I’ve written these posts many months after walking the Ridgeway, so I’ll keep them succinct and maybe useful as a guide to anyone else planning the walk.

The Ridgeway has been used for over 5,000 years and is the oldest “road” in Europe. It stretches for around 90 miles (140 km) across southern England from Avebury in Wiltshire, to Ivinghoe Beacon in Buckinghamshire. It essentially follows high ground along ridges which has provided a dry path for travelers for centuries. At the suggestion of two very old friends, Mick and Paul, we walked it in six days, staying in pubs and guest houses along the route. We were traveling from different directions and meeting at Avebury. It was a pretty easy journey for me, with a train into London, a full English breakfast, then another train from Paddington to Swindon and finally a bus to Avebury.

Avebury is a tiny village in the middle of an ancient stone circle. The whole area is managed by the National Trust, and therefore obviously had a cafe for us to meet up in. We headed off through the stone circle, and towards Silbury Hill. This whole area is like a historic park, with three main neolithic sights. The stone circle and Silbury Hill date to 2400 BCE and West Kennett Long Barrow is older at 3600 BCE. We didn’t make a detour to the long barrow, as we were aware we had quite a long walk ahead of us.

The first section of the Ridgeway is exactly how I imagined the walk to be. Along the top of a chalk escarpment, with amazing views and we passed quite a few “white horses” carved into the hillsides. It must be said, that the Ridgeway is not the best way to view the carvings as you have to drop down hill to get a view. We only did that once. It was a perfect day walking, passing any number of interesting ancient earthworks and iron age hill forts.

The whole walk was remote and away from civilization, and we finished in Ogbourne St George which was the first village all day. We stayed in the The Well Guesthouse with a nice triple room with excellent food and beer, which was most welcome as we were all pretty tired.