First day of a week off so I yomped over the downs to Marlborough in very muddy conditions.
The first 12½ mile leg to Avebury is all familiar now, but the canal towpath which usually gets me off to an easy flying start was very muddy, slow and hard going. Leaving the canal behind, as usual I saw no other human beings at all on the 5 miles between Harepath House and the long barrow at West Kennet; this was mostly good going except for a stretch of about half a mile coming to the top of Easton Hill where the bridleway had turned into sticky chalk sludge, which was very hard going, both slippery and sticky at the same time! I was rewarded for my exertions with corncrakes singing and giant murmurations of starlings.
From the long barrow, however, the whole Avebury site was chokka with half-term families and the paths were almost impassable with mud in places. Worse yet, The Red Lion could not provide me with lunch as it was solidly booked out, which is not a problem on a normal week. So I finished the fruit out of my backpack sitting on their wall and set out for Marlborough on an empty-ish stomach.
This turned out to be a blessing as I was rewarded with magnificent late afternoon sunshine over Fyfield Down with its mysterious sarsen fields, and while there were some people up there, I was absolutely alone in the valley east of the summit which was awash with trees in red leaf. Mostly much firmer footing too, just one mud bath on the way up from Avebury and that of only about 100 metres.
With about three miles to go, I realised I was going to be very tight to get the last sensible bus connection to Devizes at 1728. After that it’s either a nearly 3 hour odyssey via Swindon or £35 in a taxi. I pushed hard for the last 3 miles and made it with three minutes to spare, but only by walking on the pavements on the traffic saturated A4, rather than the pretty riverside walk from Manton with its fine views of Marlborough College.
