King Alfred's Way part 3 - from the ranges to the Ridgeway

Keen to complete the KAW by the end of the year, I booked my ticket from Clapham Junction to Westbury for an early Friday train in July.

I needed to be back in London by Saturday lunchtime, so decided to cap the distance at under 100k., and get a train back from Didcot. That turned out to be sensible, because the route had nearly 1500m of climbing. Here's the gpx file

COURSE_286959146_kaw_westbury-didcot.gpx

Download GPX • 223KB

I trundled down to the station under pretty grey skies - but luckily the rain didn't materialise. It's a two hour journey that seems to call at almost every station on the way.

The climbing starts almost immediately - back up onto Salisbury Plain. The red flags were up, so definitely no sneaking into the range area this time.

The Imber Range path is pretty well used - and in places I think it's a BOAT - Byway Open to All Traffic - so the 4WD enthusiasts have created deep ruts that are just too narrow and catch your pedals. The other really obvious point I should mention is that the combination of heavy rain and sunshine over the last few weeks meant that everything, and I mean everything had grown like topsy. Head high beds of nettles. Grasses waist high. You get the picture.

But on the upside, the colours of the flowers on the plain are simply glorious. Purple heather; blue cornflowers and poppies of the deepest scarlet. Add a scrap of blue sky, countless butterflies - and the kilometres passed by just like that.

For me, it's what bikepacking should be all about. A chance to switch of and reconnect.

I had the trail almost entirely to myself - passing just a couple of other cyclists also doing the KAW bit by bit. Navigation is mostly pretty easy - with just a couple of moments of indecision.

After Salisbury Plain you drop into the Vale of Pewesy and the village of Avebury. The latter is a pretty place with a large stone circle slap in the middle of it. As you might expect it's a popular spot - both with overseas visitors and more mystic Brits! More importantly it has a big National Trust centre - where the friendly staff are more than happy to help you refill your water bottles. From there it's onto the Ridgeway.

Widely recognised as England’s oldest road, this beautiful, prehistoric trail stretches over 87 miles from Overton Hill near the Avebury World Heritage site in Wiltshire to Ivinghoe Beacon in Buckinghamshire. The views off it looking north are amazing

and as you'd expect it's crammed with history. You cycle right past Liddington Castle - a huge Iron Age fort, Wayland's Smithy, Uffington Castle and Grim's Ditch - another Iron Age earthwork. The Ridgeway was a herepath and it's not hard to imagine the Anglo Saxon fyrd legging along it to deal with Vikings.

Under tire is a combination of chalk, flint nodules and the occasional gravel section, As earlier watch out for deep ruts. Despite all the rain we had in June, 95% of the route was pretty dry - but I imagine that in any kind of rain you'd be crawling along sticky gloop. But even with dry condition after 56 miles I was pooped. Looking at the OS map and googling I could see that just 3k off the ridge was a pub - the Greyhound. But it was 7.45 pm and although the thought of a pint and a big bag of crisps was very, very tempting - I reluctantly decided to push on and get a bit closer to Didcot. It has rooms too, so a smarter cycler might decide that a hot shower and a decent bed are more appealing than a hard stone floor.

Which is where I ended up at ///confined.hoops.small. To add to my collection of weird places to sleep I chose a memorial to Baron Wantage at 95k. Just before there though, I passed what looked like a mash up of a festival and a barracks. Rows of colourful banners and small tents. This turned out to be the basecamp of the Ridgeway Ultramarathon - the race to the stones being held over the weekend. And people think I'm mad.......

But back to my bivvy at ///confined.hoops.small. This is a large monument erected to commemorate Baron Wantage by his wife. War hero and co-founder of what became the British Red Cross, he was clearly quite some person.

But more importantly as far as I was concerned, the memorial has fantastic views; a solid flat base; steps you can sit on and ledges to stow your gear. All in all, it was an unexpectedly great place to kip.

Saturday dawned, and it was a pretty simple coast downhill to Didcot. In fact it was so easy, I had to wait over an hour for my booked train. GWR has so few bike spaces and insists on booking - hardly a way to improve the take up of non-car travel surely. And the actual spaces are actually too small for my Orange P7. But that's by-the-by I guess, It was a great traip and there's only 100k left of the KAW to complete. As is customary, here's the video. If you like this blog or these videos please let me know and feel free to share. Thanks.