Wiltshire Wirllwind tour

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The Wiltshire Whirlwind tour







Day 1..



The big day has finally arrived and I’m full of excitement for the day ahead but typically, I wanted the day off to spend three days travelling around Wiltshire but Salty Snacks needed their crisp delivered urgently, without fail and down in Andover Wiltshire. How I wanted to drive the lorry down there and park it up whilst travelling the fine and beautiful county then drive back Sunday, but I’m sure that would have been my last day driving lorries for them.



Once I had the car loaded and was headed towards my first port of call down many winding country lanes I spied in the distance my first of eight horses the Uffington white horse.



The oldest of all the white horses I’ll be seeing this weekend. Ok its in Oxfordshire, but I won’t tell if you don’t.



The Uffington white horse is a prehistoric hill figure dating back over 3000 years. And incorporates the Dragon hill and a castle. Well the area where a castle once stood and all that remains is a bank and ditch. It makes you wonder what the area was like round here 3000 years ago. The Uffington white horse is supposed to be the inspiration to all the other white horses around Wiltshire,



The Uffington white horse is formed from stylized curving lines some ten feet or less wide, and its length of around 365 feet makes it over twice as long as the longest of the Wiltshire horses. Whether it is indeed intended to represent a horse, or some other creature instead, has been debated, but it has certainly been called a horse since at least medieval times. A cartulary of the Abbey of Abingdon from between 1072 and 1084 refers to "the place commonly known as the White Horse Hill"



After reading up on everything there was to read, I decided to head back to the car, “I had given myself an average of an hour at each site, so I could fit everything in; in this rushed weekend.”



After what had been a long stretch of very warm weather the heavens decided to open up just as I got back to my car and listening to the news there was reports of flooding in Salisbury right near where I was planning on pitching my tent for the night.



As I drove through the rain religiously following my satnav and down more tiny winding country lanes to the Hackpen white horse about 18 miles away. I was thinking what a time to start raining. I’m not a fan of camping in the rain but I won’t have much choice this weekend.



I parked in the allotted carpark; this time for free as it was more like a bit of waste ground for fly tipping and then headed off to find the second horse of the day. To my surprise as I headed down the slope I noticed a group of people at the bottom of the hill in a campervan milling around, then I spotted a crop circle obviously made by aliens whom had come to visit the white horse earlier that day and the locals possibly complaining about the crops it had squashed.



Hackpen white horse is one of the more modern horses having been cut in 1838 by a Henry Eatwell, Broad Hinton parish clerk, perhaps with the assistance of the landlord of a local pub, to commemorate the coronation of Queen Victoria. That’s enough of the history lesson as I had to set off for my third white horse.



Broad town White Horse my third of the day was fortunately only 3 miles away but not the easiest to get to. After consulting the map, I worked out where the horse was hidden and started that way, it’s amazing how hard some of these horses are to get to and this wasn’t going to be an easy challenge. I could spy the horse in the distance and headed full of hope towards it but the closer I got the task ahead looked impossible and considering I was giving myself an hour per horse I had to ask a passing dog walker. It ended up I was coming to it from the wrong angle, so I got as close to it as possible took my photo and headed back to the car.



The Broad Town white horse is on land which once belonged to Little Town Farm. According to Rev. Plenderleath, writing in 1885, it was cut in 1864 by a William Simmonds, who held the farm then. Simmonds claimed later that it had been his intention to enlarge the horse gradually over the years, but he had to give up the farm and so did not have the opportunity.



The Fourth horse for the day was a massive 15 minutes away and presented me with a problem. To get from Broad town to Cherhill I had to drive through Avebury, one of my future visits. And close to Silbury hill and West Kennet Long Barrow. Should I quickly visit these or save them for the last day as planned. Luckily, I opted to keep to my plans.



Once I had parked the car in a nearby layby, within sight of Cherhill white horse I started on my travels This was planned as a circular route taking in both the Cherhill white horse and the nearby obelisk known as the Lansdowne Monument, which unfortunately you couldn’t get right up to due to scaffolding protecting us from falling masonry.



The Cherhill white horse is the second oldest of the Wiltshire horses. Very well placed high on a steep slope, the horse is easily visible from below and from a distance which makes it easy to photograph.



I was going to call it a day on my travels and head to the campsite, but I was ahead of my schedule and considering once there I’ve not got a lot to do apart from pitch my tent, cook my noodles, make a coffee and go to bed so I opted to visit one more white horse.



Devizes white horse (this being the new one as the old one had grown over and no longer visible), was about 10 miles away and not too far away from Stonehenge Touring campsite in <a name="_Hlk520450012"></a>Orcheston, Designed by Peter Greed, it was cut by around two hundred local people in 1999 to mark the millennium. It is on Roundway Hill to the north of Devizes, overlooking the village of Roundway. This horse is the only one in Wiltshire, and one of only four in Britain, to face to the right.



This turned out to be one of those white horses that can be seen from a distance but once there is hard to see; but considering my intention for this walk was to walk up to them, I decided to stick to my plan. As most white horses they tend to be on a steep slope which always makes it a hard walk, but I struggled on and ticked another white horse off my list, and hopefully not picking up any ticks whilst walking through the long grass or other biting insects.



That was the last visit of the day and getting late, so I headed wearily to the campsite for my noodles. Once through the formalities of booking in and being shown to my pitch I then disturb a few hundred tiny frogs whilst putting the tent up followed by a couple of well-earned beers.

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