Old Wardour Castle to Ansty Down and return via Ansty

We had been to Old Wardour Castle with Helen, Tom and Bertie, which Bertie had thoroughly enjoyed; lots of steps to climb and dangerous situations to get into, what more could an 18-month old explorer wish for? However, by 2.15pm he had worn himself out, so they headed off so that Bertie could have a sleep. Meanwhile, his 60-something explorer of a grandmother had a plan to facilitate the joining together of our Cranborne Circles walks with the Wessex Ridgeway and lots of other paths beyond. This relied on the fact that we visited Old Wardour Castle on the Wessex Ridgeway on a rather grey (and later wet) day in October 2013 - and if we went from Old Wardour to the top of the ridge above Ansty Down today, we'd only be a bit more than a mile from Ebbesbourne Wake, where we'd walked in March 2022, and it would be easy to join the two together tomorrow without having to do any walks on which we had to climb up and down or down and up a slope with the sole purpose of linking two paths together. This afternoon's short walk was delightful, though not a walk in the park; there were several climbs and descents.

Old Wardour Castle is a slightly old-fashioned English Heritage attraction, though it was quite busy, with a kiosk at which to pay; made more complicated (and old-fashioned) today by the fact that because of a technical problem of some sort they had no way of paying by credit card other than recording the transaction on slips of paper. It's hard to believe we used to do it this way all the time. However they are building a new visitor centre, and our path set off past the building works and up into the wood behind. We got good views back to the castle and lake at Old Wardour as we climbed through the trees. At the top, we crossed a field then turned right onto a track through a bluebell wood. It was very pretty. We descended very slightly, but were conscious of the steep descent to Ansty Combe, on our left. This would be our return route.

The track became a minor road which we followed to the A30. Immediately opposite was "New Barn", which has recently been converted into six houses, and after crossing the main road, we walked past one of the barn conversions, a timber clad one, which is currently for sale. I can't say I found it an attractive proposition, certainly not for what the price they're asking. The location (other than the closeness to the main road) is nice enough and we continued along Shave Lane, getting closer to the ridge we were planning to climb. We could see the route of the ascent, heading diagonally across Ansty Down, identifiable in the distance by the hedges on either side of the track. The climb was actually not too difficult.

At the top of the ridge we found ourselves on the continuation of the by-way that we'd walked along further to the east, after climbing up from Broad Chalke and before descending by way of Prescombe Down. Today we followed a very pleasant section to the east, through a band of woodland. There were some very big puddles to negotiate, but in each case there was a way round. At the end of the woodland, a minor road crossed the byway, by a field of sheep. To the south the road descends to Alvediston and Ebbesbourne Wake where we will be walking tomorrow (though not by way of this road); to the north it descends to Ansty and that was our route for today.

The road zig-zagged its way down the slope, with good views across the flatter valley bottom to the wooded hollow in which the village of Ansty sits. After descending and crossing the valley we crossed the A30 and took the minor road towards Ansty, noting that the road will be closed for the Ansty May Day festival at 4.30pm on Monday. The route to the village had steep wooded sides, with yet more bluebellls. We reached the church, the "Hospice", (a lovely old building, apparently built in 1596-98 by Thomas Arundell, possibly on the site of the original Hospice of the Knights Hospitaller) and the village pond. However we could hardly see the pond for all the parked cars.

It turned out that the cars belonged to the parents of the children who were gathering near the maypole to collect their costumes and presumably to practise for Monday. We passed the group just as the children were being told not to wear any hair ribbons etc., of any colour other than that of their maypole ribbon. Two other points of interest are (i) Ansty's maypole has claim to be the tallest in England, though other villages make similar claims and other stories talk about Ansty's pole having been replaced with a shorter one, for safety; (ii) this Ansty is not the same as the Ansty in Dorset where we stayed when walking the Wessex Way.

We'd turned left by the pond and continued onto the road into Ansty Coombe, initially climbing steadily then steeply, back up to the track through the bluebell wood. We retraced our steps to Old Wardour Castle, where the car park was much quieter than it had been and the castle was just closing.