The Swan is a small very old pub, one of only two for miles around, the other being right across the road! Kitchen closed last night so I ate opposite, a bigger and very friendly place with a rather pagan sounding name: the Crown and Horns. Apparently the town had a major fortnightly sheep market in medieval times, the biggest apart from Smithfield. The busy A34 bypasses the town: the High Street, squeezing between the two pubs, must have been a major bottleneck before.
The Swan, right, and the Crown and Horns, left, on East ilsley High Street
Up early and back up to the ridge, a greyer, colder day, with a good breeze in your face. From here the track is wider between low hedges and mostly grass with footpaths rutted into the chalk: a drovers’ road or Green Lane. It continues for miles ahead with wide views on both sides, to Didcot power station and below a low ridge, the Thames valley. Ahead is glimpsed today’s destination, Wantage. 11 miles to go. At the top of the footpath an area is called Sheep Down, and there is another with the same name above West Ilsley: probably holding areas for the market.
The OS map starts to indicate more sections of Grim’s Ditch, half way down the slope on the less side of the ridge and I drop down to have a look. Mostly it’s on private land and inaccessible but a couple of footpaths cross it. It’s not easy to make out because it has been left to allow nature to rewild, with grown out hedges and long grass, but the characteristic profile is visible at some spots. It’s even clearer that this is not defensive but the remnants of an old route for foot and horse traffic, taking the lee side away from the biting prevailing wind from the west. Here again the county boundary follows stretches of it, a sign that it was a well know feature when the boundaries were decided. Once again there are many barrows near the route and a larger one, Scutchamer Knob, which is hollowed out to create a small amphitheatre, and where the shire moot was held in medieval times. Soon after I dropped down through the model estate villages at East and West Lockinge, to Wantage. It has a very grand church and a market square with a couple of old pubs, which I ventured into before catching the X36 bus to Didcot Parkway and home. From the bus you can see the ridge to the south, stretching from horizon to horizon.
