A week of Wiltshire byways
Our leisurely exploration of this ancient landscape took us from the stones of the Neolithic and Bronze Ages to the concrete of the 1930s.
It was a late August morning, the first of our holiday, and we were keen to get going. We retrieved our bikes from the cottage porch and set off on trails which – over the next few days – would take us to a street market, a neolithic tomb and the largest stone circle in the world.
While other families joined motorway queues heading to the coast, we had travelled the short distance to Wiltshire and a holiday cottage with the Ridgeway running past its door. I’d ridden the Ridgeway twice before, but both times were solo and squeezed into limited time between commitments. This was to be a more leisurely exploration.
The prehistoric Ridgeway is famous, but a web of lesser-known byways just like it entangle the Wiltshire landscape, giving us plenty of route options. And with the dry weather stretching into late August, conditions on the chalky trails – treacherous in the wet – were still perfect for riding. When we tired of hills, the old railway path in the valley gave us the chance for an easy spin.