Is the RIDGEWAY really 5000 years old?
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- Опубликовано: 1 окт 2024
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Welcome to this weeks video. We take a look at some of the stunning landscapes and ancient features along the famous Ridgeway. We also ask, how do we know that the ridgeway is 5000 years old? Its long puzzled me, so I thought I would take a look.
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Maps: National Library of Scotland
Maps: OS Maps. Media License.
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The legend of Wayland's Smithy is that if you place a coin on one of the stones and leave your horse there overnight, in the morning the horse will have new shoes and the money will have gone. I cycled that part of the Ridgeway a few years ago, and stopped off there and left a few pennies on one of the stones. Back home a few days later, I noticed how worn my tyres were from off-roading, and then a friend coincidentally emailed to ask if I wanted some new tyres they couldn't use. Wayland's magic still works...
If I get there this summer I intend to leave some coins. I wont have a horse or a bicycle but I'm sure Wayland will know the appropriate action.
I love this story. Thank you for sharing 👌
No interest in Saxon colonial crap from north of the rhine
Although some might say that correlation doesn't equal causation!
@@neilthornton3544 lmaoo
I’ll never go to England. I’m too old, broke and ill. I’ve always wanted to walk the back roads and now I’ve come as close as humanly possible without being there in person. Thank you for taking me along!
Awesome video, not only is the Ridgeway deeply rooted in our national history, but I have spent many hours walking and cycling this route, from my childhood to more recent adventures. Loved the White Horse and Waylands Smithy bits!
Thank you. Really enjoyable to make this
Maybe it went out into Doggerland. I like that thought.
Well.. thats such a good point. Why ever not!
What people tend to forget when walking long-range ancient trackways like The Ridgeway today, is that the countryside around would have looked a LOT different 5,000 years ago. Most of it would have been covered by the all-encompassing Wildwood, a complex and tangled mixture of trees, with a significant number of the trees either dead or dying through the ravages of wind, fire (lightning strikes) and flood.
Paths like The Ridgeway would have been meticulously cut through the Wood by our ancestors and maintained by passing travellers. Hill Forts like Uffington would probably have been welcome open areas for trading, rest and respite from the miles and miles of deep and dark woodland.
When the hills of Doggerland were hit by the wave, 8.5k yrs ago, many mammoth were swept into the sea, where their remains are still found today. If they behaved like elephants of today, our oldest trails and clearings in the forest need not have been Man-made.
Please look at bronze age deforestation and what not. I hope the subject interests you.
the people that ran those open areas would charge a toll of some kind
@@excession3076 quite my thoughts as well... it was a while ago when I did my degree and the image of Britain as one big forest into mediaeval times is somewhat fanciful. The bronze axe accelerated the deforestation started in the neolithic age, and it's the best farming land that would have been cleared first.
To my way of thinking the 'Wyld Wood' would have survived the longest in the heavier, boggy, clay soils of the valleys, while the drier downland would likely have been gradually cleared first. The 'hill forts' remain something of an enigma though, to me. I am always mindful of the dramatic licence Mortimer Wheeler employed to 'sell' archaeology, particularly with his excavations at Maiden Castle. Later work showed that the site was essentially abandoned some time in the C1st BC and there is little evidence to support the idea that any major siege by the 2nd Legion took place there. I've often wondered if the structures, at least the simple single ditch and rampart ones, more likely had their origins as over-night stock enclosures and camps for drovers and travellers. The lack of water at these sites would seem to preclude extended habitation due to the need to typically descend some distance down a steep incline into the valley to collect water and water stock.
Do we really know with any certainty, or are we still essentially clutching at straws? I suspect the latter is more likely the case and it is that which captures our imaginations and feeds our ongoing fascination with these sites and monuments. Maybe it is best that they remain enigmatic, for the sake of future generations so, they too, can enjoy the mystery as we do. 😊
This was a great video Paul, I have walked the Ridgeway 5 times from Ivinghoe to Avebury and have spent my whole life living under the shadow of the White horse.
There are three more Iron age forts that you missed, one is hard by the Ridgeway but is almost completely ploughed out now, "Rams hill", another lies close by to the North west of Uffington "Hardwell Camp" and a third lies about a mile due South of the Ridegway above Ashbury and close to Ashdown house "Alfreds castle".
You can't beat a bit of local knowledge:)
I'd love to walk its full length one day! I bet there is more than three that I missed ;-)
"Alfreds castle" rumour has it is that this is where King Alfred waited for the Vikings. The battle where he defeated has been suggested as taking place above Compton in Berkshire further to the East. The national trust property Ashdown Trust close by is worth a visit. Interesting history. Pete Townsend of the Who. Rents this as an out of London abode. With the the Odstone Coombes close to Ashbury in the vincity. Makes for a great place to go rambling. Varied landscape with miles of tracks.
Had fun taking the aerial shots, my favourite track as you know well!
I like the shot at 11.05, it's where my parents ashes are spread at Sparsholt firs. My Dad grew up on a farm there and he and my grandad farmed the fields on the right in the 1950s. I have my Blewburton hill canvas on my wall from your website.
Some really great clips there Hedley, well done!!
@@Zeebad_1st Sparsholt Firs is such a lovely area and how. Lovely that you grew up there. Glad you like the Blewburton picture!
@@davidberlanny3308 thank you David
really helped bring it to life
Anorher vid packed with history, archeology and geography. You're lucky to live in a land that retains the signs and scars of people's past activities. And we are lucky that you step outside to find and film them even on a cold day!
wasn't Wayland Smithy Mr. Burns PA in the Simpsons ?
The hill forts may not have been occupied, but they are obviously defensive in structure. They may have been a trading spot in peaceful times but also a place where people could congregate in times of trouble, when neolithic peoples would have lived decentralized across the countryside. News of raiders/invasion/conflict would prompt people to gather there for safety and organization as needed
It's a lot easier to travel along ridges than through the ups and downs of valleys, river courses which can be quite difficult to traverse and exhausting
That's the big frustration about archaeology - it can tell you the what, the how, sometimes the who but rarely can it tell you the why.
Your decision to reduce your output in order to focus on quality was a wise one. Several other YT bloggers I follow should take a leaf out of your book on this matter.
I've long considered many so called hillforts as being like motorway services, a chance to rest refresh and stock up every 2-3 days.
Probably quite expensive to use too.
Uffington is absolutely spectacular, it's one of my favourite places to wander, so much so I have the Uffington horse tattooed on my arm. Great video and I must explore more of The Ridgeway.
It's such an elegant and abstract horse. People could be forgiven thinking that it's a modern work of art.
@@affalaffaa That is an absolutely fantastic comment 👏
Incredible to have so many well preserved monuments on one route. Thanks for sharing your adventure with us!
Thanks for watching!
Excellent storytelling and photography as ever, and I have just noticed that you have reached 101K subscribers. Well done!
The area of land beneath Uffington Castle was originally wetland/marshland. The farm land we see today comes after man drained the water away.
Lots of wetland in Essex was drained for farmland after the war. It's this the same?
Wonderful, you do the walking so i don't have to. Although in the past i climbed Silbury when we broke the journey from London to the west country.
And thanks for using BC and not that modern woke abomination BCE!
Nice video my man
At one time (though not now) I used to live in the village of Pitstone, from the living room window I had an uninterrupted view of Ivinghoe beacon.
At the time I lived in Vicarage Road, at one end of this road, was the village center, and the main road through the village which was the Lower Icknield Way, at the other end of the road it made a junction with the Upper Icknield Way.
At that point they're just roads, nothing more or less than that
The pathway roughly followed the upper Icknield Way, I should imagine most walkers were glad when they crossed the A41, and took to the hills, leaving the main roads behind (you mentioned the Gryms Ditch, as a child I lived in the village of Potter End and well would you believe it Gryms Ditch crossed the golf course not a half mile from my house, the golfers didn't like it because they had to leave it alone, as it was a National Monument, they wanted to landscape it and make it look what they thought was,-- "nice"--)
some expeert digging there Paul. Some say it was orginally in use when Britain was still attached to Europe (NL)
Nice, did a circuit from Avebury to Silbury Hill, West Kennet and The Sanctury last Friday. Given the recent rain, you can see why many of the ancient paths were on high ground.
Absolutely yep
A great start to my week, thank you! I went to school in Wantage and recall (with no great delight!) the cross country runs up to Segsbury Camp, after which the school was named. I also recall spending the night at Waylands Smithy and, whilst we didn't see any horses being re-shod, it was one of the most spiritually 'thin' places I've ever been. Finally, those crop circles that were found close by where the ley lines cross in the 80's and made national news? Yeah, sorry about that!
hahaha... ooops
I don't think there is any doubt people traveled along this path for that long, no. The exact route might have changed a bit and the question is if it was a road or just a path in early times, there is a difference and before horse and wagons really was a thing in Britain, you probably didn't really need a road unless you wanted to move a large number of troops between the different sites and I don't think the population was large enough for that to be valid.
With a path, you cut down trees and bushes, maybe build a bridge or 2 and mark the path out but that is it. A road is a engineered project that requires you to prepare the surface and maintain it and I don't think the Ridgeway was like that in the late Neolithic since that is a lot of work that could be used to build things along the path instead. That of course must have changed in the bronze age where wagons and chariots became common, by the late bronze age you needed a road between all these places to freight goods and people, and to quickly move war chariots and soldiers when threatened.
I don't think this is the worlds oldest road, places like Mesopotamia, Egypt and China probably had roads earlier due to them having higher population density and were earlier with horses and wagons but it is certainly plausible it is the oldest in the British isles. It would be interesting with a modern ivestigation of the area using Lidar, geophys and aerial photos during a drought to see if we could figure out the original path and maybe to find more Neolithic, bronze age and iron age settlements in the area. I think there is more just waiting to be found there, the most southern part have been pretty well investigated but up the road more work could certainly be done.
There is still a lot we don't know about England before the Roman invasion... Good episode. :)
Excellent work Paul. Passed this on to an American niece asking for pre-Christian British history.
I was thinking that I have heard Americans talking in the same tones as Paul about N. American history but the dates were an order of magnitude younger on the East coast & another order of magnitude younger on the West coast.
I really upset some Vancouver Mounties when I asked for directions to the "Heritage Building".
I said "The signs point this way until the park keeper's shed, then point the other way on t'other side of the shed! Do you think someone's turned the signs around?"
They looked REALLY angry, they hissed "That shed IS the heritage building! It's from 1932!"
I apologised & scarpered. I'd been there two days & hadn't adjusted my "history clock" yet! 😳
@Aengus42 glad you took the chance to annoy the Mounties, they love that
Given the momumental scale of the earthworks shown, the people at the time each was built would have had a great capacity for moving through the landscape. Cherboug to Weymouth, 123 km, but the high point of the peninsula west of Cherboug is 185 metres high and likely visible 40 km away towards England. The high point on the isle of Portland is 150 metres high and is 106 km from the high point near Cherboug. Likely, for 70% of the journey from Cherboug to Weymouth, land was visible on a good day - 88 of 123 km (55 of 76 miles). Alderney, at 80 metres high, would have been a help with navigation. The Isle of Portland must have been an important place well back in history as it dominates the land for many miles around. The Ridgeway name is a clue that there are ridges, likely with less vegetation, that offered security and reasonable speed for a journey from western France deep into England. There is a high point north east of King's Lynn near West Newton.
I live near to Ivinghoe Beacon and always fancied wondering off down the Ridgeway. It will take me not to far from North Hampshire where I used to live.
Maybe one day if I can get back some of my youth.😅
Change is always possible! (Except from a vending machine...)
Terrific Paul. So many truly wonderful links to the past all on one excellent video. Thank you for sharing it with us.
😊
Thanks, Pauline
The white horse was a symbol of the Atrebates tribe, as on coins found at Calleva. It is thought that the horse in the chalk may perhaps be a marker to show they were in control in the area.
Happy memories of walking days on the Oxfordshire and Wiltshire Ridgeway. Lunch stops amongst the beeches and thinking about what the ancestors would make of our "modern" world. Thanks Paul for taking me along with you.
Loved this video, the aerial shots made it come alive. Been to a few of the places along the Ridgeway one hot summer walking along from a white horse to Avebury and back to the car on a tour of places of note.
Reminds me of a walk I did as a student in 1975. The section from Swindon to Avebury. I’ve never forgotten the magical descent into the great stone circle. Thanks for a great episode Paul!
Thank you for the walking tour, as always. Always a pleasure to see you and your videos. Hello Rebecca, and see on the next, Paul! 😊
I've walked sections of the Ridgeway over the years, most of it during military service as part of a Basic Fitness Test or for navigation exercises.
I have walked it with groups in latter years, and I'm pleased to say none of it was in the cold weather!
I've been looking at place names and giving them a Brythonic twist, which I find helps to understand why (perhaps) and occasionally who built or owned that place. Ton - Dun, a hill or even a slight prominence in the land. DD - Th, A - Ar as in Afon, so the river Avon becomes the river River (lol). 2 places called Atherstone - Arthurs Dun, Adderwell - Arthurs Well, a place fresh water can had, for a small fee of course.
Our language has had many influences over millennia, memory of what was faded along with those changes. How many more such routes as the Ridgeway were paved over by the Romans.
There is an iron age hillfort a few miles away from me (Sandpit Lane iron age fort in South Weald, and excavations found very little pottery where the ditches would have been (it still has the earthwork banks around parts of it). I came to the conclusion that it was build for trading markets, and it most likely would have been used for markets while it was being constructed.
They apparently found a lot of post holes from buildings within its structure when they scanned it.
If they only built most of these forts and hillforts from the iron age for trading, then trading must have had huge importance back then to go to all the efforts of building the huge earthworks, which must have taken a huge amount of time and manpower to construct.
Sandpit Lane fort is partially a hill fort as on it's western side there is banks running all along it, and on it's eastern side there is a reasonable sized bank. At its northern side it's like a flat plateau.
It's built on the havering ridge, which is where the Ice sheet ended. There are a few apparently victorian era 'gravel pits' nearby, with the biggest being right beside the forts north western edge. But I wonder if those gravel pits were also used by the forts builders to dig material to build the forts steep banks.
A small section of the fort is in Weald country park, with the majority of the fort being across the road with a cricket club and pitches within it. The main visible earthworks is within the park, but at the eastern side there is still visible and decently sized earthworks where the hill there undulates.
I’m pretty sure they were to help prevent cattle rustling, there is no reason to create such massive earth works for a market. They are defensive but not easy to defend, but the reason they are so large is to make it less easy for raiders to run off with your prize heard.
Top video, Paul. The Ridgeway is one of our most enigmatic national trails. So fortunate to live local to it, White Horse Hill and Waylands Smithy are favourite walks for me and the dog!
Couldn't agree more!
Really enjoyed this video. I was brought up in the 1950s in Didcot by parents who loved going on picnics to places near the Ridgeway in both Berkshire (the original "boot shaped" county as it existed before 1974) and Wiltshire. After getting married in 1972 we lived in Wantage and continued to visit all the places you featured. There is also the Icknield Way which parallels some of the Ridgeway and was a shorter route but only useable in summer as it is at or below the spring line and therefore passed through boggy land at other times of year. I lived in Wantage and then Grove until 2010 and therefore know very well the route and remains of the Wilts & Berks canal and the Didcot, Newbury & Southampton railway with which I have family connections as my grandfather became Station Master at Upton & Blewbury from 1916 and later at Compton from where he retired in 1941 to live in Blewbury.
Paul - the way you fell over at the beginning - do you have a Judo or similar background? Seriously, you fell perfectly with your head up and you didn't try to stick your arms out to "save" yourself.
Former Goalkeeper! 😊 (love that someone noticed).
I used to go for Sunday walks on the Bedfordshire end of the Ridgeway in my 1980s childhood. I had no idea of its history. Thank you.
Nice video! I live near the Ridgeway and the way the views stretch out to the north across the vale always amaze me. It's like the world opens up before you.
Makes a great Sunday evening watching your videos looking forward to the next.
Awesome, thank you!
I'd always hoped to walk the Ridgeway. Thank you for doing it for me.
I can't believe that those hill-forts were used for trading... Take potatoes for example. Would a trader bring half a ton of spuds to the top of a remote hill, and then would a hundred housewifes each carry away 10 pounds of them down the mountainside. Surely the market would be located in the centre of population, on the flatlands.
btw.. We had a mountain bike event in that area, one of the checkpoints was in the horses eye, although we didn't realise it was that at the time.
Excellent Paul, loved the history and the walk 👏👏👏👋⚔️🌍⭐️
If you like old stuff you need to come back to Dartmoor as we have plenty of railways that you have not visited and some stunning 6000 + year old building remains high on the moor with amazing views that need your storytelling skills.
Love it again
You do make me smile ...
You do of course say. "sent-u-arry". But honestly 😮😮it is spelt century...
😂
English as she is spoken..
😢
hello again Paul , my Sunday is now complete , another very interesting video, great drone shots Hedley , really well done and thank you 😊
The horse was clearly to warn low flying aircraft that the may disturb horses 😂😂😂😂
Loved the passion you put into this one and the integration of so many significant places into one story.
Imagine what it might have been like to walk that route 5000 years ago.
Really well done. Have a great week!!
Thanks David.
Not far above Avebury there are sarson stones on the ridgeway with grooves cut in them - where axes were sharpened. Proof enough for you?
Not sold on this one, Paul - but as intrigued as you, and everyone is, by the hanging questions about this “route”.
Are these sites indicators of the age of (this part of) The Ridgeway, or does the modern route join up sites of historical interest? Did it really dogleg down into Streatley and Goring? There are, at least today, potentially fordable spots around Wallingford and upstream of there. You’ve speculated in an earlier video about the Romans crossing the Thames (where?) at Dorchester, and we know they had a propensity for following (some) pre-established routes. And then there’s onward… to The Wash? Really? Wasn’t there a bit more land out there a few thousand years back?
Not arguing with you, not at all… so many questions. But I don’t think we can remotely try to date the ‘modern Ridgeway’ from its tenuous association with other archaeological sites “en route”. Is it not more likely that travellers would have preferred (on that section, at least) the route (now road) that hugs the spring line, halfway down the slopes?
Pass the beer, ta.
One clue for dating pathways is studying how they interact with landmarks that have been dated. For instance, we know the approximate dates for Roman roads: if a pathway ignores it, we can conclude the pathway is older than the Romans; if it appears to be influenced by it, then it dates after that time.
From Paul's presentation here, it would appear that the Ridgeway evolved with the various walled camps, which he suggests were marketplaces. For itinerant traders to reach their markets, they would need roadways, & to find several linked by one roadway indicates all of them came into existence at the same time. (Or at least most of them.)
And exceptions to this would suggest the existence of an even older roadway. (Just my amateur archeological opinion.)
Great video as always! Century is not spelled Centuary. Just sayin' :)
Informative and well produced Paul, as usual! Just a small point, there's no 'A' in Century!
Oooops
Hello Fresh is brilliant - no waste, no shopping!
Absolutely agree. Big fans here.
Brilliant video and great to see white horse hill somewhere I've lived near my whole lide5
Some stunning photography
Many thanks!
Excellent video, thank you. I'm off to Waylands Smithy tomorrow - thanks to you. How many days did it take for your to walk the Ridgeway and di you do it all in one go?
Epic. Enjoy it. We basically filmed this over 3 days visiting each site individually. 😊
The traditional eastern part of the route, beyond Ivinghoe Beacon, differs considerably from the line on yor map. In fact, it continues along the chalk scarp of the Chilterns and into East Anglia. Known as the Icknield Way, it is a similar network of routeways studded with ancient sites (burials, hill-forts and ditches). Once you get beyond the south-eastern corner of the Fens, the alignment either fans out or turns north across the Breckland to North Norfolk, this section being known as Peddars Way.
I enjoyed that, Paul! You covered some ground there. The Ridgeway is a very special route and I would love it if one day, archaeologists could prove the prehistoric origins of stretches on the current line. I don’t think that’s been done, but I could be wrong about that.
You’re a brave man showing your search history, but it was great to spot my channel in there!
Wayland Smithy? wasn't he in The Simpsons?
Country singer I think.
An amazing vlog. I am blown away by what you have produced for us. I just did t know all those places were there. Well done. Keep going please
Love the romance of the Ridgeway and these sites. Thank you.
Thanks for the video, these places are so special.
Another Brilliant video Paul, there is another indication that the Ridgeway could be even older than the 5000yrs as Geologists,and Archiologist think this footpath may have a connection with Ancient Europe when we were connected by the piece of land that once joined us to Europe about 8000yrs ago known as Doggerland they think Ancients could have used this footway ,maybe why the Ridgeway has so many Ancient monuments along its way as being very important to them up until the landslide that caused the land to drop below sea level and surrounding area to flood.
I live about 5 miles from the white horse and have been along virtually every road below it to try to get a decent picture of it.... but the only way seems to be from the air as you did!
Nice scenery, but nothing of the investigative insight we know Paul for.
Panic not... back next week with quite the opposite!
Fantastic video. I cycled King Alfreds Way 3 years ago and on the stretch that is the Ridgeway you just feel you are riding through ancient history. To be using a route that has been in constant use for 5000 years is mind blowing. Alas we didn't have much time to stop and explore. Maybe next time.
Thx for another great video - When we walked the Ridgeway it blew our mind just thinking about whose feet had taken those same steps through the millennia! It’s truly epic but so rewarding too .. Thx for raising its profile …
Very well put together and filmed, Paul. I expect the Ridgeway would have formed as a route thousands of years ago, in the same way that deer use the same routes through a forest. It was never written down or quantified by the people who used it and its route probably changed over the thousands of years.
I really love your videos. I'm a big fan of landscape and archaeology. So I get the same vibe form your vides as I do from old Time Teams. Just makes me want to get out there. Thank goodness we're emerging from Winter now. I always associate archeology with summer and long days. So it's really wistful watching material shot in summer in winter. It helps that yours seem to be more or less real time!
I'm really curious though as to the logistics of your videos. Presumably you didn't do the whole way in one go? So do you arrange to meet a driver?. Do you just park up, shoot some footage, then loop back and move to the next spot? It's just really impressive how it all comes together.
I know you explore many abandoned canals, have you and Rebecca ever been on a canal boat to tour an existing canal?
We keep meaning too. Maybe one day
Very interesting video with some great drone footage along the route. I suppose that ancient travellers would have joined - and left - the Ridgeway at various points, particularly if they were engaged in trade, or moving livestock. Do you know anything about the coastal ports at either end - in Dorset and Norfolk?
Great video Paul, you really caught the spirit of the route.
Many thanks!
Fun fact.. Kate Bush,s video of "cloudbusting" was filmed at Uffington. The wife and I spent a lovely sunny Sunday there spotting the locations and taking " then and now" pics. Also we have been using Hello Fresh for a few years now and genuinely love the meals. Oh yes... another Great video too ;-)
Lovely walk, very good provocation, standing back to get the wider viewpoint is always a good exercise, and one the professional historians are often too frightened? to take. Glad you survived the cold.
It was a close call!
Great video. love the transition on how you fell at 0:35... even know it not fun falling but a really interesting video.
Neat huh.... 😊
Another fab video Paul. So much mystery. 👍🏻🚶🏻♂️🚶♀️
It seems rather casual to dismiss some hillforts as _just_ being markets, because there is no direct evidence of persistent habitation using post holes, from a few archeological digs. I don't believe ancient people would devote so many resources to dig a defensive earthwork (and presumably stockade) _just_ for a market.
Perhaps they were seasonally occupied, had temporary structures (no deep posts), held markets, but also provided services to travellers, in the style of a _caravanserai:_ a temporary roof over your head, enough space to shelter pack animals or a herd, and protection from wild beasts, such as wolves descending on the flocks. If that was the case, the size would reflect the volume of livestock trading/travelling, rather than the number of people sheltering. There are well documented examples of large hillfort-like enclosures being mostly to protect and delimit the range of livestock.
However, it also seems that many very ancient sites (pre-IndoEuropean, hence pre-Celtic), including Stonehenge, and probably Avebury complex, were the focus of seasonal festivals. These would have been prolonged summer periods of worship and religious festivities, markets trading livestock and regional speciality goods, as well as a marriage market, and general partying, with exchange of gossip. Thomas Hardy portrays these roles for the travelling fairs of 19th century England, some 5,000 years later (ok, perhaps religion excepted :)
People certainly travelled significant distances to attend these festivals. There was likely a switch of command structure in tribes, from laissez-faire normal life at home in the shires, to strict leadership control, negotiated truces, and codes of conduct, which ensured that cheating merchants, or young men fighting drunken brawls over eligible maidens, did not escalate to full tribal warfare.
For some suggestive insights on this theme, see Graeber&Wengrow - _The Dawn of Everything_ - although it does focus more on N. America.
Modern archaeology has become really sloppy. Just the earthworks by themselves should clue us in that this was a military encampment, not a merchant mound. I bet the reason why no evidence of any structures is that they missed the post-holes.
In 1970s I met a farmer near Hitchen whose father used to walk to Newton Abbot to buy sheep and walk them home. He must have covered the Ridgeway/Icknield Way for much of this. He said police on the way would stop people ensure they did not exceed 100 sheep legal limit. But the dogs stirred the sheep up to make counting rather difficult! He said the last stop before Hitchen was Houghton Regis which had a pond by the green. I have read Edward Thomas book the Icknield Way which says cattle droving was already history in 1914. No doubt killed off by the railways.
I get a real belly laugh when he talks about "bitter cold", probably because I live in Alberta, Canada and we just went through a week when the temp had daytime highs below -25 celsius, with a couple of nights with -35C or lower. Ah Brits, even the Scot's don't know how fast your skin will freeze when the wind chill is 2,300 watts per square meter. FYI about 45 seconds when the standing still temp is about minus 30C. Beautiful stroll just the same
Another lovely video, thank you. One thing I found about "Hello Fresh" was a large amount of packaging with every delivery. Beyond ingredients, the extra foam for insulation and resulting bigger box seems excessive and unsustainable. I found "Hello Fresh" food options, ordering, and delivery quite good.
Thanks for the video, glad to see you emphasis the "hill forts" as trading places, or maybe enclosures to keep people and animals safe after each day's travel? In an era with much more woodland covering the landscape, and even wild boars and wolves still roaming the countryside, a nice safe enclosure every few miles would be quite welcome.
In a booklet published by the British Geological Society called 'Britain beneath our feet' they say: "Flooding is the major and most frequent recurring natural disaster in Britain. But it is not a new phenomenon and geological information shows where it has happened in recent geological past - in the last 10 000 years. BGS holds data that show where the floodplains occur - the alluvial deposits that compose clay , silt sand and gravel left behind in previous inundations"
If you find the map that goes with that, immediately you can see that The Greater Ridgeway didn't just meander across southern England's chalk downs, it was in fact the driest route, on the highest ground, between the west and east coasts of southern England. Nowadays that's Lyme Regis to Norfolk, but 5,000 years ago, how much of Doggerland was still above (what was then) a lower sea level? The Ridgeway may have gone even further east than present-day Norfolk.
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Wooden tracks across bogs or soft ground were constructed in Ireland from about 4,000 BC. That's a lot older than the Ridgeway. However, it is likely that the same sort of tracks would have existed in Britain.
Nobody really knows. It could be even older. Ancient Trackway will have to suffice, nothing wrong in that.
Walked a section many years ago. Just off the A34. Great to hear some history. Especially about the Iron Age.
Ancient Ridgeway / Ridge top routes the first Motorways?
While earliest routes were just people travelling from one place to another, and by direction; there were places where the terrain meant there was no one line that people followed; and then routes used regularly also took various exact routes and over thousands of years of use, included, so the beginnings and endings, destination places along long distance routes, and their exact courses would have varied..
Ridge Routes were probably the oldest, most ancient routes in existence, for simple clear enough reasons, primarily easiest to travel along..
Only hundreds of years ago there was much more forestation, though massively destroyed by the Normans, industrialising agriculture, and so in earlier times much of the UK was covered by forest.
Even on the moorland tops there were trees growing, but not like the forestation in the lowlands, terrain, that included rivers, streams, bogs, marshes, hills, and more dangerous animals that no longer live in the Uk.
And so to get to places, and if there were hills or ridge hills; taking the high ground was easier and safer for travelling, so wherever there are ridge hills (basically elongated hills), would be the first and earliest, safest and convenient way to travel.
Once onto a hilltop, so if it's a ridge, or just leveller high ground, that would be also likely to be a more level, easier travelling, and so avoiding the difficulties and perils of the more densely forested lowlands, that are also know to have been a lot wetter than they are now, boggy and marshy.
Just by the terrain factors, how old is a main, famous Ridgeway? As old as the hills, meaning wherever people travelled, or herded / drove their animals to markets, (Drove Roads included), and traded, along, for as long as before Avebury and Stonehenge, included; a convenient Ridge Route would have been used wherever available, even just 2 or 3 Miles, while significantly easier and safer to travel along than through the terrain and vegetation etc of the ground around it.
And so the main routes / Ridge Way / 'Motorways' used to get nearer to destination locations.
You forgot to show Dragon Hill, and The Manger, yes a natural formation, you showed it, but never mentioned it!
No matter, I have walked this twice, and seen food laid out at Wayland's Smithy and West Kennett. Interestingly the legend says that if you tied up a horse the night before, Wayland was supposed to put a new pair of shoes on it!
Not sure about Hello Fresh, don't think your advert makes a good USP. Cheapens the brand!
Thanks for putting Avebury and the Icknield way into perspective. And the Ridgeway
Thanks Paul really enjoyed this one, I cycled the Track last year towards the end of April and camped just outside Goring on Thames the temperature really dropped woke up really shivering thought I had Hypothermia but I was just being melodramatic.
I have walked most of the route over the years. I do know somebody who used to walk the entire route every year in 24 hours, which is really, really tough.
I see this video concentrates on the southern part of the route which, to be fair, is where almost all the really ancient monuments are. Once you get north of Wantage (the birthplace of King Alfred the Great), then it has quite a different flavour, especially after you cross the Thames. A the northern end, you get to Ivinghoe Beacon, which I know quite well as my brother lives within easy walking distance. But the Icknield Way, which some claim to be the oldest part of the route, extends off towards the flint knapping areas in Suffolk.
In some ways it's rather pointless trying to work out the date of a route, which is a somewhat arbitrarily defined modern artefact of something that will have been a maze of different routes that grew up "organically", rather than as a planned system. As such, there will be paths which must have dated back to the Mesolithic era, which started around 11,000 years ago, although the hunter gatherers of the time left no monuments. There is, however, evidence to settlements and housing almost 10,000 years old.
nb. the Uffington White Horse is a great favourite of mine. It is an amazing piece of semi-abstract figurative art, that could almost be the work of a modern artist. It shows that there are some human sensibilities that approach the eternal.
What a beautiful film,a beautiful landscape a sacred landscape. I tried to visit Waylands Smithy around midsummer 2023. I walked miles along a track from the village of Woolstone. At that point there seem to be several diverse tracks . I kept passing signs saying to Waylands Smithy but never got any closer. Then i felt an illness attack coming on me so i had to ring a friend to come rescue me. Thank goodness for mobile phones. He actually located the place and went there but i was too ill to leave the car. He drove us home past quite a few barrows and told me he had slept in the monlight on every barrow in Wiltshire,but thst was many years ago,when we were all young. Possibly after consuming a quantity of cider. Im hoping to get to Waylands Smithy this year. X fingers.
Good video Paul. I visited Uffington Castle for the first time the year before last, a lovely place. There are many other ridgeways across central-southern England which are worth walking but perhaps none with such a wealth of important prehistoric sites.
Great video. Great perspective. Thank you, Paul 😊
A nice take on the essence of the Ridgeway, Paul. For all the academic assertions I am always pondering on just what we don't know and all those things potentially under our feet, yet to be discovered :-)
I'm always impressed at how many structures have maintained for thousands of years. Considering the long and expansive history of the British Isles, you would've thought that the locals to have pillaged the stone, artifacts or even the soil for use. Yet they've left them mostly undisturbed.
Uffington White Horse…. XTC’s English Settlement!
Avebury, my area, have explored all those sights many times. Great video Paul.