To crossing with Macmillan Way from Toller Porcorum and return

When we did the short walk from Pound Cottage to Toller Porcorum earlier in the week, we’d discovered a car park at SY561980, near the Village Hall in Toller Porcorum and that was where we headed this morning. It was nice not to have a long drive. Toller Porcorum is such an unusual, pretty name, but it doesn't have a pretty meaning: Toller" is the old name for the River Hooke, and "Porcorum" is a Latin phrase meaning "of the pigs," so it means "Toller of the pigs", and it is thought to refer either to the fact that pigs were raised here or that there were wild boar in the area. For all that, it's an attractive little place now.  We paid £1 into the honesty box at the car park, and we were off. It was a warm day (very warm for April) and the walk was slightly longer than we'd calculated it to be in advance - and it was quite tough going in places. However, we did it and we enjoyed it; it was a lovely walk and I was delighted to have the reassurance that, after my various foot problems last year, we were back to coping with this sort of walk.

We headed along School Lane,  past the Church, then left onto Lower Road. On the way out of the village,  we took a path  over a disused railway line and across fields, including a ploughed field which we headed across, grateful for the dry weather The route wasn't always clear; at one stage, I found Richard being watched by some sheep as he puzzled over which path we should take - most unusually, it was me who spotted the sign giving us the route here.  We  continued across a field with the remains of an oilseed rape crop and, later, we found a footbridge over a little stream. At several points we'd noticed good views back to Toller Porcorum Church, and we were climbing gently, but we could see that we'd have to climb quite markedly in order to get out of this valley and into the next. Where we would climb and how we would get to the right starting point was less clear. 

The route we found up to the top of the valley did indeed include some rather steep sections, up a narrow and muddy path through the vegetation. We'd had  Wynford Wood to our right as we climbed and towards the top we edged closer to it and we were rewarded by a spectacular display of bluebells and wild garlic. We almost immediately began our descent to the next valley, but now the route was clear on a distinct path across a crop field. This brought us to a minor road just to the north of Wynford Eagle, and we followed the road, with avenues of trees on either side, down to the hamlet. "Wynford Eagle" is another lovely name (apparently "wynford" means "white stream" and "eagle" derives from the name of the L'Aigle family, who were lords of the manor in the 13th Century.  We reached the pretty little St Laurence's Church, and turned right in front of it.

We hadn't seen any other walkers this morning, so we decided that it would be reasonable for me to sit on the bar of a stile near the church in order to change my socks - and lo and behold another walker appeared from nowhere (well, not strictly from nowhere I suppose, but he'd not come the way we did and he wasn't very chatty so we never found out). The other walker did however  continue along the onward route of the Jubilee Trail, and after sorting out my feet, we followed him, along between another wide avenue of trees, then left across a stream and up to a minor road on which we had seen vehicles passing. We crossed the road and took a track which climbed steadily. 

One of the things that we particularly appreciated about today's walk was the variety of landscapes through which we passed, and we were now walking across typical Dorset chalk downland. After a couple of kilometres, we turned left at the top of a valley and the route finding for the next bit was not entirely straightforward, but we didn't have too much difficulty finding our way to Compton Barn, where we turned right onto a road. The Jubilee Trail continues straight along this road for about a kilometre, but we had decided to take a small loop off the trail, for variety and so as to visit yet another attractively named village: Compton Valence. We took a left-hand turning onto a minor road that descended quite steeply to the village.

I'd begun to doubt our wisdom in making a deliberate decision to take this diversion, with its loss of height (which we would have to regain before reaching our end-point). Compton Valence is very much nestled within its valley (Wikipedia tells me it is known as "a pocket of habitation in the downs") which meant that we couldn't see much of it. We did see some colourful gardens to our right as we descended, and we went into the little church. Then we turned right, joining the route of the Macmillan Way, and climbing up Tout Hill by way of a wooded valley. I am delighted to report that this climb was less difficult and more enjoyable than I'd expected.

We emerged back onto rolling downland and, after crossing a surprisingly busy road, we took a path alongside a field boundary for our final approach back to the point we had reached yesterday, the crossing of the Macmillan Way and the Jubilee Trail, underneath the row of pylons that was now clearly visible.  Before getting to the crossing point of the paths, we stopped for lunch, sitting at a point where a hedge provided some shade,  and when we reached the Jubilee Trail we turned right onto it. A track led near but not quite to a road (we had to find the route across a field just before getting to it) and we followed roads back to Compton Barn. The route of the Jubilee Trail between our turning point and here was definitely easier than the route we'd taken on our outward walk - though it was also less interesting.  

From here we retraced our steps back to Toller Porcorum.  It wasn't as difficult as I'd feared, in particular, the descent down the steep hill into the valley including Toller Porcorum (which I had been dreading, because I'm not good at steep descents) was actually quite short and quite manageable.  We had underestimated the overall length of today's walk, and mid-walk, when we realised this, we abandoned earlier plans to do something else afterwards. This enabled us to take our time and just enjoy the walk, stopping for a snack in Wynford Eagle, this time sitting on the grass in the shade of the avenue of trees.  It was a good day.

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