History, Wildlife and Hamstrings

This week Julie went away for the long bank holiday weekend with husband, and support crew member, Jeff. So the remaining three of Jo, Gem & Gubbs decided to head for the South Downs again for some Trailwalker training... that was until we checked the forecast and decided that it looked a little drier West.  Jo & Gem found first hand last week that some of their waterproofs were not as waterproofed as they had hoped, so the idea of avoiding having to test them out again seemed like a good one.

Salisbury Cathedral

So a plan was hatched to hike the entire distance of the Clarendon Way, a 24 mile route starting at Salisbury Cathedral and ending at Winchester Cathedral.

Being pretty local we know that long stay car parking isn't cheap in the centre of Winchester so we left a car at the foot of St. Catherine's Hill (which featured on Jo & Julie's damp training walk back in early March) and headed for Salisbury.

We arrived at Salisbury just before 8am before any of the Saturday shoppers were out, so all was relatively quiet. We parked up, got kitted up, and headed for the Cathedral.

Salisbury Cathedral has the tallest spire in the country, contains the world's oldest working clock, and has the best surviving of the four original copies of the Magna Carta. Although there was no time for checking out all that history, we had walking to do.

We we set off from the Cathedral towards the main town which is where we'd follow the Clarendon Way East. We past the Saturday market in full swing and crossed a river on to a road which eventually ran into a track. Here we had left urban Salisbury behind us and could get into the full swing of our walk.

The remains of Clarendon Palace

Our first point of interest on the way out from Salisbury, are the ruins of Clarendon Palace, which sit in Clarendon Park. This is where the Clarendon Way get's it's name.

Clarendon Palace was once a royal residence and palace, these days though it just has the one wall of flint still standing above ground level, although you can see the foundations of the other flint walls. This is one that archaeology fan Julie would have loved.

We took some time here to read the information boards and walk around the ruins. To Gem's surprise when looking down on the Royal Courtyard she witnessed that it was now occupied by a pack of Llamas enjoying the lush grass. Cue photo opportunity...

Llamas at Clarendon Palace

We headed away from the ruins to the opposite end of the field, hoping to pick up the Roman Road path that would lead us towards our destination. As it turned out we realised had taken the wrong footpath forcing us to adjust our route.

We were a little distracted with the bluebells carpeted woodland and the yellow rapeseed fields. It was only when the map showed that we shouldn't be seeing yellow rapeseed fields at all, just the woodland, that we realised that we had our bearings a little out. We found the path again without too much hassle and moved on towards our first village of the day, Pitton.

Swings!

Here Jo & Gem took some rest time on the swings in a nearby park. Gubbs eventually got them off, reminding them that there was plenty of walking left.

The next village was West Winterslow, and as we approached we were met with loud calls from the crows sitting upon their nests in the trees overlooking the nearby Church.

We had struggled with the route between Pitton and West Winterslow. It seemed that we had been quite spoilt with the signage over the South Downs and we had come to expect the same quantity of signage on this walk too, but apparently this wasn't to be. Gubbs, today's navigator, had many map checking moments to ensure we were on track. The number of map checks probably caused a little anxiety for Gem & Jo, but Gubbs was keen to show the girls where we were on the map at every point. If nothing else it was to have someone else to blame when running off course.

The Church in West Winterslow

We reached Middle Winterslow and stopped for lunch. The route looked like we were supposed to be back on the Roman Road but the route we had been taking seemed a little too windy for a Roman Road, so we checked our phones to see our positioning using the GPS.

Where would we be without our smart phones?? ...probably Bournemouth as it turns out as we again were heading a little too South for this Easterly trail.

After getting back on track before leaving the village we found ourselves crossing the county boundary into Hampshire.

Now, we didn't get to a big sign saying 'Welcome to Hampshire' or anything, we just made some assumptions based on the signage. We can only assume Hampshire must have a bigger signage budget than Wiltshire. After moaning about the lack of signposts and arrow markers we were given more signposts and arrow markers than we really actually required.

A little further on in the path we hauled ourselves up a pretty nasty hill so we took a break at the top for some snacks and stretches. Unfortunately for Gem she threw her walking pole down on a patch of grass containing the only bit of dog poo lying around. Nice one Gem!

Time for soup

After cleaning off Gem's pole with a tissue and lots of anti bacterial gel, we headed on towards the next village of Broughton.

We then powered on to Houghton (a different one), crossing over the river Test and onwards to Kings Somborne, which contains some fantastic old cottages and houses. We stopped for some of Jo's delicious home made potato and leek soup (with added salt to replenish the stocks).

Onwards we went once more, this time knowing that the next sign of civilisation we would see would be the outskirts of Winchester.

The plaque at Farley Mount

There was plenty of walking to be done prior to that though. We climbed up up Beacon Hill (a different one), and reached Farley mount which is home to a monument for a horse. Yep, that's right a horse. But no ordinary horse as it turns out. That's right, this horse was special, for this 18th Century horse leaped into a 25ft chalk pit with it's rider still sitting on it's back during a fox hunt, and survived no less. The year later it won the Hunters Plate entered in the race with the name 'Beware Chalk Pit'. Nice touch.

...The strange things you find on these walks.

At the mount however the views were great, the sun had come out and we could get a good look to the South over Southampton, the Isle of Wight and our home town of Eastleigh.

Farley Mount

Anyway, this was now very close to Winchester, and after our mishaps with the navigation and also with the added walk from the car park to the Cathedral to start in Salisbury, we had already got to our 24 mile target. This and the fact that Gem's right hamstring was getting seriously tight (meaning she was using her walking poles almost as crutches!), meant that we made a change of plan to head straight to the car which was on the other side of Winchester, to the South, rather than go via the city centre to the cathedral. We had done the miles so we didn't want to anger our bodies any further.

The problem was Winchester had other ideas. Every time we thought we were getting closer, it seems like the city would move further away from us, the trek seemed to last forever on these last few miles.

Finally we got to the car on the edge of the river Itchen, after 28.35 miles and a total time of 11 hours 23 minutes.

Gubbs horsing around in the rapeseed field
(maybe he should concentrate on his navigation...)

All three of us have never walked as far or as long as this in a day, so we feel this was a real achievement, even if, it wasn't exactly planned on being as far.

We seem to have developed a knack of adding the miles when doing these training walks (especially when Gubbs is navigating, Jo & Gem are quick to point out).

We just hope we don't inadvertently add the extra miles on Trailwalker day.