracked route from then  shows that we dutifully stayed on the route of the Jubilee Trail - and we dutifully did the same today! Today, this was rewarded by seeing a group of walkers coming across the field towards us,  who turned in the opposite direction onto the path alongside Blagdon Plantation, giving us ideas for future walks in the area.

We joined the ridge along the top of Pentridge Down with its lovely views down to the village of Pentridge to the west, and climbed gently towards the tree-topped Penbury Knoll at the top. I remember really enjoying this section of the walk last time we were here, but today it was slightly disappointing, purely because it was extremely muddy. Just before the top there was a fallen down tree, which provided a good place on which to sit for an early lunch. Our progress had been rather slower than I'd anticipated, maybe because of the mud, maybe because of the route-finding difficulties on Martin Down, or maybe because we don't walk as fast as we used to. We emailed our daughter to tell her not to expect us until 2.30 pm.

We said hello to another couple of walkers then set off again. We were looking for a trig point on the right; Richard headed off through the undergrowth and there it was, though I am not at all sure we'd approached it by the right route! After some more meandering through the undergrowth we saw the path heading clearly down the hillside, with another couple of walkers climbing over a stile and coming towards us. As we passed them, we realised that they were the same couple we'd met back on Martin Down; they reckoned we were walking the same circuit as them but in the opposite direction. I'm not convinced we were doing anything quite that logical! I'd expected the descent to be steep and muddy, but actually it was fine, and rather pleasant. We passed a large herd of cattle and continued down to Pentridge, emerging by Manor Farm.

We turned right through the village and, after the road ended, we continued onto a path that brought us to Bowling Green Lane. We turned right until we'd crossed Bokerley Dyke, then we turned right and followed the Dyke for a while, before meandering our way back across Martin Dyke to the car park. We reached our daughter's house at almost exactly 2.30pm. Later in the day, we had another short walk with our grandson, it had turned into a lovely day.