Distance: 7km
Please follow the Countryside Code to keep you, your dog, farm animals and the countryside safe. Respect other people, Protect the natural environment, Enjoy the outdoors.
For dog walkers there is special advice available from Countryside Online.
Thank you to Anita Morton, Oliver Steed, Virginia Dreyer for researching this walk. If you have any suggestions or comments regarding this walk please add a comment using the form at the end of this page.
The Walk:
Although just outside the valley, this walk gives access to very different countryside, with a number of features of interest, some lovely views and snowdrops and bluebells at the right time of year. The walk includes a number of steepish hills.
Park in the lane at the sharp bend near Saunders Cottage. (To find the lane, leave Lambourn on the Baydon Road. On reaching Ermin Street, turn left and proceed about 1/4 mile to a lane on the right. Turn down here and park by the side of the road near the sharp bend.)
Don’t be discouraged at this point by the rather bleak scene and noise of the motorway! Cross the motorway on the footbridge. Go straight along the path, with the solar farm to the left. At a wood, the path seems to bend to the left, but follow the footpath signs turning right and keep on into the wood. Go through the wood to the field beyond and follow the path along a band of trees at the top of the hill. Cross the first of the huge ditches which surround the fort and walk across the open fields within the fort which measure an impressive 34 acres (13.8 ha). Where the track swings sharply to the left, fork right, cross the second ditch, and continue to follow the clear path which curves right towards some farm buildings.
Go through the gate, ignore the path down the hill on your right, and continue straight on, through a muddy paddock (sometimes with horses and guinea-fowl loose), go through the gate on your left opposite the stables and follow the footpath signs between the farm buildings. Be careful not to turn hard left but follow the drive round to the right, leaving the main house and compound on the right. Keep on the drive, bearing right, away from the house past fields on left and right and some woodland, to a big gate and gatehouse at the road.
Turn right and follow the road for about 500 m. Take a footpath on the right across a field, which takes you to a junction of a road and a bye-way. Turn right onto the road and follow it up a steep hill, with a wood on the left. At the top of the hill is a track on the right, just before Balak farmhouse. Follow the track for about 1km. Continue on the track when it turns sharply to the right and goes down the hill through a wood. Turn left on the track at the bottom, and follow it to the edge of another wood, on the left. Turn right here (unsigned), up the hill, to the edge of a wood. Turn left to skirt the wood and follow the field boundaries back up the hill to the track past the solar farm and thence to the motorway footbridge.
Points of interest
Solar farm – on part of the old airfield
Outline of Iron Age fort, with extensive steep banks (no access allowed except on the footpath which runs across its centre)
Membury Farm
Impressive views across Wiltshire countryside
Banks of snowdrops and bluebells in season
Herds of deer (usually in the distance)
