Beckhampton to Urchfont

We didn't sleep wonderfully, but we woke to a lovely sunny morning and it stayed dry and sunny all day, without being too warm (though Richard left his sun hat behind which was probably not a good idea) and we had a glorious walk. Steve cooked us a delicious cooked breakfast and there were also strawberries and homemade yoghurt, homemade bread, just out of the oven, and a selection of jams and marmalades, some made by Steve and some made by Catherine. We chatted to two of the other guests, who had just completed The Ridgeway, and left Isobel Cottage (Beckhampton B&B) around 9.20am.

We rejoined the Wessex Ridgeway by the two standing stones that are reckoned to mark the end of 'Beckhampton Avenue' from Avebury (though goodness knows how they have worked that one out, because there seem to be just the two stones now) turning left onto a wooded path which cut across to the A4. We walked along the A4 for a while, then through a car park to a footpath at the far end. We watched around 16 horses being ridden around a circular gallops, coming quite close to where we were standing. Later, the horses walked through the circle and on to a linear gallops where we could see them, well, galloping.

Meanwhile, we followed the 'Old Bath Road' generally uphill to a Bronze Age burial mound, then we turned left and climbed more steeply to Cherhill Hill. The Cherhill Monument is slightly off the track and has a rather ugly structure around its base to stop people climbing up it, but it was worth leaving the track to visit it for the lovely view - though we couldn't see the Cherhill White Horse from here.

We descended slightly, with lovely valley-type landscape to our right, then we turned right and climbed towards Morgan's Hill in a second dog-leg of a similar shape to the one that had taken us up Cherhill Hill. It had looked odd on the map, but the dog-legs enabled us to follow the edge of the higher ground. We cut across Morgan's Hill and emerged onto the edge of a golf course, and followed this towards the Club House.

We crossed a road and took a track by the Club House. This was less attractive - it was straight and stony and we could smell the pig farm we could see in the distance! However, once again we took a right hand turn, along a more attractive track and in a mile or so this brought us back to the edge of the escarpment near Oliver's Castle. This was absolutely superb, my favourite part of today's walk. We stopped for 'lunch' (Pringles and apples that we had bought at Paddington Station) in the shade of one of the trees on Oliver's Castle, then completed our loop around the castle, past kite flyers and picnicking families. As we rounded the corner there were good views of the wooded Roundway Hill to the south.

When the guidebook was written, the next part of the route was 'impassible' so Anthony Burton described an alternative route slightly to the west and we followed this one without checking whether the route shown on the map was OK today - I suspect it would have been fine too. We followed a wide stony track from a little car park, past more cars parked and more kite flyers. until it reached a road, with the view down to Devizes opening up in front of us, then we turned left onto the road for a short distance. From the road, we took a path down towards Roundway, alongside what had been a recently planted hedge when the guidebook was written - all I can say is that the hedge didn't take well! As we descended there were occasional views back to the Devizes White Horse, and we were nearly flattened by a combine harvester coming down the hill behind us to offload its grain.

From Roundway to Devizes we followed a straight avenue between trees. This is Quaker's Walk, originally the grand approach to Roundway House, but now passing close to housing estates, with a well placed children's playground complete with bench - we stopped to enable me to change into dry socks. We reached the outskirts of Devizes, crossed the Kennet and Avon Canal (which we would follow later) and left the route of the Wessex Ridgeway to go into the town centre. We had a much appreciated 'Strawberry Eton Mess' and listened to the Wessex Military Band, playing today because it was the Devizes Carnival.

We walked back to the canal and turned right (to the east). After passing underneath a bridge, the canal did a 90 degree turn to the left (north). A narrow boat obligingly passed us, so we were able to watch it apparently effortlessly negotiating first the bridge and then the turn. It then slowed down to pass moored boats, and we were proceeding at almost exactly the same rate for a while.

The walk from here to Urchfont was lovely. We took a minor road towards Stert, but soon turned left off the road, with good views back to the buildings in the village on the ridge behind us. We climbed across a field to the railway line, crossed it, then climbed across another field. We had to keep our wits about us to follow the correct route in this area and the fact that the Wessex Ridgeway signs had direction arrows here perhaps indicates that others had had similar difficulty. After resisting the temptation to turn left, we were running close to a well-made track, leading to Knights Leaze Farm, but the path definitely doesn't follow the track, instead crossing the fields (occupied by cows when we were there) to emerge in a corner near the farm then crossing the track and then heading another field (this one with horses).

After crossing the horse field we were soon in Urchfont, a pretty place with lots of thatch. We walked past the green and reached The Lamb Inn a little before 5.45pm. We had booked a taxi for 6pm but we had only just sat down on a well placed bench in front of the community shop behind the pub when our taxi arrived. The driver, a likeable young man, took a rather circuitous route, initially to avoid the traffic in Devizes but then I suspect because he didn't know the back roads very well, so I suspect it cost us more than it should. Ah well, we got to see a bit more of the countryside! Advice to others: there doesn't appear to be anywhere to stay in Urchfont, hence our decision to spend two nights in Beckhampton and use a taxi - we would perhaps have done better to spend the second night in Devices and just to get a taxi back to there.