Wiltshire in September

 

Tuesday September 20^th 2022.

Just a stolen two days between the Queen’s funeral and the scattering of an aunt’s ashes.

Looking at the road atlas for ideas for a mini-trip, our attention was drawn to an area we don’t know, to the west of Stonehenge and south of Devizes; it looks empty of settlements and roads – perhaps MoD land? Anyway, we’ll have a look. A larger-scale map will probably look less like The Empty Quarter!

We hastily piled the necessary baggage into the van and took off. It was a bright chilly morning with mists in the valleys. We stopped for our breakfast bowls of cereals on the northern edge of Dartmoor on Sourton Down. Dog walkers have found this place these days but we only saw empty parked cars on the chamomile-studded turf at the side of the track.

Sourton Down, north Dartmoor

A Robin was singing his soft autumn song from the nearby Hawthorns and a few Swallows were flitting low over the gorse.

Hawthorn roots exposed on eroding bank.

                      

                Chamomile at Sourton

We then got stuck into the drive, joining heavy traffic on the A303 going east. A light moment as we passed a small tanker with contact details for a tank-cleaning business on the back, and as we passed him, we saw painted on the side of his tank ‘TANK FULL OF POLITICAL PROMISES’

Our next stop, for mid-morning hot choc was a few hundred yards off the road along a field track in wide open rolling corn-land, all stubbles now. The discarded ears of wheat on the headland were very thin with sparse shrivelled grain, victim of the summer drought I expect.

Wide expanse of corn stubbles from track where we saw the SARUM marker stone.

Some years ago we walked further in along this track and came upon a marker stone inscribed SARUM,( I forget how many miles.) This must have been marking an old drove-way to Salisbury to the south. Old Sarum was a very early settlement, pre-dating the city of Salisbury a couple of miles away. On this earlier visit we saw a Corn Bunting singing his jangling ‘bunch of keys’ little song from a hedge bush. But this was many years ago. The hedge alongside the track has gone now, and so has the bunting.

We left the A303 at a turning for Wylie.     

and drove through this attractive village, and Lower Langford. The buildings here have an unusual wall style, with a chequered pattern of blocks of creamy chalk stone and alternating squares of a mix of rubbly chalk-stone and flint.

We were heading for a Wiltshire Wildlife Trust nature reserve outside Langford where the River Wylie gives onto a couple of large lakes. The River Wylie is a clear chalk stream flowing over gravel and is a renowned fishing river. It joins the River Avon at Salisbury.

Langford Lakes Nature Reserve

This season has a bountiful crop of berries and, a novelty for us on the acid land of Cornwall, were numerous lime soil-loving Dogwood bushes, their leaves turning rich dark red, and the track-side wild roses had lots of big plump hips. As kids in the war we were paid 6d a pound at the Town Hall. They were used for Vitamin C--rich Rose-hip Syrup for children. It seemed to take ages to pick a pound, so we’d have pounced with glee on these rich pickings!

Dogwood.

                                      Rose Hips

 The lakes were pretty quiet for bird-life, with a few Mallards, Gadwall and a pair of Tufted Ducks, all dominated by a great flock of Canada Geese roosting on the far shore. As we got nearer they took off in small groups and landed on a maize stubble just outside the Reserve and started feeding. A Cetti’s Warbler gave his abrupt burst of song from the reedy fringe of the lake.

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Waterworks at Langford Lakes.

A gang of men were working on reinforcing the lake margin, using a big tracked swing-shovel machine which seemed to float in the water.

Looking for a night-stop we drove up a small lane beyond Langford which led up into rolling chalk hills with stubbles and clumps of trees and bushes on the steeper grassy slopes. The lane ended at a Private Road and a rough track with a thick hedge alongside, which gave us a sheltered secluded spot to stop for the night.

First Night-stop

 A very big Buckthorn with a stout old trunk and plentiful black berries.

Buckthorn (Rhamnus catharticus)

The leaves are very similar to Dogwood and my mother taught me as a kid, how to tell the difference. If you carefully pull the leaf apart crossways, the veins of the Buckthorn break but leave the white fibre within the vein intact, if it is Dogwood.

A hollow-way led up past a grassy meadow onto the nearest hill and alongside a beech wood and bushes of Dogwood and big sprawling Juniper, smothered with berries, still small and green. The hillside grass was still spotted with a few flowers; chalkland species , again a novelty for us: Carline Thistle seed-heads and rosettes of Stemless Thistles, Pimpinella , Salad Burnet and Small Scabious.

Small Scabious.

A Gall, Robin's Pincushion, on Dog Rose.

The evenings are closing in earlier at this time of the year and we settled at eight to read for a time and soon made up the bed and had a long but reasonably peaceful night, disturbed only by a couple of gamekeepers as they drove past us up the private road, to see to their pheasants.

Wednesday Sep.21st

We awoke to another quiet, bright morning with a cloudless sky. We drove out after breakfast, slowly to avoid great numbers of Pheasants and Red-legged Partridges (‘Frenchmen’) which were making their way down from their release pens on the woodland on the hilltop, to the grassy pastures downslope and across the road in front of us. Shooting must be a big business here. The only other bird life we saw here were a pair of Stonechats, a Buzzard and a couple of Red Kites circling overhead.

Crossing the A303 we then drove north across the wide-open spaces of the road atlas, towards Chitterne in the middle of Salisbury Plain.

As we suspected, the road passed through big areas of MoD land with red flags, yellow-painted posts marking military crossing places and frequent notices saying No Admittance for Civilian Vehicles. A lot of it was tank training ground and we saw various shapes and sizes of dusty dull military vehicles driving on the tracks within the prescribed areas.

Area in red is the Imber Training area. The green line marks the permitted path. Access to the red area is prohibited to civilians.

This, the largest Army training area in Britain is notorious because of the compulsory eviction of the 100+inhabitants of the village of Imber. They were only given 47 days’ notice to be out. It was just before Christmas 1943 and despite assurances that they would be allowed to return after the war, this in fact has never happened, despite numerous protests, demonstrations and legal proceedings. Only burials are allowed in the graveyard of the Imber Church which was extensively restored a few years ago. The original houses have deteriorated to ruins now but replica houses have been built by the army for house-to-house combat training.

Pub in Chitterne. This shows the local wall building style with a  chequer pattern of blocks of chalk-stone alternating with flints.

The Imber Tank Range.

Just outside the prohibited zone we stopped in a bit of a car park and after some deliberation we went along a path onto tall neglected grassland in gently undulating country. It looked as if it had once been parkland as there were isolated clumps of biggish ornamental trees including Cedars, Pines and Copper Beeches. The grassland was cut up by flint-surfaced tracks and small paths through the tall plants. Vipers Bugloss, Wild Parsnip and yellow Melilot grew at the track side and we saw quite a few butterflies : Common Blues, Small Coppers and Brown Argus.

Track through the permitted 'buffer zone' beyond the MoD land.

A rather tattered Brown Argus basked in the sun.

There was a Clouded Yellow, and a few empty Burnet Moth cocoons shone on the grass stems, but the bird life was once again, very sparse, though we heard a Raven and Tony heard a Yaffle.

A party of solders walked past us about 50 yards to our left and soon after, we met a man walking his dogs. We stopped to chat and commented that we’d neither been shot nor thrown out by the soldiers and asked him about permission to walk there. He called this area, outside the MoD land, ‘Dry Ranges’ and civilians could walk on the tracks and paths. We assumed it was a sort of buffer zone and hopefully clear of any shooting or risk of stumbling on unexploded devices.

It was a very pleasant walk in idyllic weather and the butterflies were a treat.

Then on further north to Tilshead and then took a road running west.

We walked up a track where to the north we looked beyond the plain and to another well-wooded ridge with distant white horses carved out of the chalk. The one on the left we identified as the Westbury White Horse which we’d last visited when I was expecting Kim. We didn’t fix a location for the one further east.

Further on we drove up a narrow lane going south again onto the Plain, seeing various patterns of old strip fields or lynchets running round the contours of the hills.

The Lynchetts follow the contour. These are picked out by hedges, but more often they are just indicated by banks.

Hops

                                  Haws

Yet another walk up a flint-surfaced field track with good crops of hips and haws, sloes, buckthorn berries and swags of hops. We sat on a well-placed seat and looked out across the flat expanse of the Vale of Pewsey to the north. We looked down on the buildings and extensive playing fields of Dauntsey's School. this is a co-ed Public School in West Lavington.

Several acres on one side of the track had been sown with a bird-seed mix. It was all rather tall and 'gone over' although Chickory plants were still identifiable with their clear blue flowers. A big flock of about a hundred Goldfinches flew out of a hawthorn and circled repeatedly in a bouncing flight over the crop.

Looking towards Tinhead Hill Farm. Red Flags flying!

We spent the rest of the day exploring Tinhead Down, a high area of MoD Land with extensive stubbles, ungrazed grassland, areas of scrub and wood land and one or two clusters of very large farm buildings apparently devoted to grain and fodder storage and cattle sheds. There was no sign of dwellings. It is lovely walking country; no wonder it’s so popular with the local dog walkers. The tracks around the MoD land give fine access to great areas whereas ironically the other farmland still in private hands, has PRIVATE LAND> NO PUBLIC RIGHT of WAY’ notices on every gateway!

Tottenham Wood, beyond Tinhead Hill Farm, was laced with tracks and we walked among beech and sycamore trees, with bushes of elder and hawthorn and patches of self-seeded Ash saplings. 

The field opposite the wood had a carpet of what looked like rape, self-seeded from the previous crop. A ragged flock of Chaffinches flew up and down from the adjacent trees to feed among the seedlings. Constant patrols of Crows flying over them made them very restless and interrupted their meal.

Having eaten our evening meal we sat and gazed at the view and were surprised to see two very odd planes, like a cross between a helicopter and a small mono-plane with short stumpy wings. They reminded me of the ramshackle appearance of the war-time Flying Bombs which had very rough-sounding engines before they cut out, plunged to earth and blew up, whereas these planes sounded more like helicopters.

The morning after our second night stop was misty and with a heavy dew.

Next morning we had planned to walk a path which went along the side of the wood and then looped round through the long grass and back to where we were parked. However the mist and dew would have meant we wouldn't have seen any butterflies so we abandoned that plan and instead began a leisurely drive back to the A303 and on to Exeter and the South Hams for the family rendezvous.