The Ridgeway... backwards

It is early morning and already hot. It is early morning and snowflakes are getting in my face. It is early morning and there is a whiff of of cow parsley. It is early morning and the wind has stripped the trees.

Winter and summer, earth and sky, old and new. Walk this path over the course of a year and you will feel its long, thin, time-trodden world taking hold.

Here is dry chalk dust. Now, chalk mud clings to my boots. Here are golden leaves covering the route. Then it is white with snow: snow sticks to the ivy and to the bark alongside.

Golden leaves

We have tested every season on the Ridgeway. Each time the bare path shows itself, through grass, crops, rainwater, leaves or ice, like the white backbone of a beast in the ground, a white bone of chalk, curving, dipping, rising, rutted, smooth, enclosed, overlooking. How could we take a year to walk this way? How can we have walked it backwards?

White bone of chalk

The lockdowns kept us away. Even a plan to go once a month was too optimistic, so eight walks took us thirteen months.

And going backwards? Well, we followed a guidebook, and it described the Ridgeway from West to East, while we were taking it from East to West. To stick with the the book, we started each stretch at a point which should have been the end of the day's walk and traced our way back to the beginning. We put one foot in front of the other, as normal, but always reversing the route.

One foot in front of the other - Wendover Woods

Back to the beginning. That is where we were going. Not just walking backwards but thinking backwards, thinking back across the 5,000 years and more that people have been travelling along this path, travelling not one way, not once, but in both directions, whenever they needed to get somewhere, like ants who have found a route and just keep using it because it is the best one they know.

Look down on the rest of the world

Why did people go this way? It was high up, keeping to the spine of hills and downs which linked the rugged West Country, a land of tin and other minerals, with lower, flatter Eastern Britain. There was long-distance trade, of stone and metal, of tools, or jewellery; there was short-distance driving of animals; there were people simply moving from place to place. The ridges offered easier walking and felt safer. You could look down on the rest of the world.

Now we think of the Ridgeway as a back way, out of the way, a rough way, a trail. But then it was the fast route, the highway. There were no A roads or B roads or railways to nip down to at the end of the day's stroll, to escape home, and there were no homes in towns or cities to escape to.

People to walk with

I wonder how many people you would have seen as you wandered along. There were very few people on the island of Britain, probably fewer than 250,000 in total. For every 260 people crammed onto our island now, there was only one in the early Bronze Age, around 2000 BC. Earlier, when the first farmers were still using stone tools, the population would have been even smaller. There must be more people using the Ridgeway today than when it was a vital link so long ago. The difference is that, now, they are using it mostly for pleasure and sport rather than for the serious business of staying alive.

One day we ran into 4,000 hikers and runners swarming down the route for a sponsored event. At other times, when the weather set in, we could go for half an hour without seeing another soul. Perhaps the experience around 2000 BC would be somewhere in between. There would be shepherds and farmers, families and tinkers, passing every now and then, people to walk with for company and for safety.

Wayland's Smithy

I like to think that the Ridgeway, as well as a road, would have been a place to meet and talk. There were points to linger at: forts, settlements and grave sites. One of those was Wayland's Smithy, a Stone Age long barrow with more than a dozen graves from 5,500 years ago. People would have gathered here to meet or rest, just as they do now.

John's Café

Near Wayland's Smithy we stopped at John's Café, a caravan brought up near to the path. John had laid out a variety of old chairs and tables beside a pig field. We were the only ones there but on another day there might have been a crowd. Whatever age you are living in, travellers are going to need refreshment. There was an opportunity for John because the path, for most of its course, keeps to the high ground above and away from pubs and shops.

The high ground, looking towards Ivinghoe Beacon

We started at Ivinghoe Beacon, above Aldbury in the Chiltern Hills, or rather Ivinghoe was the end point of our first day once we had reversed the route. From there the Ridgeway traces the northern edge of the Chilterns before dropping down to the Thames and crossing it at Goring and Streatley. On the far side of the river you climb again, skirting the Berkshire Downs and staying high, past Lambourn and Marlborough. The final miles take you past the pre-Roman and Saxon strong point at Barbury Castle, down a wide valley dotted with lonely copses, to end in the cluster of pre-historic remains around Avebury Stones.

Wildflowers...

...brush your ankles...

...in sun and rain.

Since the first voyagers trod these paths, walkers and their animals have carried with them the seeds, spores and grubs which went on to flourish at the wayside. In spring and early summer the wildflowers brush your ankles and reach up to your shoulders; July is the time of orchids; come the autumn, fungi spread over Wendover woods and, on the Downs, tall desiccated flower stalks wave as you pass by.

Autumn fungi...

...and desiccated flowers

Colour, scent, excitement, the dark under the trees, the harsh light on the Downs, angry clouds scooting down with showers but just missing, the open views, the sight of the long chalky path ahead and behind. This is how you get paid back for turning out on cold mornings or for trudging in the heat. Sharing the walk and chatting are good as well, and the other people you come across: a Spanish physics professor walking his dog above Harwell, two men cheerily hiking the whole thing without a proper stop, just bivvying if necessary, a cyclist appearing out of a blizzard in shorts and saying 'It's fine as long as you keep moving'.

Winding paths

On the Ridgeway you regain an appreciation, easy to forget these days, of space and distance, and there is that feeling of walking back in time, back thousands of years.

There is something more, something to do with the way paths wind around our imaginations. The Ridgeway was never just one, defined path. In the old days there were numerous routes, exploring different lines around the same terrain. Viewed from the air they would have occupied a space hundreds of yards across. Even now there are choices.

Turning out on cold mornings

You think your path will take you straight. The views, the stop-offs, the fixed itinerary, the stories you tell and pick up, they will be plain and predictable. Then, as you move, the ruts criss-cross and double up; everything gets mixed up and the mind wanders too. There are surprises, confusion, discoveries, new thoughts wrapping round the old. We get glimpses of different pasts and maybe find some forward glimpses, of how the future might be or how we would like it to go.

On our last day an icy storm moves in from the North. It is November. We think of postponing the walk, in case of a white-out, but decide to press on. The wind is gusting and knocking down branches. Then the snow arrives, covering the hedgerows and plastering up the signs.

Plastering up the signs

We have seen this route in every weather. I suppose that has been a benefit of the delays caused by the lockdowns. Another is that the walking days had to be spaced out so much that you yearned for the next one; you feared that you might not complete the course.

For once we are going the right way, forwards to the finish.

The wind drops and the snow melts

As we descend towards Avebury, the wind drops and the snow melts. A huge orange sun occupies a stripe of space between the Downs and the remaining cloud. Orange burns through the black trunks of a stand of trees. It is nearly time to take out the torches.

At the end there is a line of burial mounds leading down to a former stone circle, known as the Sanctuary. A teenage boy was buried here around 2300 BC, a boy of the Bronze Age. He had travelled a long distance, much further than the Ridgeway could have brought him, from Northern Britain or possibly France. Our walk has been a short one, compared to his.

The track widens as it nears the road. There are caravans parked and people crossing from one to the other carrying food and drink. They are living here, not on holiday. On one side are pre-historic tumuli and, on the other, families who have set up a temporary home. In between, the Ridgeway goes on, ever old, ever new.

New life: orchids in July

PS

The next day we drive over to Devizes, where the Wiltshire Museum has an exhibition of paintings by Eric Ravilious. They call him the Downland Man, because of his watercolours and prints of the Downs, both here and near Eastbourne, where he grew up. You can see that he understood the landscape and especially the chalk paths. You could be looking at the Ridgeway but, no, it is another route. It suggests that one day we should try the South Downs Way.