Hindon to Tollard Royal

We slept well but awoke early and I had a bit of a shock when the lights and fan of our en suite went out when I was part-way through my shower! We went down for breakfast at 8am, slightly surprised to find a table of 6 men already started on their breakfast. We failed to work out how they were linked (school friends or university friends perhaps) but we did discover that they were being joined by another three people and that they were also heading to Tollard Royal today. After a pleasant breakfast of smoked salmon and scrambled egg we left the Angel Inn around 9am. It had rained in the night and there were occasional light showers during the day, but it never came to sufficient to make us put our waterproofs on. The route between Hindon and Ludwell loops further to the east than you might expect, presumably so as to include Old Wardour Castle. I'm not complaining about this because Old Wardour Castle was lovely, but it does mean that the route is complicated so I will attempt to describe it in general terms rather of 'then we turned left' etc.

We left Hindon slightly behind the nine men and indeed it was seeing them on a different path that alerted us to the fact that we had taken a bridleway sooner than the correct one. From Hindon we climbed steadily towards and through the woodland we had seen on the horizon ahead of us yesterday. I think we must have reached a band of trees before those shown on the map, because it felt as if we were in woodland for longer than I’d expected.

We emerged at the other side of the woodland and descended, then took a distinct left-hand turn, spot on a map change for added confusion! We meandered about a bit then climbed quite steeply to a trig point at 214 metres. There were glorious views behind us but the promised views forward were somewhat spoilt by the mud of a pig farm. The pigs seemed happy enough though, and it was unusual to see a boar in with the female pigs...

We walked through the pretty little hamlet of Newtown then meandered in a generally uphill direction towards Wardour. The route on the map is shown as going through a school on the approach to Wardour Castle, but we followed the instructions in the guidebook and took the road slightly to the east. We entered the grounds of (new) Wardour Castle ('no public access apart from public footpaths and visitors to the chapel') and walked right up to the building, turning left in front of it, watched from within! We turned onto a path which led to a track which led past a farm to Old Wardour Castle, now in the care of English Heritage. We hadn't expected to have time to stop, but it was before midday and we are English Heritage members, so we decided to take a look. It is a 14th century castle, built by Baron Lovell, primarily to entertain his guests and thus to show off his wealth. It passed through several owners before being bought by the Arundell family, but after being badly damaged in the Civil War it was never repaired, instead becoming a 'romantic ruin' (more showing off!) when the new Wardour Castle was built in the 18th Century. We had our lunch on a bench in the grounds of the old castle, then resumed our walk, climbing and passing lakes, with good views back to the new castle.

After a few more meanderings we reached Donhead St Andrew. From here to Ludwell was pretty enough but perhaps the least satisfactory of the day, partly because there were a fair number of ascents and descents (with a particularly steep little descent in Milkwell) without the satisfaction of a good view from the top of the hills and partly because the instructions in the guidebook were less clear and just plain wrong in places (Ludwell Church was very definitely not visible as a landmark on our right-hand side). We were left wondering if the route (and map) had been altered but not the words in the book, or maybe Anthony Burton wrote this section up whilst thinking of a somewhere else.

We reached Ludwell and admired its curious two towered church - hence my certainty that this was not what we were looking towards previously! It started to rain a little more seriously, so after deciding that the farm shop was not hiding a cafe, and spotting the group of men in the distance, we took refuge in the Grove Arms. It was 3pm and they were just closing, but they very kindly served us orange juice and let us sit in a corner. The short rest was all I needed, and I felt much refreshed when we left 10 minutes or so later.

After some difficulty finding the right track, we left Ludwell by way of the watercress farm and climbed steadily, the only real difficulty being the stiles which didn't have cross bars perpendicular to the line of the fence or hedge, which made them very difficult for me to get over. We climbed up to Win Green and the views were superb; there is a car park at the top but we had got the views without cheating!

We crossed the car park and continued on a grassy track the other side. The guidebook describes the landscape here as 'the sort of countryside any walker would be happy to roll up and take away for future use’ and I wouldn’t argue with that; it was glorious. There were wooded valleys in front of us and we soon started to descend steeply. We eventually reached the wooded valley bottom and followed this along a track. The route took us along ‘Ashcombe Bottom’, clearly game-bird shooting territory, with close-circuit television, presumably to deter those who hadn’t paid appropriately to shoot the game (and I discovered later that Ashcombe House used to be owned by Madonna).

A Wessex Ridgeway sign with a direction indicator (wow! - we were getting closer to the Dorset boundary and things were set to improve) sent us left along a lovely green track which looped round to Tollard Royal. It’s a pretty village, though the village pond was disappointing. We took the road up by the war memorial, which climbed steeply, past Tollard Royal Church and King John’s House. Park Farm House was very easy to find, about half a mile above the village and Sarah welcomed us and showed us to a wonderful room. Her husband Jasper was out walking the dog.