Salisbury Plain
Having had a look at the western side of Salisbury Plain last September (see blog) we decided to explore the eastern side this year:
Thursday June 29th 2023
Got off to a stuttering start as we had to turn back from Polhilsa to get forgotten wine(!!) road atlas and Ordnance Survey map of Salisbury Plain! Started again at 7.35 on a fairly sunny and quiet morning. Quick breakfast on Sourton Down and then on in fairly heavy but moving traffic to the Old Sarum track near Cricklade and here we pulled off for our mid-morning drinks.
I strolled along the old track and thanks to my newly-serviced hearing aids, I could hear skylarks singing on both sides. Lovely! The first I’ve been able to hear for years.
It was all corn here, with a grassy strip along the track but largely False Oat and Perennial Ryegrass so not very interesting for flowers.
Where the road passed Stonehenge on the near-skyline, the traffic seemed to slow down to look.
There was a definite bottleneck along here. The crowds of adorers were already lined round the fence, gazing. What a contrast to our first visit back when we were students in the mid 50s. Then we had the place to ourselves in moonlight, with no fence so we could wander among the giant stones.
A Red Kite circled over the road near Cricklade.
We turned off at the Amesbury turning, went left in Bulford, crossing the Hampshire Avon, smallish and murky-looking here, and looked at the rather indistinct bank of Durrington Wall and then passed a car park for Woodhenge and I expect, access to walk over to the remains of Durrington Wall. Several dog walkers, picnickers and people wandering around the stumps of Woodhenge.
We’d ‘done’ all this years ago with the kids so this time we went on, though we couldn’t find our way through the Larkhill military base so retraced our steps and passed the dumpy but attractive flint church of St Leonard’s in the outskirts of Bulford. Here the village is outside the military barracks etc so our navigation didn’t get tangled up.
We headed north on farmland using tracks marked as ‘Byways, open to all vehicles’. We stopped in the side of a field along a thickly-hedged track (Hawthorn, Willow, Wayfaring Tree, Dog Roses. Sloe, some sort of wild Plum, a lot of arborescent Ivy, wild Privet, Elder,) with skirts of heavily flowering Bramble and Greater Knapweed, Field Scabious, St Johns-wort, tall Ladies Bedstraw, Vipers Bugloss, Bladder Campion, Calamint, Agrimony, Broomrape, Teazel, White Campion, Wild Carrot…..
Vipers Bugloss
Greater Knapweed
Ladies Bedstraw
Mignonette
There was a Comma butterfly feeding on the Bramble flowers, several Meadow Browns and a Marbled White.
Marbled White butterfly.
There were wide uncut rough grassy strips alongside the tracks which were going past, as we drove north, mostly grassland rather than arable, with a lot of cut and carted hay and a few big herds of cattle, either yearlings or cows with calves of assorted breeds. Areas of bushy ground, some lengths of hedges in places and quite a few deciduous plantations of largely Beech trees. We were seeing the odd small birds along the way : one family of Whinchats, occasional Linnets and a few Corn Buntings; we saw two or three Red Kites and biggish flocks of Rooks were feeding on the grass re-growth following the hay cut. Skylarks were singing everywhere.
Whinchat, showing strong white stripe above the eye.
Corn Bunting singing his jangling little song from the top of bushes.
We were enjoying the sun and the wide open vistas. A cutting where the track exposed a chalky slope gave a good selection of chalkland flowers: Dropwort, Squinancywort, Wild Thyme, abundant Pyramidal Orchids, Mignonette, Kidney Vetch.
Pyramidal Orchids, to be found growing on chalk or limestone soils.
Very little traffic: the odd farm pickup, a couple of cyclists who told us we were on the Old Marlborough Road, and a few armoured transports in army training. Red flags were flying and various notices said keep to the tracks, don’t touch unexploded armaments etc but we weren’t actually kept out anywhere along the criss-crossing tracks and the access seemed better marked and more open than we’d found last September on the western side of the plain.
Red 'danger' flags flying and notices to warn us from picking up metal as it may be unexploded armaments.
Towards the end of the afternoon in warm sun, the flowers in the uncultivated strips at the sides of the tracks seemed a magnet for nectaring butterflies. One single Greater Knapweed plant had 9 Marbled Whites, as many Meadow Browns and THIRTY TWO!! Small Skippers all busily nectaring and a nearby Vipers Bugloss had over forty Small Skippers feeding!
We passed a slope with faintly discernable lynchetts, marked on the map as ‘field systems’, and then pulled off for the night up another side track (with a Roe Deer) off the main N-S one and after evening meal, a short stroll with a hare lolloping down the track ahead of us, we settled down to a good and peaceful night.
Night stop at side of track.
Salisbury Plain is said to be the largest area of chalk grassland remaining in northern Europe, and has over 2000 prehistoric sites. Over 500 of them are protected but such are the distances and the effects of ploughing over the centuries, the visible traces of tumuli and banks and ditches are usually hard to discern.
Friday 30th June 2023
Up by 8 after a good night and the routine drive-past by a farmer in a pick-up, we headed first for an area marked as Weather Hill on the map, with several earthworks shown, though they were scarcely seen on the ground. This place was more popular with a few dog walkers who had driven down the Old Marlborough Road to walk in the plantation on Weather Hill.
It was overcast this morning with more NW wind and we decided to make our way south to the A303 following the Hampshire Avon and the string of villages along it on a side road on the eastern side of the valley rather than the main road, A345, which went up the western side of the river. Our chosen route enabled us to pull off and go up various tracks back onto the plain as we wished.
So after running down the very steep-sided Rowdens Cleeve off the plain, we joined the valley at Upavon where the two main forks of the sources of the river join.
The Hamspshire Avon (to differentiate this Avon from the several other rivers of the same name in Britain.)
There seem to be river crossings at most of the villages, either originally fords or modern refurbished bridges constructed for tanks and armoured vehicles, all with plenty of notices of ‘one vehicle at a time’ speed limit of 5mph, vehicle commanders to dismount and wave the vehicles through etc. We dismounted at most of the crossings too, to gongoozle the fish, the weeds, and in one place, a Water Vole swimming rapidly across the river quite near us. The water didn’t look as crystal-clear as the French rivers of that size, but there were quite a few patches of water-weed and very long trails of a Water Crowfoot with big white flowers. We saw only one Beautiful Demoiselle but we blamed the rather dreary weather.
The villages looked wealthy, select and a lot of picturesque thatch and white with black beams and colourful gardens. Not a camp-site in sight for the hoi-polloi!
We went up one side track back up onto the plain past the evocatively-named Gallows Barrow (no help from Google to explain!) past one of several derelict farms we’ve seen on this eastern side. I wonder if the extensive MoD land taken by the Army airfield at Upavon and the big RAF one at Netheravon accounts for this?
We had lunch and T’s snooze up there and then went back down to Bulford as I wanted to look in the flint church there. It was locked unfortunately. Very little about it on Google, just that it was 12th Century with north extension added later and a tower which was later taken down as it was seen that its foundations were dodgy.
St Leonard's Church, Bulford.
We then joined pretty heavy traffic going west, with several long and tedious crawls, eventually getting home about half past six. It was raining by then.
Each way was about 176 miles.
A good and interesting trip with no problems and decent weather.
No comments:
Post a Comment