I awoke to sunshine in the upper Thames valley and decided that I was still too full from last night’s sumptuous pub meal to justify their breakfast as well. It needed riding off for an hour or two. I was otherwise running to a roughly Tamworth schedule, which meant I should actually be slightly ahead of yesterday’s timings, with a similar length day ahead of me. I’m pretty good these days at scoping the length of a day of cycling, taking my usual rate of progress into account along with other factors like wind, hills, available daylight and known reasons to stop along the way. I usually get where I expect to be around about the predicted time, and if I don’t it is typically down to a late start, or longer than usual stops. I will never know how accurate my planning was for today, because I decided to change them less than half way there. That isn’t always possible, but today I’m very glad that I did. A big part of this whole enterprise, remember, is about enjoyment and seeing the country I pass through. There is always a balance to be struck.
Anyway, whether or not it was a lack of breakfast, I felt a bit sluggish today and unusually allowed another cyclist to pass me without a response. Extra weight or not, I don’t generally allow that. Nevertheless, there was much to enjoy, as I first made my crossing of the adolescent Thames by one of its highest locks and watched two narrow boats enter from upstream. It doesn’t matter how often I see this process, I still marvel at how it works. The opening and shutting of lock gates and the change in water level is a matter of wonder to my simple mind even now. Throw in a professional lock keeper and I am sold on the whole thing.
But I had to make progress. There was a climb out of the Thames valley and then several more as I crossed an area of rolling downs that carried the ancient Ridgeway path along their crest. Also up here, I came across an enormous – and I mean huge – motocross event that could be heard – like an angry swarm of bees – long before it could be seen. I couldn’t see the bikes at all. They were somewhere a few fields away from the road, whizzing around the Foxhill Circuit. What I could see was an ocean of camper vans and other vehicles, way too many to count. I don’t know precisely what this event actually was, but it obviously attracted vast numbers of people to hear this noise close up, meander through a village of traders and, who knows, meet their heroes for several days. I hope they had fun.
I was getting pretty peckish by now. The next big place would be Marlborough, but that was still perhaps an hour away. I might have sold myself short. But then, as often happens, help appeared just when I needed it. I arrived in the village of Aldbourne with low expectations, but it turn out not only to be a lovely little place, but – praise be – a lovely place with a quaint tea room. And it was open. I didn’t have think about it, and what followed was a pot of tea and an energy giving eggs Benedict. Brunch is a wonderful idea that fits very well with my natural body clock. I suspect I would embrace it even if I was an early morning kind of guy. I just think it works. It certainly did today. Perfect.
Reinvigorated, I rode over more rolling downs, through pretty Ramsbury (which despite its size and cuteness did not appear to have any cafés) and then along a green valley and around the walls of a large and very private stately home, and eventually into Marlborough. This is a town of some substance, well heeled and the home to a large private school, Marlborough College, which dominates one end of the town. It is all very pretty and in many ways gives the appearance of a classic English country town, with a broad, long Main Street, wide enough for many cars to park with traffic from the busy A4 passing either side of them. There are many shops, hotels and restaurants here, and along the top side they all have a continuous colonnade on the ground level, with their first floor leaning out over the street a little. There is a large, mediaeval church tower at either end, each with a prominent clock. It was all very appealing and I knew I had more hills and much countryside ahead of me, but it all came too soon after the last stop to be justifiable. I took pictures and rode slowly through, hesitating in front of three tempting establishments, but deciding that something would turn up later when I really need it.
The next section took me through a few tiny, thatched villages and then up and over a long climb to cross the chalk escarpment into the Vale of Pewsey. This is white horse country, and I had a good sighting of the one on the downs above Alton Barnes. I have walked around these hills (and horses) on my first ultra running event in 2020, during the pandemic, and the views around here are long and golden at this time of year. There are rolling fields of wheat as far as you can see, and it is in these fields that mysteries occur.
This part of Wiltshire, home to plenty of ancient artefacts like stone circles (such as Stonehenge and Avebury), burial mounds and hill figures, is also where 80% of the world’s crop circles have appeared, apparently from nowhere. In July 1990, one appeared right on this hill, and I was able to visit. From that time onwards, they have been seen in various locations – including some in other countries – and they can be extremely elaborate. How they get here is a matter of considerable debate and theories abound, along with reports of concentrations of energy and other wondrous and unexplained phenomena.
It therefore came as no major surprise to me that, a few miles further on at the bottom of the hill, I came across the Crop Circle visitor centre and exhibition. It is at a place called Honey Street, which consists of an old mill and a pub on the Kennet and Avon Canal. The former industrial buildings are now a large cafe, with tables out by the water, and a shop selling ethnically Indian clothes and jewellery, which all fit well with the Crop Circle theme. I was primarily grateful for the cafe, which – once again – came along improbably at just the point I wanted it. But the whole place was fascinating, as were many of the people it had attracted today.
I sat watching the boats and checked where I was and what still lay ahead. I had over fifty miles still to go if I was to reach the coast tonight. But did I really need to? My accommodation in Bournemouth, a little out of the way but very cheap, could still be cancelled at no cost. I would get home tomorrow either way. My trains were not yet booked. The wind was getting stronger and was blowing in my face. The sun had disappeared behind clouds. And in two more hours of cycling I would reach the fair Cathedral city of Salisbury, one of England’s gems, which I had not seen in decades. The forecast for tomorrow morning was for excellent weather. You can surely guess what I did next.
And as if by magic I now had time to learn all about crop circles, and the prospect of a relaxing ride with a wander around the ancient sights of Salisbury to follow. I would still be home by 7.30pm the next day. I was pleased with myself.
The crop circle centre was run by a Dutch lady of a certain age, with whom I chatted in the hope of extracting some deeper understanding. The aerial photographs on the walls were astounding, and you really did have to question their origin. Two men claimed to have been responsible for creating the circles, and indeed, as the lady pointed out, in some cases this was true. They allegedly used boards and rope to produce their artwork in fields in the area. Mystery solved. Except they keep appearing today, and contain such complexity and accuracy, only really visible from the air, that you seriously question how on earth it could be done. And, for those who want to believe, that is just it. They don’t come from Earth.
A local conspiracy theorist, also there with me – and who absolutely looked the part (think archaeologist on TV’s Time Team) – enthused in his Wiltshire drawl about “proof” on YouTube that no one ever reports. Whatever or whoever is behind these designs, they are very clever. I asked why he thought beings intelligent enough to visit our planet over such infinitely vast distances would leave only these clues for us in farmers’ fields when they got here. He thought it was a good question. Frankly, who knows. It’s not like believing in the Loch Ness monster. These things are real and they keep happening. There is a new circle that appeared a few miles away this month. So you can’t argue over their existence, or their size or complexity. What we are missing is footage of one coming into being. According to my friend, such footage did once exist, in the 1990s, but wouldn’t you know it, it disappeared!
Returning to the more mundane, but very pretty, world of my straight line South, I now found myself at the start of a long series of quiet lanes that follow the course of the small River Avon (a different one) right down through Wiltshire, bisecting Salisbury Plain, to Salisbury and even beyond, right to the sea. It passes through a chain of pretty villages and the town of Amesbury, and stands out on the OS map as the perfect way to cycle exactly where I wanted to go. Again, coincidence? The world is full of wonderful mysteries and I was happy to use this obvious geographical advantage for as long as I could. That began with the village of Upavon, just down the road, and took me through the rest of my peaceful afternoon of glorious cycling and on to an evening of mediaeval splendour in Salisbury.
