Winterborne Stickland & Lady Caroline's Drive

[puddleshark]

Frost on the grass, and ice on the puddles. Grey cloud from horizon to horizon, except in the south, where a halfhearted New Year sunrise was taking place in a small break in the cloud. But not a breath of wind, even up on the downs above Winterborne Stickland, and not a bad January day to go walking.



From the southern edge of Winterborne Stickland, up the lane to Sycamore Down Farm, with the rooks cawing overhead.


All the ladders. Someone is having a splendid new haircut roof.

Across the fields, recognising landmarks and realising I must have done this walk before (though I cannot remember when).


High winter cloud, but not tinged with the yellow that foretells snow. There is supposed to be a low pressure system coming in from the south later, and where it meets the cold air of the high pressure system currently sitting over us, the weather is due to get lively - snow and freezing rain. But we may escape the worst of it, this far south.



A short stretch of lane, then a turn right onto the bridleway marked on the map as Lady Caroline's Drive, (supposedly named for Lady Caroline Hambro, a 19th century inhabitant of Milton Abbey). By the turning, a sign:


SAT NAV ERROR. Not having a sat nav, I ignored this. (But, as it turned out, it wasn't a sign. It was a portent).


As well as arable and livestock-farming, the local landowner seems to have diversified into shooting and solar energy. In the foreground, pheasant feeders, and maize left standing as cover for game birds. And in the background, rows of solar panels. (There are strange new symbols on the new up-to-date OS map I recently bought. And it turns out that one of those symbols - a square, diagonally divided, half sunburst and half striped - is for a solar farm).


Lady Caroline's Drive. She wouldn't get a carriage along it these days - it is now a hazel coppice. But it's a pleasant sheltered walk, in the company of grey squirrels, blackbirds and wrens.

The path leaves behind the woods, begins to follow the field margins:




Frost on the fields, blue distant hills.

Into my heart an air that kills
From yon far country blows:
What are those blue remembered hills,
What spires, what farms are those?

Onto the bridleway to Winterborne Clenston, following a newly-planted line of oak trees all the way.




Finally, finally someone has taken action to preserve the late 16th century barn at Winterborne Clenston. Bearing in mind it is a Grade 1 Listed Building, it was in a criminal state of decay.




The roof timbers of the barn are said to have been taken from Milton Abbey after the Dissolution. Not that I've ever seen them - the building has always been in too dangerous a state to go inside.


Now if only the other barn at Winterborne Clenston can receive the same attention.

Opposite Bourne Farm, there's a bridleway up through the fields. And in the gateway, a couple of old telegraph poles are lying on the ground beside the track, forming a very comfortable seat - much more comfortable than the icy ground. I stopped to eat chocolate, pour a cup of coffee from the thermos. Steam rising from a cup of coffee on a winter's day, in the middle of nowhere - this is no small pleasure.


Up through the fields, with the mustard scent of brassica in the air. Earwormed by Louis Armstrong's We Have All the Time in the World, only with the lyrics altered to "We have all the kale in the world". (Though when I looked more closely, the fields had actually been planted with something I couldn't identify - maybe Oilseed Radish? But that doesn't scan.)

The path up through the field was unable to decide whether to be ice or whether to be mud. Like one of those calculating lovers in an Anthony Trollope novel: shall I be hard, scorning boots and jarring ankles, or shall I be soft & yielding, clinging lovingly to boots? I shall be these things by turns.




Into Charity Wood, where I lost yet another lens cap on my camera. I retraced my steps, but trying to find a black lens cap in a wood full of dark brown fallen leaves... Nope. Why are lens caps always black? Why are they not fluorescent orange?




Onto the Jubilee Trail long distance footpath. But not for long. The Jubilee Trail bore left, and I mistakenly bore right onto a farm track that was pretending to be the Jubilee Trail.





The farm track very kindly took me back down to the road. About fifty yards from Bourne Farm and the bridleway I had just taken. I was too embarrassed to sit on the old telegraph poles and drink a second cup of coffee, so set off to follow the lane back to Winterborne Stickland.


The Winterborne, which gives its name to the valley and all the villages along it. A bourne is a stream that dries up in summer. We had quite a dry December, so the water levels are not too high. In a wet winter, the roads along the Winterborne Valley are often impassable.


Coming back into the village. The thatcher and his mate were taking their tea break in their thatched van, with the windows steamed up.


The Triangle.


The Crown, 18th century.

It has only just re-opened after a wall collapsed without warning in March 2023.