Carving its way for 87 miles across the chalk downland of southern England, the Ridgeway has carried drovers, traders, soldiers, and pilgrims from the Neolithic era to the modern day. With a history dating back 5000 years, this is said to be Britain’s oldest road, reverberating with echoes of the pagan past. Neolithic burial mounds, striking Bronze Age hill figures, and mysterious megaliths plot the path of the Ridgeway, which runs from Avebury in Wiltshire to Ivinghoe Beacon in Buckinghamshire.
The idea of spending a week escaping the pestilential horrors of the news cycle on a gentle ramble through the British countryside was naturally very appealing. Moreover, I hoped to gain insight into what it was about this corner of the earth that led our ancestors to attribute such spiritual significance to it, thus further exploring the part of the world I grew up in yet knew little about.
So it was that I found myself bathed in the weakening light of an autumn afternoon, an ill-advisedly heavy backpack and cheap tent strapped to my back, amid the standing stones of Avebury. This is the largest Neolithic stone circle in the world, far larger than the better-known Stonehenge nearby and far more atmospheric. Avebury feels like a living place more than a tourist attraction; there’s no swanky visitor center, fewer tour buses, and the ancient stones encircle modern villages, the grass at their feet neatly maintained by grazing sheep. Just like Stonehenge, however, Avebury is an enigma, built in the third millennium BCE for some ritual purpose lost to time.
The Chief of the British Druid Order Philip Shallcrass, known to all as Greywolf, recounted his first impression of the stones: “The Avebury circles in their entirety felt like the welcoming arms of a great Mother”, he shared. “I suspect this numinous quality was always here, and that’s why our ancestors decided to build the henge, the hill, and the chambered tomb.”
Leaving the henge behind, I headed for Silbury Hill, perhaps the most enigmatic of Britain’s prehistoric monuments. It’s unclear why, around 2400 BCE, the people here undertook the massive task of excavating half a million tonnes of chalk and shaping it into a giant mound. This was a masterpiece of engineering, with excavations revealing systems of stakes, ditches, and spiral pathways used in the construction. It likely served some ceremonial function, but now, viewed as huge and seemingly pointless against the bright green fields, it seems to represent a creative energy unleashed when humans transitioned from hunter-gatherer lifestyles to dedicating time to grand building projects.
I continued south and climbed a windswept hill to the third monument on Greywolf’s list: the chambered tomb. The West Kennet Long Barrow was built over a thousand years before Silbury Hill, but its ceremonial use appears to have been short-lived, with 46 individuals interred here, along with pottery, jewelry, and stone tools, before its long tunnel was filled with gravel and sealed with vast sarsen stones found at Avebury. I was the only visitor, and as I stepped into the excavated chamber, I noticed signs of recent life: bundles of dried herbs and half-melted red candles, left as offerings by visitors.
Sitting cross-legged on the chamber’s grassy roof, I looked east and contemplated the journey ahead. Would the old gods smile upon me? Judging by the weather forecast, probably not. Shouldering my backpack, I walked back through the fields to Avebury. Evening was drawing in, and the stones stretched out their shadows. A sheep emerged from behind one and blinked. I retired to the Red Lion pub.
I woke up early the next morning and walked through the standing stones of West Kennet Avenue and past Fyfield Down, an alien landscape littered with yet more sarsen stones. Known as the Grey Wethers for their resemblance to sheep, I thought the name appropriate for another reason as I felt a drop of rain land on my nose from the dreary skies above – a portent of things to come. I lingered in attractive villages like Hallam, where freshly thatched houses bob above the bushes; I passed a wooden garden sculpture depicting two boxing hares who do battle in the fields each spring.
Torrential rain fell the following day, with barely a tree to shelter beneath. The soporific woodlands and bluebell carpets featured in the Ridgeway guidebooks are more characteristic of the route’s eastern half. In the western range, however, the Ridgeway appears skeletal: a band of chalk protruding from the earth like the half-buried spine of some once-mighty beast, stripped of vegetation by grazing sheep and wind, kept pristine white by the relentless rain and sun. The lonely standing stones and monolithic burial mounds only add to this bare-bones impression; unchanging relics of a culture that used wood to symbolize the living and stone to immortalize the dead.
I rested at one such relic: Wayland’s Smithy, another Neolithic long barrow enclosed by a welcome copse of trees. Wayland, a Norse blacksmith god, is said to have shod the hooves of the Uffington White Horse, which is carved into a chalk hillside a couple of miles down the trail. I trudged there now, bent double against the wind and driving rain. Up close, you’d hardly realize it’s a horse, but aerial shots reveal it to be a minimalist masterpiece, its striking curves more suggestive than figurative. It makes one ponder how on earth it was accomplished – its proportions are perfect, yet only visible from a helicopter or in miniature from the hillsides several miles away. The day prior, I’d walked past the Hackpen White Horse, which, with its goofy features and awkward limbs, better represents what my attempt to draw a giant animal on a hillside would resemble. Slumping my bag onto the wet grass, I traced a finger along the horse’s ear; the wet chalk turned to toothpaste between my fingertips.
After a wet night camping in a field, the weather improved, yet the trail became even more remote. I hurried my pace as the path wound through tumbledown farms, where strange faces could easily be imagined in the rusting sheds, and where, no doubt, the remains of wayward walkers lay decomposing in grain silos. My fingers were stained from foraged blackberries, my blisters protested in my still-wet boots, and red kites hovered above my head. Extinct in England in the 20th century, these handsome scavengers have been reintroduced and have resumed their natural occupation of cheerfully frightening campers and picnicking families.
After crossing the River Thames at Goring, woodland began to shelter the path more frequently. As the canopy ascended above me, the pathway grew uneven, with ancient roots meandering left and right like veins on an agitated arm. However, clues that I was approaching civilization emerged; a background hum of power stations and railway lines accompanied my every step, and the path now passed through affluent commuter villages, rather than overgrown ramparts of Iron Age hill forts. Even here, my immersion in the environment intensified not just the pain in my feet, but also the aroma of lavender crushed between my fingertips, and the sound of branches crackling beneath my boots. “It’s not that you go for a walk in the woods”, Greywolf had remarked; “it’s how you go for a walk in the woods.” Thus, reflecting on that journey-related profundity, I picked up my backpack and trudged onward.
