The Dorset Walk – The Gussages & Ackling Dyke
After eighteen years Matt Wilkinson hangs his boots up, but not before a trip to the north-east of the county. His replacement, Paul Quagliana, took the pictures.
Published in October ’18
One of hundreds of tumuli in Cranborne Chase
This is the 135th and last ‘Dorset walk’ that I have prospected for Dorset Life. Arthritic joints mean that it is time for a different pair of boots, with younger feet in them, to pound the rights of way of our county. As a finale, I have returned to the part of the county that in my view provides the best walking of all: not Purbeck, not West Dorset, but Cranborne Chase.
With its undulating landscape, wide vistas, greenwoods, fast-draining soils, intriguing history and sense of isolation, it takes the prize. To be on its downs on a day of blue skies and fluffy white clouds is to be glad to be alive.
A typically expansive skyline and landscape
Then there are Bokerley Dyke, the Dorset Cursus and Ackling Dyke: any self-respecting Cranborne Chase walk must take in at least two of them, and this route visits the last two. Not that there is anything of the Cursus to be seen on the ground, although it is clearly identifiable in aerial photographs.
Ignore the waymarks and follow the path between a laurel hedge and a fence
Its two banks, about 100 yards apart, run across the Chase for 6¼ miles. Tumuli and barrows cluster around and even within it, and archaeologists assume that it was some sort of processional route, but the truth is that not even the experts know for sure what it was for or who built it more than 5000 years ago.
Near the start of the walk in Gussage All Saints
Ackling Dyke, some 3000 years younger, was part of the main Roman road that ran from Londinium to Isca Dumnoniorum (Exeter) and passed through Badbury Rings. It would have been built on an embankment (or ‘agger’) to help prevent flooding, and nowhere is that feature more clearly to be seen than on the stretch across Cranborne Chase.
A quintessential Cranborne Chase walk vista
The Gussage villages are something of a curate’s egg, with some lovely old houses, especially in Gussage All Saints, some not bad modern development and some fairly disastrous 20th-century infilling. Gussage St Michael in particular is very much a working village, where the practical, such as farm machinery, corrugated iron etc, rubs shoulders with the picturesque.
THE WALK
1 Walk back out of the village, towards Gussage St Michael, following the road over a bridge and round to the right. Just before the village sign for Gussage St Michael, turn left up an enclosed grassy track. At the fork, turn right into Sovell Down Nature Reserve. Take the clear path through the reserve to another stile, after which turn right to walk round the right-hand edge of a very large field. At the far end of the field, under some power lines, go through a gap into the next field and turn left. Bear right round the end of the line of trees at the top of the field and continue to a gate onto a lane.
2 Turn right, then in ten yards right again, over a stile. Follow a path that meanders through the wood, soon paralleling its right-hand edge. Emerge over a stile into an open field and bear right, downhill. Cross a stile into woodland and turn left on a path that descends steadily to reach the road through Gussage St Michael. Turn left, then when the road bends to the left, go straight ahead, passing to the right of the village hall. Continue up this road to the impressive double gates of Manor Farm, bypass them courtesy of a gap to their left, and walk on up the drive.
3 At the edge of the farmyard turn right, and in about 120 yards left onto a track, with a hedge on the right and a fence and open fields to the left. In about six hundred yards, opposite the far end of a roughly oval patch of woodland in the field to the left, turn right over a double stile and bridge. Turn left for about fifty yards, then go through another gate on the left. Despite what the waymarks say, the kindest option to the owners of the private garden in which you find yourself is to turn immediately right up a path between a laurel hedge and a fence. Turn left round the end of a large outbuilding, then right, and continue up the path to the drive, which leads to a lane.
4 Turn left and in ¼ mile, soon after Meadowside on the left, turn right up a paved drive to North Farm. Past the farm buildings, the drive becomes a rougher track. About five hundred yards after the buildings, it turns sharply left, crosses the Dorset Cursus, enters the next field and turns right to run up its right-hand edge. At the top of the field, pass to the right of an old gate and turn right on a path along the top of Gussage Down, which re-crosses the Cursus. In about six hundred yards, just after two tumuli in the field on the right, the path bends to the right.
5 Here turn left and in a few yards left again to follow the left-hand field-edge. In the first corner, turn right, downhill. At the bottom of the field, turn right on a grassy track and almost immediately follow it round to the left. At the end of the first field, continue straight on on a rather rougher grassy track. Follow this into an open field and walk along its right-hand edge. Enter the buildings of Down Farm and go straight ahead on its drive. This leads up to a lane, where turn left.
6 Just before the main road, cross a gate on the right, turn right and walk round to where the trees on the right end, about 150 yards from the first corner. Here go into the field on the right and follow its right-hand edge – it is rough going at first but becomes easier. Walk right to the very far end of the field, where go through a metal gate and the embankment of Ackling Dyke, and turn immediately right on a path that leads through the wood alongside the embankment. Cross a lane and continue, this time on the embankment – you are actually treading where the legions marched.
7 In a little over a thousand yards, turn left onto a broad track that is the Jubilee Trail and crosses Harley Down. In almost ¾ mile, it bends sharply round to the right then the left, keeping woodland to the left. In a further ¼ mile, just before leaving the wood, turn right on a track which is enclosed at first but then reaches a fork; take the right-hand option, which becomes a track across Tenantry Down. Follow it into an open field and along the right-hand edge and, at a corner, into the woodland on the right. Stay on the track as it bends to the left but then walk straight ahead, still on the track and ignoring all turnings, to a lane.
8 Turn right. In 1/3 mile, at the top of a rise, turn right through a gate onto a track. In ¼ mile, turn left. There are actually three left-turn options: a gate, a path that runs between two posts, and another gate. Take the middle one, between the posts, and follow this path down to the road through Gussage All Saints, where turn right to return to your car.
Distance: About 9½ miles.
Terrain: Undulating, but no fearsome climbs. Generally good underfoot, but with some brief rough stretches
Start: The western end of Gussage All Saints, near the war memorial.
How to get there: From the A354 Blandford-Salisbury road, turn south at Cashmoor, signposted to Gussage St Michael and Gussage All Saints. Stay on this road through the former, to the latter. OS reference ST999108. Postcode BH21 5ET.
Maps: OS Explorer 118 (Shaftesbury & Cranborne Chase), OS Landranger 195 (Bournemouth & Purbeck) & 184 (Salisbury & The Plain).
Refreshments: Drovers Arms, Gussage All Saints. When this pub closed a couple of years ago, the community got together and bought it and now it is a busy hub of village life.
