Winter walk, Winterborne Valley

[puddleshark]

A nothing-much sort of morning. No wind. No rain. No daylight.



In the few weeks since I last visited Winterborne Stickland, the thatcher has finished rethatching the ridge of the cottage at the edge of the village. Scaffolders were busy taking down the scaffolding, with much clanging.


Another thatcher has started work on a cottage just down the road.


There are enough thatched cottages in the Winterbornes to keep several master thatchers in business.


Along the lane to Winterborne Houghton. The Winterborne stream running high and fast in its channel alongside the road, but not up over its banks yet.

The lane was a lot busier with traffic than I expected. I always have this vague idea in my head that Winterborne Houghton is a remote village. But actually, like most of the Winterborne villages, it had a lot of development during the last half of the twentieth century. There are a few old thatched cottages, but it's mostly modern bungalows and detached houses.


At the edge of Winterborne Houghton, an area marked on the OS map as "fish tanks". I peered over the chain link fence and caught a glimpse of large spotted trout in the pools. Hopeful-looking Little Egrets were hanging round the edges.

Residents of Winterborne Houghton used to be known as "Houghton Owls", in reference to the story of a villager who, when calling for help having got lost in the woods, mistook the calls of owls for answering human voices. In his book 'Dorset Villages' Roland Gant posits the theory that Thomas Hardy used this tale as inspiration for the scene where Joseph Poorgrass gets lost in Yalbury Wood in 'Far from the Madding Crowd'.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winterborne_Houghton

Middle Farmhouse, of banded brick and flint. Late 18th century. In places the brick courses are distinctly crooked, and the windows are all at slightly different levels.

From the edge of the village, onto the bridleway up onto the downs.


A narrow chalk track, washed very white by all the recent rain, and lined with green ivy, ferns and brambles.


Up on the downs. The very muddy downs. But from the widely spaced hoofprints in the grass, someone had been having a nice gallop.


Winterborne Houghton down in the valley.



A short stretch of lane up to High Lodge - one of the old lodges that used to guard the entrance to Milton Park - then across a field to some very dark and forbidding-looking woods.



Not a friendly path at first, with flint nodules trying to turn your ankles, and patches of slippery mud trying to take your feet out from under you. But this path soon joins a gravel forestry track, where the footing is good, and you can make good time.


Back on the Wessex Ridgeway long distance footpath again.




Charity Wood. A plantation of young beech trees.

Last time I walked this way, a few weeks ago, I managed to lose the Wessex Ridgeway footpath, and ended up wandering off into the fields. For a moment, I thought I had managed to lose it again...


... then I realised the waymarker was lying down on the job. This time I managed to follow the Wessex Ridgeway successfully all the way back down to Winterborne Stickland.

Comments

[greenwoodside]

Winterborne Stickland. Some village names make me so happy merely through their existence. Despite or because of the etymological wandering from sheep to stick.

I read FFtMC sixteen years ago, and should really revisit it since I have no recollection of the Yalbury Wood scene.

[puddleshark]

I love double-barrelled village names. We have so many of them round here. Sixpenny Handley has to be the best example of etymological drift - from Saxon Hill to Sixpence.

Same here. It's been a few years since I last read Far from the Madding Crowd, and I have forgotten the minor characters.

[greenwoodside]

Also,chalk tracks <3.

In the junk box of my brain, they're tagged as being as exotic as cicadas and tamarinds.

[puddleshark]

I've walked these chalk tracks all my life. It was only when I read Robert Macfarlane's wonderful chapter on them in The Old Ways that I realised how strange and magical they are.

It seems unlikely I will ever get to hear a cicada in real life, now the one UK species seems to have gone extinct. I must make do with listening to grasshoppers along the chalk tracks in summer...

[heleninwales]

Those old thatched cottages are so picturesque but are no doubt very expensive to maintain.

We did no walks last week and this week isn't looking promising with no opportunity until Thursday. I have a meeting tomorrow, Welsh chat on Wednesday (and G won't go for walks in the afternoon because he likes to take a nap) and on Tuesday we have to wait in for a new table that should arrive that day.

[puddleshark]

I love seeing thatchers at work, and the old traditions in action, but I don't think I would ever want to live in a thatched cottage!

It's hard when the days are so short. Just one appointment, and that's the whole day gone.