3 Men on a walk 2017: Boys walking week day 4

Hunting the White Horse

We had to leave our lovely little Inn with the Well (yes, it did have an old well right in the middle of the bar) to travel home but we wanted to do so via another section of the Ridgeway Trail which goes past Uffington Castle; another Long Barrow and most importantly, the oldest hill sculpture in Europe, The Uffington White Horse which is at least 3,000 years old and according to The Guardian newspaper "for more than 3,000 years, the Uffington White Horse has been jealously guarded as a masterpiece of minimalist art." see White Horse

We drove to the car park a few hundred yards from the site and set off in search of the beast which is 110 m (360 ft) long and one of the largest such figures in existence. Looking for info on the internet the previous day had warned us that this beast was not at all easy to see as in truth, it can ONLY be seen fully from the air!

How right they were. We walked up hills as steep as a seaside cliff; down deep valleys and up and around the horse but all we ever got was a partial view. Currently visitors are urged to keep off the monument itself and we obeyed this. But we would probably have seen even less up that close.

So we set off to find Uffington Castle, another Iron Age fort and very similar in construction to Barbury Fort that we visited two days previously. (Uffington_Castle) We then picked up the Ridgeway Trail again and walking westward followed it for about a mile or so to "Waylands Smithy" another Neolithic ancient burial Long Barrow very similar in construction to the West Kennet one. See Wayland Smithy

We could have walked a few more miles but after the two long previous walks in very hot weather the legs and feet were feeling the strain so we back-tracked to the car park, found a pub in Uffington for lunch, then drove home.