Start – Kingsclere, End – Dummer, Distance – 11 miles, Difficulty – moderate
https://www.hants.gov.uk/thingstodo/countryside/walking/wayfarerswalk-kingsclere
We start this leg on another blustery end-of-summer day at the beginning of September 2020, determined to get another leg done before schools finally return for, what we hope, will be a full term. As it turns out it is just wishful thinking. However, more glorious far reaching views met us with no other walkers about. Just beautiful. As we walk, we talk. About anything and everything. And we move about – I could be talking to the Littlest, then FotT, then walking on my own … it’s always been very fluid and just feels right. And there’s no competing with mobiles and social media – utter bliss!!
Before we passed Walkeridge Farm and continue south, we cross the Portway, a major Roman road primarily used for armies marching from Silchester (north of Basingstoke) to Salisbury. In fact there’s a long thin line of trees known as Caesar’s Belt marking the line of this ancient road. It’s hard to imagine thousands of well trained Roman military personnel marching across this peaceful landscape. It must have been pretty terrifying for any of the local population.
The route followed a track with high hedgerows either side before it took us into the small hamlet of North Oakley and we crossed more fields alongside Great Deane Wood.
At Deane Down Farm we had to carefully zigzag across their land before crossing a bridge over the railway line. The fields we walked though were full of beautiful wildflowers and then it was downhill across bare fields to the pretty village of Deane with its lovely tree hidden church and manor house all in a manicured parkland setting – quite different to the landscape we’d previously walked through.
The walk took us around the edge of the village of Stevenson, where Jane Austen’s father, and later her brother, were the Rector.
Canopied pathways led us to open farmland – the perfect spot for lunch and the discovery of a Geocache!
Appetites satiated , we continued under a railway bridge, through Bull’s Bushes Copse and past the beeches of South Wood before crossing first the A30, with its Covid-19 sign and after walking through Peak Copse, the M3.
Negotiating the A30 crossing was definitely easier during a pandemic! And finally we arrived in the village of Dummer and the Queen Inn pub. Leg 2 done.
