pootler.co.uk routes

The text and routes in these mapping apps are based on content in my blog where you can find the updated versions of the routes and notes on the landscape, history and things to watch out for. Link www.pootler.co.uk. This is a pleasant, peaceful and undemanding route. Starting from Oxford Station, there is a short climb out of the town and the road into and out of Oxford is busy. Thereafter it is ride along mostly minor roads in flat, arable countryside in the Thames and Windrush valleys. It visits the market towns of Eynsham and Witney before turning south across the flat clay farming landscape of the Thames Valley, to cross the river at Tadpole Bridge. From there is a climb of around 35m onto the Golden Ridge, which separates the modern Thames Valley from the Vale of the White Horse and which you follow back towards Oxford. Zooming In Highlights are: The flat vistas and wide skies of the Thames Valley. Historic and handsome Eynsham and Witney. The villages and views across the Valley from the Golden Ridge Stanton Harcourt and the Devil’s Quoits, now ‘restored’ A diverse collection of heroes and villains. The word ‘diverse’ is not loosely used here. In researching this tour I came across Old Nick, the Patron Saint of Bicester, King George 111, a Grand Prix driver and ‘ex’ of Fergie, King Cnut, Brian May from 'Queen', Tom Yorke from 'Radiohead' and sadly, the Colditz escapee who became a Tory Minister before being assassinated by the IRA and the expert of biological weapons who was found dead in mysterious circumstances in the run up to the Iraqi invasion.    On the blog, there are detailed notes on waypoints and things to see. If your mapping app has not imported these, use this link to go directly to the blog post of the route. I hope these will be more entertaining than the links to dry Wikipedia articles dredged up as POI’s by the mapping apps’ software robots. This cannot give you the exact location for each waypoint but it many cases you won’t need it and at least the information will be up to date! Link : Pootler Route Zooming Out The countryside of the Thames Valley to the west of Oxford is mostly riverine clay sitting on a bed of chalk. There are exceptions; for instance Witney sits on Cornbrash, the dry limestone rubble soil that corn thrives on. The Golden Ridge is Corallian Limestone, younger than most of the Cotswold stone and made of the crushed remnants of coral reefs. You can see it there in the beautiful honey-coloured stonework on the older houses. It used to be famous for its roses. And look out for fossils! As you might expect given that this isn’t far from the Stone Age wonderland that is Wiltshire, the area has been occupied for a long time. One legacy is the Devil’s Quoits, near Stanton, which are a Neolithic Henge. Now, following centuries of enclosures, it is a classic ‘planned’ and ‘improved’ landscape with large rectangular fields, drainage, straight(ish) roads, scattered farmsteads and comparatively few footpaths. Witney still has a medieval layout but was something of an industrial centre once, taking wool from the Cotswolds with fulling mills running on water power from the Windrush and easy access to London by road. Blankets made there became famous and prized around the world, used in Nelson’s navy and strapped to cowboy’s saddles. They even have an exhibition dedicated to them! Context is all, and on the blog you will also find posts on the rich and complicated human and topographical history of the area as a whole, ranging from the early occupation, the changing agricultural landscape, the geomorphology of the chalk country, the buildings and anything else that moves me. Link Pootler : Other Stuff Route Tips If your app provides notes on the road surfaces etc. keep in mind that they are automatically generated and only as good as the underlying mapping. In this case the whole tour is on road and should present no problems. Believe no other. So my main tip is, if you want to eat at the Trout on Tadpole Bridge, take your gold card.

The text and routes in these mapping apps are based on content in my blog where you can find the updated versions of the routes and notes on the landscape, history and things to watch out for. Link www.pootler.co.uk. Rothschildshire is not a name I made up. It is often used to describe the Aylesbury Vale. The paw marks of the extended banking dynasty are all over it and this is a tour around the fabulous mansions they built here. You pass 7 in all! Starting from Wendover, it heads north across the River Thame and through Eyethrope Park to Waddesdon, the greatest pile of all. Think, the Adams Family win the Lottery. Then it heads west, going through lovely Quainton en route to Wing where it turns south past crumbling Mentmore before returning to Wendover via Tring along roads between the Chilterns Scarp and the Wendover Arm of the Grand Union Canal. It is mostly flat and on-road with a few undemanding climbs. The exception is at Eythrope See ‘Route Tips’ below. Zooming In Highlights are: The Rothschild Mansions. 7 of them! Eyethrope, Waddesdon, Ascott, Mentmore, Tring, Aston Clinton & Halton. Tring Natural History Museum. Old school & none the worse for it. The Buckinghamshire Railway Centre. Rail geek heaven. Quainton a lovely and interesting stop. The George & Dragon is a great pub AND cafe! The site of the Great Train Robbery in 1963. A good story. A WW2 secret weapons lab. A site once seriously (but ludicrously) mooted for a 3rd London Airport.  The usual assortments of oddities. NB. Of the mansions, Waddesdon charges for entry, Ascott is National Trust, Tring is now an offshoot of the Natural History Museum, you can get close to Halton & Mentmore with some judicious trespassing, Eyethrope isn’t public and Aston Clinton is just a memory. Legend has it that the mansions at Waddesdon, Tring and Mentmore were sited so that they could be seen by each other. . There are detailed notes on waypoints and things to see which I hope will be more entertaining than the links to dry Wikipedia articles dredged up as POI’s by the mapping apps’ software robots. If your mapping app has not imported these, use this link to go directly to the blog post of the route. This cannot give you the exact location for each waypoint but it many cases you won’t need it and at least the information will be up to date! Link : Pootler Route   Zooming Out Much of the route is across the flat, clay landscape of the Aylesbury Vale. The exceptions are the rocky outcrops around Waddesdon and Quainton which are capped with limestone Basically, all sedimentary rocks and deposits, but laid down under different conditions. The Aylesbury Vale is the valley of the River Thame. You might wonder how such a small river cut such a wide valley. The answer is thought by some to be that this was one of the routes of the ancestral Thames, before Ice Age glaciation diverted it through the Goring Gap to its present course. The clay is its legacy. For a long time, light ploughs meant that clay wasn’t easy to far, so the heart of the vale wasn’t a densely populated area. It still isn’t even though mechanisation has solved the problems. Compared with now, much more land was once devoted to sheep rearing. In contrast the land adjacent to the river offered loamy soil and meadowland; and the land below the Chilterns scarp was rich and fertile, blessed with streams and access to the higher ground of the Chilterns for grazing. As a result it was densely populated with a string of towns villages. Tring and Wendover are examples. But while the local agricultural economy in most places did well in the centuries immediately after the Norman Conquest, it went sharply into reverse later in the 1300’s as the climate cooled, soils were exhausted and crop failures were followed by the Black Death at a time when England was almost constantly at war. Recovery took a century or more during which labour shortages led to rising incomes and a shift towards less labour-intensive pastoral farming, with an even greater emphasis on sheep, the profitability of can be seen in places in the quality of the Churches. And people started investing in the their property. Many of the oldest houses that you see today were the result of this ‘Great Rebuilding’. Those enclosures were the next major event in the landscape. Early on, they were locally organised. Later, they could be enforced by an Act of Parliament and the process continued into Victorian times. The impact was most marked in the Vale, where the old system of open fields was gradually eradicated and replaced by a ‘rationalised’ layout, with straight access routes and field boundaries. The early story was a bit more complicated on the high ground around Quainton, which had been part of the woodland patchwork of the Bernwood Forest, but even there the field pattern on the south and western slopes is very regular. The result of the troubled 1300’s, the need to adapt to the changed economic and social circumstances that followed it, and enclosures, meant that many marginal hamlets and villages shrank or disappeared and some were simply and intentionally obliterated. The sites of several near the route are marked on the 1:25000 OS maps. The Rothschilds are the legendary Jewish uber-financiers, the Rockefeller's of the Victorian era, accused by both left and right wing conspiracy theorists of manipulating markets and even fomenting wars for personal gain. Some still believe that they secretly control the global economy, presumably from rural Buckinghamshire where many of the family lived (and several still live). Do they deserve their reputation? To my mind, while they were undoubtedly unscrupulous capitalists, there is more than a whiff of antisemitism in all this. Check the (much more detailed!) Waypoint notes and admire the philanthropy tenacity and eccentricity that decorates their uber-capitalist reputations. On the blog you will also find posts on the rich and complicated human and topographical history of the area as a whole, ranging from the early occupation, the changing agricultural landscape, the geomorphology of the chalk country, the buildings and anything else that moves me. At Link: Pootler / Other Stuff Route Tips If your app provides notes on the road surfaces etc. keep in mind that they are automatically generated and only as good as the underlying mapping. The estate road at Eyethrope Park has been blocked, supposedly on a temporary basis. You might need to use one of two adjacent ‘right of way’ footpaths for a few hundred metres. Check you map. One is gated, the other longer.. When I am aware that this has changed, I will update the waypoint note on the blog. Also, check online for information on roads temporarily closed to facilitate HS2 works.

The text and routes in these mapping apps are based on content in my blog where you can find the updated versions of the routes and notes on the landscape, history and things to watch out for. Link www.pootler.co.uk. The route starts from Knebworth Station and then runs clockwise to the east of Stevenage, on quiet, gently undulating roads around the East Hertfordshire Plateau. (You could as easily start from Stevenage, if you don’t mind the town traffic!). It crosses the River Rib and (Roman) Ermine Street at Buntingford and beyond that follows the River Quin south to Braughing, before turning West to return to Knebworth via Stapleford. This was another part of territory of the Catuvellauni until the Romans arrived and turned their oppidum at Braughing into a town which for a while vied in importance with St Albans. There is little t o see of it now; and the varied landscape is a microcosm of the changes in the agricultural and village landscape since Medieval times. Zooming In Highlights are: The post mill in Cromer. You won’t see many of those! Locations used in the 2005 film of 'Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Arthur Dent's house and the local pub, where he is drinking when the planet is blown up. A hamlet named 'Nasty'. You can guarantee that name wasn't invented by estate agents. (There is also a hill called Bummers!) Buntingford, where the High Street is a Roman Road and (it is claimed) became England’s first turnpike. A cornucopia of ancient and listed buildings. The churches at Walkern, St Wydial, Buntingford and Braughing are rated 'Grade 1' and (catering to my own religion), Braughing has a Grade 2* listed boozer, the Brown Bear And gratuitous oddities. On the blog there are detailed notes on waypoints and things to see ,which I hope will be more entertaining than the links to dry Wikipedia articles dredged up as POI’s by the mapping apps’ software robots. If your mapping app has not imported these, use this link to go directly to the blog post of the route. This cannot give you the exact location for each waypoint but it many cases you won’t need it and at least the information will be up to date! Link: Pootler Route Zooming Out This is chalk country but that is usually only seen where the plateau has been dissected by a river. Elsewhere it is covered, mostly by boulder clay, first deposited and then diced, sliced and scoured through aeons of glaciation and erosion. In the valleys, more fertile loamy soils facilitate intensive arable farming. In the Iron Age, the Belgic 'Catuvellauni' tribe took over the area from the Trinovantes and built an 'Oppida' or stronghold at Braughing, which is on this route and which later developed into a lively, commercial Roman settlement covering some 15 ha. To picture it, think of a settlement of timber houses built around a few streets, with a few brick or stone public buildings such as a baths. Only a little further south, at Puckridge, was the intersection of Stane Street, Ermine Street and other major roads, all part of the system that started with the Appian Way in Rome and revolutionised European transport. There is nothing to see now, but Braughing is regarded as one of the most important archaeological sites in Hertfordshire.  The current pattern of settlement and cultivation began with the Saxons. One of the early tribes were known as the Brahingas who gave their name to Braughing. The villages are stuffed full of Listed Buildings and old churches. Some of the latter have Saxon origins traces of the latter See Link: Listed Buildings in Herts Beyond that the main legacy is in the faded patterns of ditches, fields and tracks in what experts define as 'ancient' countryside with villages, isolated farms and hamlets, narrow lanes and very old hedgerows; a pattern of settlement thought to have been created by 'assarting', or the clearance of forests, in the 12th & 13th century. Forests apart, the area has always been relatively densely settled. Braughing’s decline as an administrative centre compared to St Albans started very early on, and in the Medieval era it must also have been eclipsed by places like Ware, with its access to the navigable River Lea. Like most places, the agricultural population and economy would have grown in the centuries immediately after the Norman Conquest. The 1300’s brought a sharp reversal as the climate cooled and crop failures were followed by the Black Death at a time when England was almost constantly at war. If there is once century to avoid on your time travels, this might be it! There are several abandoned villages hereabouts. Recovery took a century or more during which labour shortages led to rising incomes and a shift towards less labour-intensive pastoral farming, mainly sheep. People started investing in the their property and many of the oldest houses that you see today were the result of this ‘Great Rebuilding’.   On the blog you will also find posts on the rich and complicated human and topographical history of the area as a whole, ranging from the early occupation, the changing agricultural landscape, the geomorphology of the chalk country, the buildings and anything else that moves me. At Link: Pootler / Other Stuff Route Tips If your app provides notes on the road surfaces etc. keep in mind that they are automatically generated and only as good as the underlying mapping.This is a road tour and I have never had a problem on it.

The text and routes in these mapping apps are based on content in my blog where you can find the updated versions of the routes and notes on the landscape, history and things to watch out for. Link www.pootler.co.uk. This route mostly uses minor roads to tour the Eastern Cotswolds, an area lived in and loved by well-to-do ‘nobs and yobs’. It takes in some lovely countryside, chocolate box villages, sights to see and some political and celebrity gossip. It starts from Charlbury on the River Evenlode and runs northwards through higher ground to Chipping Norton before crossing a river valley to visit the famous Rollright Stones. From there it continues through Hook Norton, home of the eponymous brewery, and Great Tew, the epicentre of the rural celebrity wonderland. From there, it turns south and generally downwards, back through Stonesfield and the along the Evenlode Valley to return to Charlbury. The hills are numerous but not steep. There is one small but irritating stretch of off-road. See the Route Notes at the end of this summary. Zooming In Highlights are: David Cameron’s house, the location of the notorious ‘kitchen suppers’. Chipping Norton, with its relics of old industry and a surprising new one. The petrified Kings / Rollright Stones neolithic monument Hook Norton’s quaint old brewery. And lovely beer. The Dorn River Valley, home of ‘Butlin’s for Toffs’ and Top Gear. The usual sprinkling of oddities. On the blog, there are detailed notes on waypoints and things to see. If your mapping app has not imported these, use this link to go directly to the blog post of the route. I hope these will be more entertaining than the links to dry Wikipedia articles dredged up as POI’s by the mapping apps’ software robots. This cannot give you the exact location for each waypoint but it many cases you won’t need it and at least the information will be up to date! Link Pootler Route Zooming Out The bedrock here is typically Oolitic Limestone, a stone formed from small ball-shaped 'ooliths' (or egg stones), stuck together by lime mud and formed when calcium carbonate is deposited over sand grains on a shallow sea floor. This would have happened some 150m or more years ago in the Jurassic period. It is rich in fossils but in many places and in particular around the valleys, the limestone is buried under a thick layer of clay. If you want to know more about that check this link: Cotswold Landscape As you would expect the landscape was folded, dissected by rivers, eroded and generally mucked about a lot in subsequent eras as this part of the earth's crust enjoyed a world cruise while the climate changed on a scale that dwarfs our present pre-occupations. If you are interested there is a proper description here: Link: Cotswold Geology This area is generally good farming country. One particularity of the Cotswolds is Cornbrash, a loose rubble soil which forms on limestone and apparently provides a nice place to grow corn. This is described by the Oxford Geology Group as “bioclastic wackestone and packstone with sporadic peloids; generally and characteristically intensely bioturbated and consequently poorly bedded”. So, if anyone asks you, now you know. The area has deep history. Stone Age people left their 'barrow' graves all over the place. The Rollright Stones, which are on the route, straddle both the stone and bronze ages and also lie on a network of Roman roads which are still followed in many places today. Throughout, sheep farming was a major activity even though the southern part of the ride was originally within the boundary of the Wychwood Forest. It suffered along with everywhere else from the travails of the 1300’s but thereafter played in a big part in the medieval wool trade. The enclosures were the next major cause of change in the landscape. These started out being organised locally but later on could be arranged through an Act of Parliament The process continued into Victorian times. But the landscape (and the views of much of the populace) didn’t lend itself to the sweeping imposition of rationalised pattern of large rectangular fields and straight roads found in the wide valleys, and while there is evidence remains refreshingly varied. Ethnologically, this remote area is now inhabited by the 'Toffs' tribe who don't have much communication with modern society and who are of great interest to sociologists, anthropologists, gossip columnists and paparazzi. ‘Clarkson’s Farm’ (which is close Dave Cameron’s farm on the route but is not on it) is not on a direct line of descent from the rural forefathers! On the blog you will also find posts on the rich and complicated human and topographical history of the area as a whole, ranging from the early occupation, the changing agricultural landscape, the geomorphology of the chalk country, the buildings and anything else that moves me. Link Pootler : Other Stuff Route Tips If your app provides notes on the road surfaces etc. keep in mind that they are automatically generated and only as good as the underlying mapping. The only problem you might wish to avoid here is a short stretch of Woodland footpath after you have left Great Tew and crossed the River Dorn. The minor road runs out beyond the airfield. I reckon the ‘views’ make it worth the walk! If you don’t, there are easy alternatives. Consult your map.  

The text and routes in these mapping apps are based on content in my blog where you can find the updated versions of the routes and notes on the landscape, history and things to watch out for. Link www.pootler.co.uk. The gossamer thin trainspotter rationale of this route is to follow the long-abandoned extension of the Metropolitan Line beyond Aylesbury to its termination at Verney Junction near Buckingham. You will see work on its rather more expensive 21st century substitute as you go. It is an easy ride on a clockwise route on quiet roads from Haddenham & Thame Parkway Station, through pleasant, gently undulating, but generally unremarkable arable and pastoral countryside. There are a couple of ridges to cross in the first few miles and a short but steep climb of 40m or so after you have crossed the A41 at Waddesdon on the return leg. Also the estate road in Eyethrope Park has been temporarily closed, see the Route Notes below. Zooming In Highlights Include: The home of ‘Spaghetti Trees’. Playing detective to spot what remains of the abandoned stations. (Often not much!) The Buckinghamshire Railway Centre. Rail geek heaven. The home of Henry V111’s favourite saint and inventor of the Jack in a Box. Eyethrope – A Rothschilds ‘garden’. The usual assortments of oddities. There are detailed notes on waypoints and things to see which I hope will be more entertaining than the links to dry Wikipedia articles dredged up as POI’s by the mapping apps’ software robots. If your mapping app has not imported these, use this link to go directly to the blog post of the route. This cannot give you the exact location for each waypoint but it many cases you won’t need it and at least the information will be up to date! (I know this is a nuisance in relation to the old station sites, but can’t help it!. A bit of sleuthing works). Link : Pootler Route Zooming Out The bedrock around here is all sedimentary rocks, mostly various types of sandstone and Jurassic mudstone on the higher ground and elsewhere rather newer chalky mudstone. The low hills and outcrops are the various concoctions of stones that were more resistant to erosion. Both hills and valleys are often covered with clay of some sort, either finer ground stuff in the river valleys or, in many places, boulder clay, which is basically the muck and rubble left in the wake of the retreating glaciers. For early man, clay wasn’t easy to plough, and this wasn’t a densely populated area. Compared with now, much more land was devoted to sheep rearing. Thanks is part to better ploughs, the local agricultural economy did better in the centuries immediately after the Norman Conquest, but it went sharply into reverse in the 1300’s as the climate cooled, soils were exhausted and crop failures were followed by the Black Death at a time when England was almost constantly at war. As the population shrank, marginal villages shrank or disappeared. There are several near the route and marked on OS Maps. (NB. The one at Eyethrope is screened by trees and difficult to see, even from the adjacent footpaths) Recovery took a century or more during which labour shortages led to rising incomes and a shift towards less labour-intensive pastoral farming, mainly an even greater emphasis on sheep. And people started investing in the their property. Many of the oldest houses that you see today in places like Wichendon and Quainton were the result of this ‘Great Rebuilding’. Enclosures were the next major event in the landscape. Early on, they were locally organised. Later, they could be enforced by an Act of Parliament and the process continued into Victorian times. The impact was most marked in the Vale, where the old system of open fields was gradually eradicated, especially by the Parliamentary enclosures from the 1600’s onwards. This resulted in even more hamlets being abandoned, sometimes forcibly. As you can see the fields are often rectangular, many of the roads are straight, and footpaths lacking. But again the higher ground is an exception and the hills above Quainton look and feel like a world of their own. Some pastures appear to have been entirely spared the plough. Metroland was a name dreamt up by the Metropolitan Railway for the new suburbs being created on its routes out of London Marylebone, past Wembley and Harrow to Amersham and beyond. This route covers the 'beyond' bit, which stretches beyond London and the Chiltern Hills into rural Buckinghamshire, which the Company painted as the rural idyll within easy reach of its railway.   The creator of the railway was Sir Edward Watkin, the Elon Musk of his day. You will find a short bio on the blog. The name might have been created by an adman, but it was catapulted into a wider audience by John Betjeman, a Poet Laureate with an attachment to the landscape and an entertaining turn of phrase; perhaps best known for the lines "Come friendly bombs and rain on Slough". He wrote a lot about it and even narrated a rather wonderful eponymous BBC documentary in 1973. Like it, he finishes at Verney Junction, which by then was already abandoned, sighing "grass triumphs, and I must say I’m rather glad”.   The construction of HS2 dogs the route and you will probably see some signs protesting against it. The arguments both for and against Watkin’s railway were similar. And the extension turned out to be a white elephant. Are we learning anything here?   On the blog you will also find posts on the rich and complicated human and topographical history of the area as a whole, ranging from the early occupation, the changing agricultural landscape, the geomorphology of the chalk country, the buildings and anything else that moves me. Link Pootler : Other Stuff Route Tips If your app provides notes on the road surfaces etc. keep in mind that they are automatically generated and only as good as the underlying mapping. The estate road at Eyethrope Park has been blocked, supposedly on a temporary basis. You might need to use one of two adjacent ‘right of way’ footpaths for a few hundred metres. Check you map. One is gated, the other longer.. When I am aware that this has changed, I will update the waypoint note on the blog. Also, check online for information on roads temporarily closed to facilitate HS2 works.  

The text and routes in these mapping apps are based on content in my blog where you can find the updated versions of the routes and notes on the landscape, history and things to watch out for. Link www.pootler.co.uk. This is a varied but undemanding ride around the fringes of the Cotswolds in Northern Oxfordshire. It leaves Bicester using the cycle path to the South of the A41 then crosses that road to follow the Roman ‘Akeman Street’ to its conclusion. The route then heads north for 10 miles across higher ground to cross the River Cherwell at Somerton. You then climb around 200 ft, into the Eastern foothills of the Cotswolds and follow a scenic ridge road for a few miles before turning south towards Islip and the flat and empty marshland of Otmoor.  Outside of Bicester, the ride uses minor and usually well-maintained roads. There are no off road sections. The living is easy, the fish are jumping etc. Zooming In Highlights are: Laughing at the ersatz ‘consumer paradise’ of Bicester Shopping Village. Enjoying the genuine character of the Cotswold stone villages, Lower Heyford, Somerton, Dun's Tew, Islip and Chalton The views from the ridges above and beyond the Cherwell Valley Islip, Birthplace of Edward The Confessor The rather strange flat, empty, often windy and once fought over drained marshland of Otmoor The usual melange of oddities. On the blog, there are detailed notes on waypoints and things to see. If your mapping app has not imported these, use this link to go directly to the blog post of the route. I hope these will be more entertaining than the links to dry Wikipedia articles dredged up as POI’s by the mapping apps’ software robots. This cannot give you the exact location for each waypoint but it many cases you won’t need it and at least the information will be up to date! Link : Pootler Route Zooming Out As you might expect, this area is mostly an extension of the limestone geology of the Cotswolds foothills. All of these limestones are rich in fossils. Keep an eye out! As usual there is a lot of clay, but equally much variety. In places you find ‘cornbrash’ or ‘stonebrash’, a dry rubble that wheat seems to like. Under the mud in Otmoor is ‘blue shale’ mudstone (older mud!), another fine grained variety of sedimentary rock. The villages sit on islands of gravel in what used to be extensive marshes. stern Oxfordshire is a wealthy area and the attractive villages hereabouts owe more to a little ‘re-imagining’ and careful maintenance than benign neglect. The farmers seem to be growing winter wheat, barley and oilseed with a lot of land left fallow and fewer sheep and cattle. It wasn't always like that. Farming on the heavy and badly drained soils of the clay vale in particular could be difficult although both pastoral and arable farming are possible. Notwithstanding, even the higher ground has been shaped by the enclosures. The exceptions are mainly the Parklands associated with the grand estates and the smallholdings flanking the road across Otmoor. There are few commons or waste lands. The Churches and Manors around here are often have longer histories but the latter have often been substantially modified, usually by the obscenely rich, famous or notorious. The Waypoint notes cover the most egregious examples. On the blog you will also find posts on the rich and complicated human and topographical history of the area as a whole, ranging from the early occupation, the changing agricultural landscape, the geomorphology of the chalk country, the buildings and anything else that moves me. Link Pootler : Other Stuff Route Tips If your app provides notes on the road surfaces etc. keep in mind that they are automatically generated and only as good as the underlying mapping. In this case the route is all on road and should present no problems. If you do the tour anti-clockwise as suggested, you will probably end up on the home straight across flat Otmoor with the wind at your back. Lovely!

The text and routes in these mapping apps are based on content in my blog where you can find the updated versions of the routes and notes on the landscape, history and things to watch out for. Link www.pootler.co.uk. This ‘figure of eight’ tour takes you from the wide, flat Thames Valley at the East end of the Vale of the White Horse, into much narrower and steep sides valley where the river cuts a course between the Chilterns meets the North Wessex Downs. This is the Goring Gap. It starts from Didcot station and heads north on NCR 5, a good(ish) cycle path towards the Thames, which it follows to Dorchester and Wallingford. Both were important cities in the Iron age and the Saxon period respectively and both can prove it!. It then continues along the bottom of the Goring Gap to Goring itself before returning to Wallingford, enjoying longer views from the upper side of the valley. From there it skirts the foot of the Downs back to Didcot. Apart from NCR 5 out of Didcot, It is mostly flat, minor roads with the odd busier stretch near the river. Much of it is flat, but there is a long but gentle climb out of Goring and an unmade section around South Stoke. See ‘Route Tips’ below. Zoom In Highlights are: Following Jerome K Jerome's trip down the Thames, immortalised in 'Three men in a Boat’. King Alfred’s Saxon Walls and a Plantagenet castle at Wallingford. Game of Thrones stuff! Even older Dorchester, once an Iron Age Oppidum and later a capital of Wessex, where you can also visit the site of the World Pooh Sticks Championships next to a Bronze and Iron Age fort. Good mini-museums at Wallingford (History) Dorchester (part of the Abbey) and Pendon (eccentric!) Goring Village. A scenic spot on the Thames. The Goring Gap itself – a slice of geological history! As ever, a Wunderkammer of other oddities.   On the blog, there are detailed notes on waypoints and things to see. If your mapping app has not imported these, use this link to go directly to the blog post of the route. I hope these will be more entertaining than the links to dry Wikipedia articles dredged up as POI’s by the mapping apps’ software robots. This cannot give you the exact location for each waypoint but it many cases you won’t need it and at least the information will be up to date! Link Pootler Route Zooming Out The Thames has moved around quite a lot over time. At its zenith it was much larger, draining much of North Wales and following a northerly course before flowing into the North Sea, perhaps around where Ipswich is today. During a severe Ice Age around 500,000 years ago this route was blocked by glaciers, so it turned south, cutting through the soft chalk of the downs to create the Goring Gap and adopting (roughly, it is always on the move) its present path to the sea. Dorchester’s owes its historic importance to both its location and the fertility of the surrounding land. In the Bronze and Iron Age when the this stretch of the river probably marked the boundary between the Catuvallauni and Atrebates tribes. You might have bumped into them on some of my other Routes. Sadly, a lot of the traces they left behind were obliterated by gravel quarrying. It was effectively the capital of Wessex for a while, its importance was underlined by the status of its Abbey as the seat of the Bishopric of Mercia. It lost that title in the 11th century and since then it has been downhill all the way. It is a sleepy old place now. Wallingford is one of the lowest fording points on the Thames, so it was always a nodal point on early transport routes. Hence King Alfred’s fortifications. Later, William the Conqueror used it when circling around London after the Battle of Hastings and its pivotal role in both the intermittent Medieval conflicts and the Civil War. Now, it is a bustling small town but while it retains its role as a convenient river crossing, its administrative and economic roles shrivelled several hundred years ago. On the blog you will also find posts on the rich and complicated human and topographical history of the area as a whole, ranging from the early occupation, the changing agricultural landscape, the geomorphology of the chalk country, the buildings and anything else that moves me. Link Pootler : Other Stuff  Route Tips If your app provides notes on the road surfaces etc. keep in mind that they are automatically generated and only as good as the underlying mapping. The cycle path out from Didcot is narrow but mostly tarmac. I haven’t been there after heavy rain but imagine that might cause problems on the low lying ground. There is a stretch of unmade road at South Stoke on the way into Goring. If you are using a road bike, you might prefer to stick to the B4009. The climb out of Goring is about 90m over about 3 miles. Not scary.  

The text and routes in these mapping apps are based on content in my blog where you can find the updated versions of the routes and notes on the landscape, history and things to watch out for. Link www.pootler.co.uk. This is a tour of the varied and undulating countryside of the eastern Chilterns and the valleys of the Mimram and Lea Rivers. The route starts from Harpenden Railway Station and heads down to and across the valley of the River Lea. It then crosses the higher ground between the rivers, ducks under the Luton Airport flightpath, and descends into ‘Lilley Bottom’ for 3 miles. This is the valley of the River Mimram, but this usually only emerges on the surface to flow south, where you join the valley road and head north where the valley is dry. At this point the two routes diverge. The longer route, which probably doesn’t suit lightweight road bikes, takes you over the scarp and into the vale beyond before doubling back to Offley. It adds about 10 miles overall. The shorter route takes you straight to Offley. From there you have a meandering route back to Wheathampstead and then Harpenden. Zooming In Highlights are: The classic chalk valley landscape of Lilley Bottom. Emily’s Cafe in Whitwell. Famous in the Veloverse, but you might struggle to find it! George Bernard Shaw's house with his revolving writing shed. The stronghold of the Brythonic King Cassivellaunus at Wheathampstead The unlikely last abode of the real villain of the notorious French Dreyfus Affair. And more than the usual party bag of oddities. On the blog there are detailed notes on waypoints and things to see which I hope will be more entertaining than the links to dry Wikipedia articles dredged up as POI’s by the mapping apps’ software robots. If your mapping app has not imported these, use this link to go directly to the blog post of the route. This cannot give you the exact location for each waypoint but it many cases you won’t need it and at least the information will be up to date! Link: Pootler Route Zooming Out The bedrock of the Chilterns is chalk which comes to the surface on higher ground. The Chilterns were spared the worst of the ravages of glaciation and there is extensive areas of clay and gravel on the higher ground. It is those clay ‘lenses’ on the hills that lead to the roads sometimes flooding where you might not expect it. In 1538 the travelling diarist John Leland 1538 described the Chiltern Hills on his twitter feed as 'baron, woody and ferne ground'. But the higher ground in particular had never been particularly welcoming. This was frontier territory for a long time. Before the Romans showed up it was populated by the Belgic Catuvallauni tribe whose King, Cassivellaunus, purportedly surrendered to Julius Caeser here. Roman settlement followed as you would expect given the proximity of St Albans, but they left nothing to see on this route except some straight roads! Later, during Saxon times, King Offa of the Mercians held court here and after Mercia succumbed to the Vikings, King Alfred drew the boundary between the Saxons and the Viking ‘Danelaw’ along the River Lea. ‘Lea’ is old English and means ‘meadow’. Generally, the population here was never as dense on the higher ground as it was in the lower countryside to the north and south. The soils were poorer and water was harder to find. In this area in particular you will find many hamlets named with the suffix ‘End’ or ‘Green’. Many of these occupy land carved out from woodland as ‘assarts’ in Medieval times. The larger settlements and better farms were concentrated in the fertile valleys and lower slopes where there was a water supply and where the larger villages are now situated. The villages are for the most part pretty but not stunningly so, with a scattering of houses great & small and pubs dating back up to 400 years and several churches that are very much older, nearly all of which have been altered in varying degrees. On the blog you will also find posts on the rich and complicated human and topographical history of the area as a whole, ranging from the early occupation, the changing agricultural landscape, the geomorphology of the chalk country, the buildings and anything else that moves me. At Link: Pootler / Other Stuff Route Tips The longer route heads on through Lilley Village, crosses the ancient Icknield Way and heads over the scarp slope and down to Hexton in the Valley. From there the route runs clockwise through flat(ish) arable country through to Pirton. The route then climbs the Pegsdon Hills to Offley. For the short version of the route you turn right at the end of Lilley Bottom and head up the hill to Offley. From there, both routes follow the east side of the Mimram Valley, descending into Whitwell where the river is clearly visible. Emily’s Cafe is hidden from view off a short street on your left. Leaving Whitwell the route gets more complicated. You head south for 2 miles before turning right to rejoin the Mimram valley. A turn off on the right takes you past G.B. Shaw’s house and onwards to join the Ayot Greenway. This converted railway track is part of NCR57, that takes you to Wheathampstead. After a mile on the road heading west from there, you can rejoin it to complete the trip back to Harpenden. If your app provides notes on the road surfaces etc. keep in mind that they are automatically generated and only as good as the underlying mapping. From Pirton the route follows the Chilterns Cycleway (an NCR) initially using footpaths. On a hybrid, I manage most of it but dismount where the ruts are deepest. In winter, I divert by going straight through Pirton and turning right on the busy Hitchin Road to rejoin the route about 2 miles on. Consult the map. Turning left off the Hitchin Road towards Offley, the route is only partly surfaced. There is no easy diversion here and, again, you might want to dismount when you encounter deep ruts. It will only be for a few hundred metres. The Ayot Greenway is mostly hard earth and OK. Ditto the continuation of the NCR into Harpenden although that can be muddier after rain. In this case, if you consult your map you will see that you can easily avoid both if you want to stick to roads.

The text and routes in these mapping apps are based on content in my blog where you can find the updated versions of the routes and notes on the landscape, history and things to watch out for. Link www.pootler.co.uk. This route uses minor roads and the Phoenix Trail to explores the Aylesbury Vale and some attractive old villages, used as settings for the documentary series ‘Midsomer Murders’. It starts at Princes Risborough Railway Station and the initial 3 mile stretch to Chinnor is on a well used B Road. It then turns north then west towards Ewelme where it pivots back on a more northerly route, passing through Chalgrove and the Haseleys before crossing the River Thame at Shabbington on the way to Thame. From there it uses the Phoenix Trail, a converted railway line, to return to Princes Risborough. There are some homeopathic climbs, the highest point being just 124m (past Postcombe) and the lowest is around 40m. For more detail see the Route Tips. Zooming In Highlights are:   The ‘Midsomer Murders’ Villages. (Almost every village here claims to have appeared in in the series, with plots around an improbable number of mysterious murders. You might not unreasonably expect to find bones scattered across village greens, cottage walls dripping blood and pubs packed with eccentric detectives. Memories of even more, medieval, bloodshed at Ewelme Olde churches, many retaining original features including what is perhaps the oldest inscription in English, a hagioscope and a Stone Cadaver. (If you want to know what the hell they were, read on...). And Olde pubs. Of course. The old market town of Thame. A cast of local characters includes Mercian and Saxon Kings, Plantagenet knights and schemers, Chaucer’s remarkable granddaughter and the odd pop star. The usual goody bag of ephemera. There are detailed notes on waypoints and things to see which I hope will be more entertaining than the links to dry Wikipedia articles dredged up as POI’s by the mapping apps’ software robots. If your mapping app has not imported these, use this link to go directly to the blog post of the route. This cannot give you the exact location for each waypoint but it many cases you won’t need it and at least the information will be up to date! Link: Pootler Route Zooming Out The Aylesbury Vale is the valley of the River Thame. It has been suggested that this was one of several routes of the Thames, long before Ice Age glaciation diverted it through the Goring Gap to its present course. A lot of the valley floor is clay, with the low hills and outcrops being various concoctions of harder stones that resisted erosion rather more successfully. For early man, clay wasn’t easy to plough, and the heart of the vale wasn’t a densely populated area. It still isn’t. Compared with now, much more land was devoted to sheep rearing. In contrast The land below the Chilterns scarp was rich and fertile, blessed with streams and access to the higher ground of the Chilterns for grazing. The result was the string of villages, of which Ewelme is an example. But while the local agricultural economy did well in the centuries immediately after the Norman Conquest, it went sharply into reverse later in the 1300’s as the climate cooled, soils were exhausted and crop failures were followed by the Black Death at a time when England was almost constantly at war. Marginal villages shrank or disappeared, a process that continued for several centuries as the country adjusted to changing economic and social circumstances, not least of which were the increasingly better paid and footloose agricultural workforce and the enclosure (privatisation!) of swathes of the farmland. A particular shift was from arable and subsistence farming to large scale sheep rearing, the profitability of which is attested by the quality of the Churches. And people started investing in the their property, adding windows, storeys and staircases. Many of the oldest houses that you see today were the result of this ‘Great Rebuilding’. Initially, the enclosures were locally organised. Later, they could be enforced by an Act of Parliament as part of a process continued into Victorian times. The impact was most marked in the Vale, where the old system of open fields was gradually eradicated and replaced by a ‘rationalised’ layout, with many of the straight access routes and field boundaries that you see today. On the blog you will also find posts on the rich and complicated human and topographical history of the area as a whole, ranging from the early occupation, the changing agricultural landscape, the geomorphology of the chalk country, the buildings and anything else that moves me. At Link: Pootler / Other Stuff Route Tips  If your app provides notes on the road surfaces etc. keep in mind that they are automatically generated and only as good as the underlying mapping. The 1 mile run on the return leg from North Weston to the Thame Roundabout, is on the busy A418, but you can use the dual use footpath alongside. The Phoenix Trail is gravel and / or hard earth and in my experience presents few problems for a bike with anything but the flimsiest tyres, even after wet weather. The start at Thame can be difficult to find. If you want to go into Thame, check your map. If you want to avoid it, the best bet is to come off the roundabout onto Oxford Road and almost immediately turn right into the Leisure Centre. Eagle eyes will spot signs directing you around the left hand side of the building towards the Trail.

The text and routes in these mapping apps are based on content in my blog where you can find the updated versions of the routes and notes on the landscape, history and things to watch out for. Link www.pootler.co.uk. This ride visits the Commons and woodlands that border the higher ground around the valleys of two tributaries of the Thames; the Pangbourne and Kennet Rivers. These Commons have been the staging ground of battles, riots and demonstrations for 400 years. Starting from Theale, it heads up to the Pang Valley which it follows on the south side before descending to meet the river at the pretty village of Bucklebury. It then heads south to Bucklebury Common. Descending again, you cross the River Kennet at Thatcham and head up towards Greenham Common, infamously used as a nuclear guest-house by US air base during the cold war. You then return to the Kennet via Newbury Racecourse, and follow its towpath for 12 miles back towards Theale. There are two off-road stretches on the route, the towpath and track across Greenham Common. See the Route Tips below. Zooming In Highlights are: The sites of the 1980’s anti-nuclear protests at Greenham Common, now renewed and green again but not hiding the old bomb proof bunkers and control tower. Newbury Racecourse. A name I was only familiar with from the sports reports! The long & pleasant stretch of towpath, built as part of the canalisation of the Kennet in the 1700’s. Your inner geek might enjoy a single view taking on three generations of transport history; a Georgian canal, a Victorian railway and a Roman road routed next to each other. The ancient Commons generally, Bucklebury and Crookham as well as Greenham; and which were the site of Civil War battles and ‘Swing Riots’. The usual bolognese of local trivia. You might also experience a sense of amazement (and disbelief?) that Thatcham could be the oldest known continuously inhabited place in Britain. (According to the Guinness Book of Records in 1990). On the blog there are detailed notes on waypoints and things to see, which I hope will be more entertaining than the links to dry Wikipedia articles dredged up as POI’s by the mapping apps’ software robots. If your app has not imported these, use this link to go directly to the blog post of the route. This cannot give you the exact location for each waypoint but it many cases you won’t need it and at least the information will be up to date! Link: Pootler Route Zooming Out To generalise, the chalk bedrock in this area is covered with a layer of clay, gravels and sand, some of which would have been deposited when rising seas inundated the Thames Valley. The ‘Commons’ sit on caps of gravel (which are readily apparent at Greenham) and the whole is dissected by the rivers. The Pang is a chalk stream and clear enough to support watercress beds in places. The area, and especially the river valleys which provided fertile soils as well as transport, has been settled for a long time, but doesn’t have the same extensive legacy of very early occupation as the more open country to to west. Before the Romans appeared, this was part of the territory of the Atrebates, whose major settlement in the area was at Silchester. This became Calleva after the Romans turned up and left their own footprints in this area. In the early medieval period, Berkshire as a whole shuffled between the overlordship of King Alfred’s Wessex and Mercia; but it is hard to imagine that this had much impact on the lives of toiling local farmers. Later, judging by entries in the Domesday Book, it seems that the area had become quite prosperous but, as elsewhere, the settlements and activity diminished with the Black Death. Thanks largely to its transport links and fertile valleys, it grew in importance as the centuries passed. In the Civil War, the King was based in Oxford and Parliament in London, so the Newbury area was pivotal. Hence the battles, both to the West around Donnington and on the Commons to the East which are on this tour. For more detail, check the waypoint notes. The Kennet and its valley grew in importance as the major route to the West Country, being usefully south of the Thames, flat, and with water for the animals. In time this advantage diminished. The Great Western Railway bought the canal to snuff out the competition and then ran it down, and more recently the Bath Road was sidelined by the new M4. On the blog you will also find posts on the rich and complicated human and topographical history of the area as a whole, ranging from the early occupation, the changing agricultural landscape, the geomorphology of the chalk country, the buildings and anything else that moves me. At Link: Pootler / Other Stuff Route Tips If your app provides notes on the road surfaces etc. keep in mind that they are automatically generated and only as good as the underlying mapping. The road surfaces on this trip are OK and there are two ‘off road’ stretches. The 2 mile track across Greenham common is well-maintained gravel. The quality of the Kennet towpath surface varies. It is part of NCR4 and I haven’t had any trouble, but it can be muddy after rain and there are stretches where I am grateful for my tough touring tyres. If you don’t fancy this, I suggest that you head east from Greenham through Brimpton and Aldermaston en route to Theale.

The text and routes in these mapping apps are based on content in my blog where you can find the updated versions of the routes and notes on the landscape, history and things to watch out for. Link www.pootler.co.uk. This ride takes you from Newbury into the green valley of the River Lambourn, a classic chalk stream, which starts near Lambourn village and joins the Kennet in Newbury. At Great Shefford it turns north and climbs towards the open, arable, upland of the North Wessex Downs. You then have a 7 mile roller coaster ride along the hilltops with great views, before returning downhill back to Newbury, passing through villages set in the more wooded terrain of the lower lower eastern slopes. This peaceful countryside has been settled for millennia and vestiges of the inhabitants and their farming, from the bronze age through medieval times to the Victorians, can still be found. It is all on roads which, outside of busy Newbury, are small and quiet. Zooming In Highlights are: The watermills and (probably!) medieval water meadows of the Lambourn, a classic chalk country stream. Creating and maintaining these is more complicated than you might imagine. The exhilarating ride over the hilltops which have been farmed since the stone age, with the unique features of chalk landscapes such as the dry valleys and open grasslands A wonderful variety of English vernacular buildings going back over 600 years. One of the best cafes on any of my routes, the ‘Community Cafe’ at Hampstead Norreys Plus the usual bunch of oddities. On the blog there are detailed notes on waypoints and things to see, which I hope will be more entertaining than the links to dry Wikipedia articles dredged up as POI’s by the mapping apps’ software robots. If your app has not imported these, use this link below to go directly to the blog post of the route. This cannot give you the exact location for each waypoint, but it many cases you won’t need it and at least the information will be up to date! Link: Pootler Route Zooming Out Most of the bedrock hereabouts is chalk, which comes to the surface near the scarp, Chalk is porous so you won’t see many rivers on the high ground. The empty valleys that you can see there, were cut by streams during the ice ages, when the ground was frozen so the water couldn’t percolate away. Sometimes you also get winterbournes which are streams that only usually flow in winter. Springs appear when the water table coincides with the surface so, in a dry summer, when the level of water table falls they only appear lower down the valley. There is one, conveniently called the Winterbourne, flowing into the Lambourn at Bagnor, just outside Newbury. Even though the soils on the higher ground are thin, much of it is now devoted to growing crops such as wheat, barley and rape. In the past, even in the Stone Age, you would have seen more livestock and in particular sheep. The banked enclosures are a legacy of their occupation and although we call them hillforts, many of the smaller ones in particular might have simply been seasonal settlements. Maybe the weather was wetter then, but now the opportunities for grazing are limited by a lack of water and trees don’t tend to thrive on the alkaline, chalky soils. Further down the dip slope, the soils, while still thin, cover flinty clay, which adds bit of acid to the mix and suits them better. In the early stone age, there was probably a lot more woodland but much of this was cleared by early farmers, exposing the soils to erosion and degradation. The original and probably thin tree cover here would have been among the earliest to be cleared in England. Later, it might have been scrubland. Sheep farming in particular continued throughout, until the need for more food during the World Wars led to a conversion of a lot of land to arable use. The grassy character of some of the grazing is, Since the myxomatosis outbreak some fifty years ago, some of it is now reverting to scrub. On the hillside, the area around Hampstead Norreys is blessed with both water and fertile, non-acid soils. If it looks prosperous that is because it is and always been! Lots of Roman litter has been found around here. Moving down the slope, the valleys provided shelter and access to fresh water. (You can sink a well on the hills, but it isn’t easy). Around the rivers, the alluvial and gravely soils and gravels are quite fertile so this was where settlement has been concentrated since Roman times, although they did have a Temple and graveyard on Roden Down, north of Compton. For more, check the waypoint notes. Link: Lambourn Valley   On the blog you will also find posts on the rich and complicated human and topographical history of the area as a whole, ranging from the early occupation, the changing agricultural landscape, the geomorphology of the chalk country, the buildings and anything else that moves me. At Link: Pootler / Other Stuff   Route Tips If your app provides notes on the road surfaces etc. keep in mind that they are automatically generated and only as good as the underlying mapping. The road surfaces on this trip are OK but watch out for any potholes of you are hurtling down the slopes!

The text and routes in these mapping apps are based on content in my blog where you can find the updated versions of the routes and notes on the landscape, history and things to watch out for. Link www.pootler.co.uk. This is ‘figure of eight’ tour of the Western end of the Wessex Downs and includes famous neolithic sites. It starts from Hungerford on the River Kennet and heads over the interfluve between that and the River Lambourn before heading up the chalk hills towards the scarp. South of the Lambourn, the landscape is more wooded and mixed farming predominates. North of it there are open vistas; the few trees you see were probably planted as windbreaks. Going right back to the Neolithic, this used to be sheep country. In King Alfred’s time it was ‘West Wales’. Now, the dominant land use now is probably race horse training gallops. Most of the route is on minor roads with several long but not steep climbs. The exception is where it follows the Ridgeway along the hilltops so there is the alternative of a lower route which avoids the Ridgeway but is longer. See the ‘Route Tips’ below Zoom In The Highlights Hungerford. Charles II effectively negotiated his surrender of England to Prince William of Orange in the Bear Pub. Port Down is a landscape archaeologist’s dream. The Dry Valleys. Unique to chalk hills. The Gallops above Lambourn The Ridgeway : Ride the oldest road in England. Waylands Smithy: Release your inner Flintstone! A Neolithic Tomb you can go into. And come out of. Uffington White Horse: Best seen from the valley route. Seven Barrows. There are actually more then 40. On the blog, there are detailed notes on waypoints and things to see. If your mapping app has not imported these, use this link to go directly to the blog post of the route. I hope these will be more entertaining than the links to dry Wikipedia articles dredged up as POI’s by the mapping apps’ software robots. This cannot give you the exact location for each waypoint but it many cases you won’t need it and at least the information will be up to date! Link Pootler Route Zoom Out The poet Edward Thomas (the bloke who wrote ‘Adlestrop’) wrote about the Lambourn Downs that “there is something oceanic in their magnitude, their solitude... flowing on and on”. That would have been in the early 1900’s, but they haven’t changed that much since. Geologically, this is the limit of the London Basin and as I am sure you know, the Downs are all chalk, albeit covered by clay in the valleys. All the classic features of chalk downland are here. You will see many 'dry' valleys. Chalk is usually both porous and permeable so in normal circumstances water sinks through it easily when where there is no covering of clay. But valleys would be cut by streams in the ice ages when the ground was frozen. When the world warmed up, these vanished. A great example is the Manger, next to the White Horse, which you can only really see if you take the lower route. Apparently this is where the White Horse goes to feed! Note the fluted sides of the dry valley. This is caused by the ice penetrating the chalk, freezing and fracturing the chalk to the extent that it comes adrift and slumps down the hillside. Sometimes you also get winterbournes. These are streams that only appear in winter. They emerge as springs when and where the water table coincides with the surface. In a dry summer, the level of that water table falls, for instance in a dry summer, that upper reaches of the spring dries up and it re-appears lower down the valley. One flows into the Lambourn at Bagnor, just outside Newbury. It is conveniently called the Winterbourne. Evidence suggests that these downs have been open for a very long time. There is some debate about whether they were ever covered in trees, but it is generally agreed that what cover there was, seems to have been cleared early in the Stone Age. From then on, the Downs probably had more of a scrub covering. The spring turf and cropped grass seen nowadays might be relatively recent and a product of close grazing, not least by rabbits. In any event, the light, thin and well drained soils on the chalk seem to lend themselves to wheat and barley. he hills have always been well used, witness the cornucopia of pre-Roman remains, but they have never been densely populated. Even though the climate might have been wetter at times, in chalk country the lack of water is invariably a major deterrent, so most of the settlement was in the valleys. The Gallops which are now a dominant feature of the area, can be traced back to the 1700’s and are now second only to Newmarket as a place to train racehorses. On the blog you will also find posts on the rich and complicated human and topographical history of the area as a whole, ranging from the early occupation, the changing agricultural landscape, the geomorphology of the chalk country, the buildings and anything else that moves me. Link Pootler : Other Stuff  Route Tips If your app provides notes on the road surfaces etc. keep in mind that they are automatically generated and only as good as the underlying mapping. At the point near the scarp where the road north intersects with the Ridgeway, the mapped route uses the latter. I tried the rough stone surface of the Ridgeway once, on a titanium road bike. It was not difficult, but the going was slow and tiring. I thought that the reward of brilliant views and a visit to Waylands Smithy and the hillfort was adequate reward. You might not. In which case you can descend to follow a road below the hills before suffering the steep climb back up near Kingston Lisle. At least that way you get a decent view of the Uffington White Horse!