Hambledon Hill

[puddleshark]

Today a walk through the meadows from Shillingstone, and up onto the ramparts of Hambledon Hill Iron Age hillfort.



Up and out early, very early, to beat the summer holiday traffic. And the Met Office forecast (rain and forty mile an hour winds arriving at lunchtime). The roads still quiet on the drive north. Past Blandford, where a new estate of bland brick houses (designed by software to be as cheap to build as possible) has sprung up, like mushrooms after rain, every time I pass.

North of Shillingstone, there is a small car park for the North Dorset Trailway, once a branch line running to Sturminster Newton, in the days when milk was transported to the dairies by rail. But those days are long gone. These days it is a track for walkers, cyclists and horse riders.

By Bere Marsh Farm, across weedy fields of parched yellow grass and dock. A chamomile-scent rising from Mayweed crushed underfoot.




Narrow Concrete bridge number 1, over a summer-dry channel of the Stour.




Narrow Concrete bridge number 2, over the River Stour.


Not that there's much of a view of the river, it's so choked with weed and willows.

The path from Shillingstone to Child Okeford is not well-marked, and bends back on itself in a confusing fashion, but this doesn't matter. It's a well-trodden path, the grass worn short, easy to follow. Well-worn paths walk themselves.


And it probably helps to have Hambledon Hill as your destination. It's kind of hard to miss.


Oak-lined path to Child Okeford.


Monk's Yard, medieval in origin, remodelled C17 and altered C18, C19 and C20.


Child Okeford House, service range probably of C17 origin, main range C18 with mid C19 additions and alterations.


A Gate guarded by a Lion.


The Olde House, probably C15 origin with additions and alterations at later dates. Many later dates. No two windows are alike, and the walls are a patchwork of different materials and styles.


This cottage has a pear tree in the garden, and is proud of it. How do I know this?


Shillingstone 1 mile. Pear Tree 18 ¾ ft.




Nature's taking this one back.

From the village of Child Okeford, there are footpaths leading up onto Hambledon Hill.


A steep breathless climb, up a path lined with blue flowers: Small Scabious and Harebells.


Harebells (Campanula rotundifolia), it has an uncanny reputation in folk lore.

Some day, I think, there will be people enough
In Froxfield to pick all the blackberries
Out of the hedges of Green Lane, the straight
Broad lane where now September hides herself
In bracken and blackberry, harebell and dwarf gorse.
Today, where yesterday a hundred sheep
Were nibbling, halcyon bells shake to the sway
Of waters that no vessel ever sailed ...
It is a kind of spring: the chaffinch tries
His song. For heat it is like summer too.
This might be winter’s quiet. While the glint
Of hollies dark in the swollen hedges lasts—
One mile—and those bells ring, little I know
Or heed if time be still the same, until
The lane ends and once more all is the same.

'The Lane' Edward Thomas

A circle of the ramparts, with the wind shaking the grasses, setting the Harebells and the Quaking Grass to trembling.






Bees cling to madly dancing Scabious flowers.







I met only one soul on my circuit of the ramparts, and he may possibly have been a ghost.



Sound carries from the valley to the hill: the clop of horses along a lane, a combine harvester working in the fields. But it seems little relevant to a person walking a careful circuit of the ramparts: noise drifting from another world.




A Kestrel above the ramparts. Now that is relevant.

I lost track of time, the way I always lose track of time when walking on hillforts. I thought I must have been up on the hill for hours.

But when I descended back into the village, walked back to Shillingstone along the lane, and reached my car, I found it was only half past nine. Some sort of timeslip seems to be the most likely explanation, probably due to the Harebells.

But it turned out well. The Met Office had been lying, and rain began to spot the lane as I crossed the bridge over the Stour, and drew near to the car park. And the rain arrived in earnest as I reached the car.


The rain begins.

Comments

[mallorys_camera]

Lovely!

Thanks for this.

[puddleshark]

You're welcome!

This walk brought to you courtesy of some unseasonably cool weather - a very comfortable 14 degrees C yesterday at 6am, perfect for walking.

[bleodswean]

Such a walk and a timeslip to boot!

[puddleshark]

I don't often walk out from Shillingstone. The village obviously fell afoul of the surveyors when the Ordnance Survey maps were first being drawn up, and is located right at the very corner on two different maps. So, shortly after setting off on your walk from Shillingstone, you fall off the edge of the map.

But falling off the map, and timeslips, make it a charming walk.

[benicek]

Man, OS are vindictive.

[puddleshark]

Heh! They are! There's no way that you need to use three different OS maps to do a circular walk from Shillingstone by chance...

[house_wren]

Joining you on your walk, I feel refreshed. Thank you.

[puddleshark]

You're welcome.

The schools have broken up for summer here, and, as is traditional, the weather has turned cold and rainy. A proper British summer. I am enjoying it immensely.

[benicek]

Multi-vallate-tastic! I know that hill fort from my archaeology degree but have never been on it.

[puddleshark]

Not quite as big as Maiden Castle, but I think it's the most beautiful of our hillforts - the way the ramparts and ditches snake round the hill.