Bikepacking Britain’s Oldest Highway: The Old Chalk Way

I spent 6 days riding the Old Chalk Way from Lyme Regis on the Dorset Coast to Holme-next-the-Sea in Norfolk, taking in the Cerne Giant, Stonehenge, Avebury Stone Circle and so much more. Challenges included the heat, dodgy battery management and sand traps. Definitely one of my favourite ever bike rides.

I’m in Limeis at the start of the old chalkway, a 360 mile route across England to Kingslin. It’s uh takes in most of the ridgeway, the Canal Way and Pedar’s Way, which together people think may be the oldest highway in Britain. This is known as the Jurassic Coast. If you can see the cliffs behind me, lots of fossils have been found here. And the the most famous fossil hunter of them all is Maranning. Today’s going to be a brutal day. It’s going to be hot up to 30° and Dorset where I am is not flat. There’s nothing particularly high, but it either goes up or down. [Applause] [Music] [Music] signposter. a bit manic, aren’t they? Let’s talk chalk. After all, this is the old chalkway. This was laid down in the Cretaceous period, the third of the great eras of the dinosaurs. And if you think about Tyrannosaurus, Rex, and Triceratops, they were Cretaceous dinosaurs. Yes, they were in Jurassic Park, but Cretaceous Park didn’t sound so good. Apparently, there were only two Jurassic dinosaurs in Jurassic Park, but that’s another issue. Uh, so the world was much warmer than it is today. So, this was covered in like a really shallow sea and it would evaporate and then refill and evaporate over, you know, thousands and tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of years. And every time it evaporated, it left behind uh shellfish. and their shells are basically got crushed down into this chalk. And if you look at the deposits of chalk in the south of England, to me they look sort of like a leaf or a palm frond. And uh they have these sort of this main stem that we’re going on uh towards Cambridge and and Norfick. Um but with these branches down to the coast. So, White Cliffs of Dover was one of those branches and they were used as long-d distanceance trading routes because they were well drained. Chalk drains very well. So, it was easy to walk and also the ridges meant that uh you could see any enemies. It was harder to be be ambushed by bandits or or enemies or whoever. So, we’re going to see a lot of chalk. [Music] Ladies and gentlemen, behind me on the hillside is the biggest penis in Britain, the CERN giant. There’s a lot of mystery behind it. You would have thought with a 11 m long penis, you know, somebody would have written stuff down about it. But uh the current thinking is that it is an ancient representation of Hercules. That sometime in the late middle ages, somebody who hated Oliver Cromwell decided to add some genitals and a belly button because Hercules was Cromwell’s uh nickname. And then the current thinking is in 1908 or so that somebody joined the small genitals together with the uh belly button to create a very very large penis. Oh, apparently it’s the postcards is the only pornographic picture you’re allowed to send by royal mail. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Music] Tired and dehydrated no matter how much I drink. Starting to make a few mistakes. I knew today was going to be hard. I didn’t know it was going to be this hard. Both legs cramping now despite my attempts to rehydrate. [Music] So, end of day one and I am at the campsite at um Oakford Fitzp and I’m the only one here. My little tent, absolutely nobody else on a Friday night in June, which surprised me. I had a bit of a tough day. 80 km and 1,700 m climbing. So quite a lot uh quite a lot of hike a bike cuz a lot of the these climbs were quite loose gravel climbs. So I I had to do a lot of getting off and walking. It was 30° today and it did affect me. Uh at one point I stopped and uh gugged a load of water and vomited straight back up again, which is very unpleasant. Uh so I’m slowly rehydrating myself now and going to have just some camp dinner here, I think, rather than going anywhere. There is a a big pond going on. Small lake at the campsite. Fortunately, you’re not allowed to swim in it and there’s no showers, so there’s no way of getting clean. That was definitely the hard likely to be the hardest day. Garmin says there are 31 uh designated climbs and I did I think 13 today. Yeah, it’s it’s been hard. It’s been really cool. Um but uh it’s been really hard. So, day two and it’s going to be another hot one. 28 rather than 30. But hey, I think I’ll still be flapping about at my lunchtime. Um, it’s the summer solstice and I’m hoping to get to Stonehenge. [Music] [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Music] [Music] I feel like I’m properly on the ridgeway. Now there these wonderful tracks across top of hills. Wonderful views on either side. It’s not many places in the UK you can ride and gravel for this length of time. [Applause] [Music] There. [Music] Hey, Stonehenge. Neolithic monument built somewhere between 3,00500 BC. And if you think about that 1500 years, that’s the same time between now and the Romans leaving Britain if you went backwards. So, uh, when people try and work out what Stonehenge is for, I sometimes think, well, it’s probably for lots of things cuz it was rebuilt and moved about at different times. Big stones were moved about 24 miles away, but the smaller ones, some of them were brought from Wales over 130 mi ago. I would love to have seen the minutes of the committee meeting at decided that [Music] we have a bit of a problem. I checked and this was meant to be a non-firing day on the Lark Hill ranges and red flags are flying. H I am I thought the ranges were open today. Do you know it says on the I’ve just looked it up again. It says there’s no firing on lock. No, they’re definitely firing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I don’t know cuz I’m just going with my map which is goes around it. All right. So you can go along here with Yeah. Yeah. As long as you’re not going into the Yeah. You can you can go whatever. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Thanks very much, guys. [Music] [Music] So, day three. Heading on to the Ridgeway proper today. The great ridgeway. This was the classic bit. Had a fantastic burger and chips and a couple of pints last night. recharge the the calories. But, uh, the campsite’s the second one in a row with no showers, which means I’m definitely starting to whiff a bit. So, I hope tonight’s one has some decent facility so I can get clean. [Music] [Music] So, I’m at Avery Stone Circle, one of the the biggest stone circles in the world. Neolithic. It’s got a a henge on the outside. If you can see that bank behind me and then a couple of rings of stones. And it’s also probably my favorite story on this trip is that in a moment of religious fervor back in the early 1300s, a gang started pulling over the stones, seeing it as the devil’s work. But one of them fell on top of one of these guys and squished him and nobody touched the stones anymore. And I I think it was 1936 they pulled the stone upright and they found his body with a coin dating back to 1304 or something like that. So the story went down through hundreds of years and it appears to be true. What’s quite interesting here is that the village has kind of been built into the into the circle, but it’s a very atmospheric place. Unfortunately, this trip, I can’t take a lot of time to to stop and enjoy too much, so I must push on. So, I’m on the Ridgeway proper. I think this is certainly what I imagined it was going to look like with these snaking white paths leading up the hillside. New Age Traveler is still a thing. Looks like it. [Music] So, I’ve just ridden across Barbar Hill, an iron age fort, and it’s it’s big. Look at the size of the the um the ditch between the two ramp parts. Absolutely massive. [Music] So this is Whan Smithy, a Neolithic long barrel, but the the name is much later. Uh Wayland was a a Germanic smith god. Uh so this was probably named by the Saxons 4,000 years after it was built. There were lots of bodies buried here. Just crossing the terms of Goring. Apparently this is the the halfway point in effort if not in distance. Good. [Music] It’s been a fantastic day up on the Ridgeway for the vast majority of the day. Um, surprisingly as we were going through middle England is really quite densely populated. Didn’t see any towns or villages for a long time. I was quite pleased to get to Goring ons and get hold of some water. So, it’s just raining a little bit here in the campsite, which is why I’m hiding under this cover. The family who run this place said that because it’s busy, I should camp in the garden, which I’m finding a little bit odd. So, day four. I’ve escaped the traffic of Wallingford and come across across quite a difficult little bit of uh single track, which be all right if the bike wasn’t laden and I hadn’t just woken up. Um but um I’m not sure what really to expect today, although it might be a long day. I think I might have messed up my distances slightly. Pulled this campsite a wee bit early and the next one bit late, but we shall see how we progress. Heat. Heat. Feel like we’re on the ridge wag again probably because we are the house named house gives a clue to the next part of the ride after the ridgeway. [Music] This must be interesting cuz there’s nothing else. [Music] door. It’s apparently a monument to the father of inland navigation. Maybe that was his uh canal we passed a way back. This is Ivingho Beacon which I’m not going to climb cuz I don’t have time. But this is where I thought the Ignil Way met the Ridgeway. But actually I’m not surprised that 20 or 30 mi of it that way is known as the Nile way because it it didn’t feel the same as the Ridgeway. It wasn’t up in the chalk downs. It was sort of all the tracks through the forest. Eggnil is thought to uh come from the Eini tribe uh which spawned Buddaca, the warrior queen and uh scourge of the Romans. Um but this was their road and I suppose we’re heading deep into their territory now. Whoever designed this bridge, never seen a bike before. Here [Music] we go. What an epic day. I thought it was going to be 65, maybe 70 miles and I must have just got my brain in a twist when spotting campsites. Uh because that was 84 and with the chill turns at the start. That was a hard 84. The first half was really hard and slow. lots of um not just climbs but sort of routy uh tracks through forests. Absolutely brilliant. I’ve absolutely loved it. Um campsite is extremely basic. Woke up to light rain but it stopped fortunately bit overcast but it’s been cheered up by two red kites flying over the campsite. The red kites have definitely been a highlight of this trip. Heat. Heat. [Music] So, back on the eggnal way, which seems to be uh which seems to be alternating between these sort of 3 m wide grassy strips with the exposed chalk path and then more functional farm tracks in between. So, I wasn’t that disappointed to see the back of the the campsite cuz it definitely had a strange air about it. You could just imagine a reporter standing with the microphone in front of a a police tape. So, the other problem was the uh was nowhere to charge anything. So, I’ve got no phone, no nothing. Another busy road. [Music] Heat up [Music] here. We got this. Let’s see. [Music] [Music] That’s the penultimate hill in Garmin and the only one today. Soft gravel at the top. Pretty brutal. That’s something good. [Music] made good time today despite the fact gear shifting’s all out. This happened to me last time a bike pack and the bike was out in the rain just stopped shifting upwards. I’m trying to work it on the fly so it’s just about working. It’s working down okay but with the flatter roads it’s a real problem. um because you know of the second freewheel downhill. Uh but that’s turning into real pain. Uh but I don’t really want to start uh trying too much experimentation in the middle of the day until I get to the campsite. So I’m going to have to play along with it and see if I can get it going. Um in the meantime, just going to have some lunch. [Music] Today turned into a bit of a day. The footage will have cut off slowly suddenly because all my batteries seem to die at once. Garmin went so I didn’t know where I was going. My phone pretty much went the same time. So I didn’t have my backup route to know where I was going. All I knew was I had to go north out of Thatford and then east through Watton to Hingham uh where the campsite was. I ended up doing at least 21 miles when the direct route is 15. My route was along A roads and B roads largely and I at rush hour and I was just getting so much exhaust. It was definitely type two fun. But the good news is this campsite is gorgeous. I’ve just been to the pub in Hangingham and had a very nice dinner and I’ve been plotting my route and I missed a lot of Peter’s way by going up that bloody a road. So I’m going to loop back south a little bit and pick up some of it. But it also means I avoid the um the B- road and A- road sections pretty much. So I think I’ve got a a win-win on that. So day six has got off to an interesting start. This morning I tried to reindex the gears myself. Didn’t work terribly well. So, I looked up local bike shop. I uh there was one supposedly in the next village. I end up I ring the guy. No answer. So, I decide, well, let’s just rock up. You might be in the middle of repair and it’s a quite a modern domestic house. Ring the doorbell. just about to give up when a woman in wheelchair has to fight her way through the inner porch to answer the door. And the bike repair business belongs to her ex-husband who has moved into the another village and a bit further away and isn’t very pleased that he hasn’t changed the address of the business. So, I’ve decided to push on. I’ve got about four or five working gears. That’s the way it is. It’s going to be one of those days, isn’t it? [Music] [Music] So, back on the Peters’s Way and I think on the Ped’s way properly. As I say, I drifted a little bit south out of Hingham to pick up a bit more of it because otherwise I was worried I was going to miss too much. And it’s very atmospheric through the woods here. Um, ped means peddler itinerant people wandering around stuff to sell looking for casual work being blamed for the world’s ills. It’s also said to be haunted by a black hound called Old Shuck if I remember right. I will keep my eyes peeled. [Music] Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. [Music] This part of Peters Way is marked as a Roman road, which you can tell because it just goes straight where the tarmac roads go off. Although I did almost come across here in the sand behind me. Uh coming downhill, reasonable pace. Got a fly in my eye. Hit a deep load of sand. Nearly went our super tip, but hey, just about recovered. Hey, not far to go now. So, I made it. Well, I’m calling this it because as you see, the sea is still quite some distance in the background there. But I’m not pushing a laden bike across a really soft sand uh to get to dip the wheel in the in the water. We’ll take that as red. I’ve had I’ve done quite a lot today. Um really pleased actually. I dipped south the start of today just to pick up uh one of the main off-road parts of Peterswood cuz that was really atmospheric alongside the the firing range. Um, you can imagine a black dog hunting it or Robin Hood and his merry men or characters out of Game of Thrones. It was very, it had a real ancient feel about it. Uh, because even though it’s an ancient track, you’re mainly sort of following Land Rover tracks for most of it. Uh, which takes away some of the mystery, I suppose. What amazing 6 days ride it’s been. Um, you know, just thinking back to uh the things like, you know, going past Stonehenge, Avery Stone Circle. Really liked Avery Stone Circle. But the bits, the best bits probably the bits you couldn’t see on the GoPro, which were the red kites flying overhead, the multitude of butterflies just uh fluttering up in front of me everywhere I went, the beautiful chalk flowers, um hairs, deer, um quite a lot of wildlife. So, um, all that was amazing. And I’m afraid a GoPro is not a wildlife camera, so you won’t have seen much of that. Uh, but yeah. Yeah. Uh, head down the road to Anstanton, find my campsite. Um, there’s nothing here in the way of uh ice cream or anything, so I’m going to go down and get an ice cream to celebrate and then some fish and chips. Uh but yeah, what a long strange trip it’s been. [Music]