Tollard Royal to Shillingstone

After a good night’s sleep at Park Farm House, a delicious breakfast and a chat with Sarah and Jasper, we left around 9.30am. We were not in a hurry and Park Farm House is one of the best B&Bs we have stayed in; as we left Jasper gave us two freshly-picked apples and we admired Sarah’s shepherd’s hut.

We'd fallen in love with the whole Tollard Royal area and the surrounding Cranborne Chase, once King John's hunting area. We walked down to the village, stopping to photograph the church and King John’s House, then we walked down to the King John Inn to photograph it, though it rained heavily before we got there.  There was another heavy shower when we were on Bench’s Lane, the track that took us high above yesterday’s route into Tollard Royal, and it rained more seriously later in the day. There was some sunshine though, and lovely walking.

Bench’s Lane brought us back to the B3081 above Tollard Royal, then we took a path across fields to the Wiltshire/Dorset county boundary where there was a signpost announcing that it was 100km (62 miles) to the end of the Wessex Ridgeway in Lyme Regis. The path appears to be much better known in Dorset, so we’re hopeful that the signposting will be better from now on.

We walked the short distance to the village of Ashmore, apparently the highest village in Dorset, and turned right towards the village pond. However a woman stopped us and asked us if we had been to ‘the exhibition’. We didn’t really know what she was talking about, but cake was promised and we were expecting an otherwise hungry day, so we walked back up to the road to the road to the village hall. The exhibition was the result of a site-specific photographic study by local art student Dunja Wood. She had been inspired by an old photograph of village children on the frozen pond, and her projects included a collage of villagers’ photos and a series of ‘kaleidoscopes’ based on images from folk dancers at the ‘Filly Loo’. It was an interesting exhibition and the cake was good!

We took a track down to Ashmore Wood. We walked through the wood and turned right close to the far side, walking close to the edge of the trees for a mile or so. Around Hanging Coppice there was a dark and gloomy section, deeper in the wood, and it started to rain heavily. The rain continued as we emerged from the wood, turned right onto a minor road and then left again onto a track into another belt of trees. Forestry operations had made the track wide and muddy and there were piles of trees intriguingly marked ‘BEAR’, and at one point the route was less than obvious because the new wide track was more obvious than the older, narrower, nicer one that we were supposed to follow.  We got it right!

We emerged from the wood and turned right again, and the rain stopped for long enough for us to stop for a snack sitting on a fallen branch of a tree. The rain came on again and we attempted to shelter under a nearby tree, but the creaks and groans made us think that another branch was on its way down so we moved on rapidly.

We crossed a road and continued on a more definite track through more woodland, with more piles of wood marked ‘BEAR’. We emerged at the brow of a hill with views down to the village known as either ‘Iwerne Courtney’ or ‘Shroton’ (from now on I will refer to the latter because that seems to be the name the locals use), with Hambledon Hill beyond. The views were good and would have been superb in better weather. We walked down to the A350, crossing several slippery stiles, then crossed the main road and took a minor road into Shroton. We left the route of the Wessex Ridgeway at a crossroads, turning left to The Cricketers pub on the village green. We had read that they stop serving food at 2.30pm on a Sunday and it was just slightly later so we were only hoping for a drink and a chance to dry off. This was just as well as they were fully booked for lunch; we were happy with a half-pint of Stowford Press cider each!

Even better, when we emerged from The Cricketers it had stopped raining, and it stayed dry for the rest of the afternoon. We walked back to the crossroads then followed the route of the Wessex Ridgeway behind houses then across the corner of a playing field and onto a chalk track which climbed, and climbed, and climbed. There were lovely views back to Shroton and beyond.

Eventually we reached a trig point, with superb views to the ramparts of the fort on Hambledon Hill. We turned left, away from the fort, and followed a path along the edge of a grassy bank and then down to a corner. From here an extremely muddy and slippery track led down through woods to a road.

We turned left along the minor road, which was busier than we might have wished, but from which we  could see a large bird of prey in the field to our right. We turned right down a lane which took us past Hanford House (now Hanford prep school) to Hanford Farm. The farmyard was muddy and our route was not terribly clear, again we got it right and emerged into a field of cows. We crossed the field and turned left through a coppice, on a path which meandered its way down to the River Stour (the Dorset one whose route one can follow on the Stour Valley Way as opposed to the one we followed in 2012 on the Stour Valley Path).

Across the river, we were greeted by a particularly anxious cow, but we were soon on another muddy track which took us under the old railway line (now the North Dorset Trailway) and into Shillingstone. We were staying at The Willows, a tearoom with two bed and breakfast rooms. The tearoom was just closing as we arrived, but – much to our delight – Carol Griffiths cooked us a meal in the evening. We knew that the village pub didn’t serve food on Sunday evenings so had expected to go hungry!