The Chalke Way
by
John Stuart Clark
This is the story of an
epic voyage -- of a journey along a thread that weaves in and out of millenniums,
through a modern civilisation largely oblivious to the adventure on its doorstep.
It is the tale of certainly the oldest, probably the most extraordinary, maybe
the wildest and definitely the most complete coast-to-coast in Western Europe.
And it is a narrative that could only be set in the UK, in the most populated
south east corner of England.
It begins in the digital vaults of my city library. I was searching for evidence
to substantiate the claim that an ancient routeway once bisected the country
and continued eastwards to the Continent, crossing the umbilical that later
dropped beneath the sea to leave Britain an island. Early charts revealed nothing.
Book references lead to cross references which lead to nowhere. Everybody mentioned
it . Nobody mapped it. Months went by.
As the thrill of the chase was beginning to pale, a sliver of a battered volume
emerged from the depths of the basement. The last time the book had seen the
light of day was in the 1960s. It was a 1914 edition of 'The Green Roads of
England' by R Hippisley Cox. In it was a sketch map showing the entire length
of a coast-to-coast trail that appeared to link up with another trail leading
east from the coast of mainland Europe. It was only a theoretical line but,
whoever he was, Mr Cox had hard facts and some impressive evidence to argue
his case.
Travelling in the Past
To this day, children in the UK are taught that prehistoric peoples didn't travel
far. At a push, Fred and Betty Neolithic made it two
or three communities down the trail before returning home. Yet we know axe heads
that could only be mined in the north west of Britain have been excavated in
the south east of Norfolk. The clay that Beaker potters worked at Windmill Hill
in Wiltshire came from Cornwall in the far south west. It seems probable that
some 6,000 years ago Britain was crisscrossed by a lattice of tracks and pathways
linking settlements. It was Cox's guess that, certainly by the Iron Age, our
ancestors were making journeys of hundreds of miles.
Way back in the prologue of time, when Britain was one big forest, the easiest
way through for migrating herds and their hunters was along the watersheds where
fewer trees took root. As the ages rolled by, and nomads evolved into settlers,
it was along these ridge routes they established their camps that later became
enclosures and then forts. Linking prehistoric hill top forts together, Cox
discovered the watershed thoroughfares of middle and southern England honed
in on the Wiltshire village of Avebury.
With its double stone circles, avenue of megaliths and 130ft grass cairn, the
Avebury triangle has to be the world's oldest and most enigmatic gyratory. Its
ancient magnificence inspired Cox to speculate that the area was the centre
of power - the seat of government of a federal Neolithic Britain. At this point
his theory becomes a little wacky, but the hill forts still exist, the watersheds
are real and the thinking that they were the backbone of feeder routes makes
sense.
Plotting the Route
It took another couple of months and 14 UK Ordnance Survey maps to trace a modern
version of the legendary coast-to-coast. Following tracks, bridleways, lanes
and minor roads, I picked out a route that mirrored the watershed as closely
as UK Rights of Way allowed. Only 30 of its 410 miles were prevented from replicating
Cox's chart by a footpath or road system laid down since the 18th Century that
defied topography and now prohibits cyclists. The original track started at
Seaton on the Devon coast, but I had to bypass four forts and start at Weymouth.
Striking north from the English Channel, I plotted a historic pack-horse trail
that fed into the ridge route at Cerne Abbas, famous for its 200ft pictogram
of a Celtic fertility god with a 30ft erect penis cut in the chalk escarpment.
At the watershed it turned north east to cross the whalebacks of the downs,
acutely arched in Dorset, barely rippling across Salisbury Plain, dramatically
plunging through Wiltshire.
At Avebury it merged into the Ridgeway and then the Icknield Way, two well established
MTB routes carrying cyclists round the back of Luton, north of London, where
the dying waves of Herefordshire wash up on the Cambridgeshire prairies. Then
through Newmarket stud country, with its miles of sweeping gallops, across the
reclaimed desert that once threatened to engulf Thetford, and on to the gentle
roller coaster of Norfolk. At Holme-next-the-Sea, near The Wash, it arrived
at the North Sea and the vast sand beaches where the blackened stumps of a prehistoric
forest peek through at low tide.
Though encompassing several titled and popular off-road routes, the coast-to-coast
had no name. The watershed it shadowed was of chalk, a great thrusting wave
of the stuff crashing diagonally across the country. I called it The Chalke
Way, adding an 'e' because the only place name along its length that referred
to the terra firma under wheel was Chalke Valley, a colloquialism for the Ebble
Valley it visits south west of Salisbury. Until riding the route, I had no idea
geology could have such an impact on the human activity and character of a landscape.
Chalk Ups and Downs
It took me a year to pedal and fully explore the fine details of the Chalke
Way. Considering it weaves its way through the most populated corner of our
fair isle, it leads you across some of the bleakest wildernesses, quietest valleys,
and most exposed hill tops in England. Everywhere the chalk shows through. In
places tracks are zinc white and the edges of fields stippled as if dusted with
snow.
With notable exceptions, there is little cover and even less ground water. Between
you and the heavens above, nothing more than skylarks and buzzards and a symphony
of clouds. Sections of the Dorset, Wiltshire and Oxfordshire legs are so remote
by UK standards, thoughtfully located standpipes provide the only thirst quencher.
In high summer, hot eddies whip up clouds of dust and, confused by the blazing
heat haze, it is easy to imagine you are riding the foothills of the Spanish
sierras.
Only crossing the sandy heaths of Suffolk and Norfolk does the chalk fail to
provide a firm surface for knobbly tyres. Where sweeping fields of corn slip
away from the ridges and expansive acres of sugar beet stretch either side in
the plains, here is a delicate Breckland of Scot's Pine shelterbeds and scrub
nibbled by sheep, rabbits and muntjack deer. It isn't long, however, before
flecks of flint reappear in the historic Peddar's Way that carves all but straight
from Thetford to Holme.
Flint was one of the earliest commodities to be dispatched down the Chalke Way.
Mined at Grimes Graves in Thetford Forest (now an underground museum), arrow
and axe heads joined salt, clay and firs on the busy thoroughfare down to the
West Country. From the south, contraband and ammunition for sling-shots followed
the same trade route north from Chesil Beach on the English Channel. Throughout
the journey, place names bear witness to commercial activities that sprung up
beside the white highway. 'Warrens' (for breeding rabbits) and 'Knapps' (the
method of shaping flint) regularly appear tacked onto a forename.
Through Battlefields
Heavier feet and hoofs have tramped this way as well, weighed down by the tarnished
armour of Imperial Rome. Both north and south the route shadows the pincer action
deployed to subjugate this troublesome outpost of the empire. From fort to fort,
battle to siege, it mirrors Vespasian's push east in AD 44. In Norfolk it picks
up the Roman road laid specifically to supply legionnaires policing the troublesome
Iceni tribe of the Celtic queen, Boudicca.
Battles are still waged across the course of the coast-to-coast. In the wide
open wastelands of Salisbury Plain and the Stanford Training Area near Thetford,
NATO forces play 'Kelly's Heroes' as you pedal passed legally and safely. Storming
Silbury Hill, they repeat Vespasian's assault on the hill fort 2,000 years before,
but this is no crater pitted battlefield. Both training grounds are Sites of
Special Scientific Interest, supporting vulnerable plant and insect species
unique to UK chalklands. Ironically the Ministry of Defence are conscientious
custodians.
This England
And the chalk totally dictates the nature of the vernacular architecture encountered
en route. Every village in each county boasts a shambles of flint cottages with
bushy reed roofs and de rigeur stone mushrooms flanking the driveway. Ancient
cobbed walls made of mud, lime, straw, and anything else lying around, line
the lanes. Checker board stone and flint mediaeval churches dominate the skyline.
Both are often also thatched, but always bordered by manicured flower beds.
This is quintessential England, as seen on glossy postcards.
Certainly it is not all delightful country riding. The middle section across
the Chiltern Hills and London commuter belt of Bedfordshire has to negotiate
an urban sprawl, gingerly weaving its way through a mishmash of rural chic and
executive estates. In Herefordshire the route brushes beside the post-WWII social
experiment of 'new towns' like Letchworth, and the one city it courses through
is Salisbury, if only to visit the most cooed over cathedral in the UK, immortalised
by the artist Constable.
Wherever possible I prescribed a line of least resistance, exploiting off-road
routes to keep the urban nightmare hidden behind tall hedges and ancient beeches.
Here you are more likely to encounter a crusty camp of gypsies skulking from
the cops than power shouldered wannabes zapping along in their company cars,
one hand on steering wheel, one on mobile phone, brain somewhere else. In fact,
in the entire length of this ride, the total distance on main roads is a trifling
eight miles.
Myth and Mystery
But more than anything, the Chalke Way is a journey into mystery and the imagination.
By dint of its origins, it wings riders passed World Heritage Sites, rampant
hill carvings and majestic earthworks that speak of a time when our ancestors
worshipped the sun and fought hopeless struggles against fanciful dragons. Maiden
Castle, Hambledon Hill, Old Sarum, Stonehenge, Avebury's stone circles... on
average, every ten miles the route is punctuated by an ancient wonder of world
renown.
After a few days stumbling across these evocative relics of tribal Britain,
I had to ask myself about the 20th Century. With all out digital gizmos, hi-tech
networks and obsession for IT we are no closer to understanding what inspired
the thousands it took to build the stone henges, the defence dykes or mountainous
cairns. We are further than ever from discovering how these primitives managed
to recruit, feed and organise the masses without leaving archeologists so much
as an internal memo to discover.
And the mysteries deepen, for the Chalke Way traverses those strange pockets
of England where crop circles suddenly appear. Not only in Wiltshire, but near
Cambridge I have ridden through unblemished fields and returned the next day
to find symbolic patterns of circles and lines etched in the wheat. It doesn't
take an expert to see these are no hoax. More disturbing is that many reproduce
impressions found on Celtic stone and metal ware thought to be icons of the
earth goddess Gaia. Maybe the truth really is out there...
Exploring by Bike
There is something very rewarding about riding a humble bicycle through a historic
landscape rich in myth and legend. Surrender to the gentle pace of the Chalke
Way, take time to explore its heritage, and the feeling you are following in
the foot prints and wheel ruts of a simpler, more satisfying way of life is
overwhelming. It is a sensation enhanced by camping wild along the way, though
the route is well served by official sites and B&Bs.
This is no sanitised cycle path. It is a challenge, both in distance and terrain,
but nothing your average pootlist couldn't conquer in a couple of weeks one
summer. It is easily accessible by train from all UK airports in the south east,
but it is a route British bike holiday companies have been slow to exploit.
On the other hand it is not a route that lends itself to peletons of cyclists,
for this is a journey about head space as much as open space.
The physical challenge is heavily tempered by the intellectual challenge. From
one end of the coast-to-coast to the other the themes and links keep coming
at you. Even the accents of locals living hundreds of miles apart along the
diagonal are closer than of those reared barely 50 miles north or south of the
line. In fact, there are so many strange and exciting things about this passage
through time and space it could fill a book. So I wrote one.
© John Stuart Clark
from 'The Chalke Way' (ISBN 1 897850-36-0),
Two Heads Publishing