The wall-to-wall sunshine of the May Bank Holiday encouraged me to venture out on the third of my 50-destinations-in-12-months. This time into Wiltshire and to a place I’ve driven past but never visited: Silbury Hill just outside Avebury. Why here? I don’t know exactly, except that it is intriguing, with as much mystery attached to it as Stonehenge. It must also have a place somewhere in my subconscious - I remember at the age of about 10 watching a schools TV programme in primary school (called something like ‘Out and About’) wherein the middle-aged presenter, a rather shifty-looking character in a pork pie hat and a raincoat, went to Silbury Hill. It must have made an impression because I still remember the statistic he dolefully trotted out: ‘if every man, woman and child in the UK emptied a bucket of earth into a pile, it would be as big as Silbury Hill’. With rather less imagination, the Silbury Hill website simply says it is the largest man-made mound in Europe.
Enough of that. The plan was to cycle from Andover into the Vale of Pewsey along the back roads, which is all very well, but that is a distance of 30 miles and my cycling rarely takes me that far in a day, let alone there and back again, so it was with some trepidation that I turned out of Anton Road at the start of this (for me) epic ride.
The first leg took me to the village of Pewsey though quiet country lanes and out into the Vale of Pewsey proper. It was lovely cycling through the gently undulating farmland under big Wiltshire skies and I even had a slight tail wind to help me up the inclines. Pewsey itself is a pretty village, with a statue of King Alfred in the village centre. I stopped for a sandwich at one of the many pubs that pander to the needs of locals and visitors before heading North towards Silbury.
Success! I reached Silbury which resembles nothing so much as a grass-covered volcano about 100 plus feet high. I was fully prepared to scramble up the steep slope but unfortunately the powers-that-be had decided that this big pile of earth is too precious to allow this and had erected a Colditz-style barbed fence fence around the site. I considered my options, including a Steve-McQueen-Great-Escape-style fence-leaping attempt on my push bike, but in the end I had to content myself with a view of the Hill from the car park. No ambition, me.
Having time on my hands, I took a different route on the way back: meandering through some more Wiltshire countryside; picking up the towpath of the Kennet and Avon canal for a stretch and slowly homing in on...well...home. By this time my somewhat limited stamina had drained and there were frequent stops to check the map (at least that’s what I told myself). There was one particularly long hill North of Chute during which I wished I had one of those electric bikes with a motor to take the strain!
Happily, the last three or four miles comprised a very, very gradual downward gradient into Weyhill and I knew then that there were no more hills to climb. I don’t carry an odometer, but I estimated that somewhere approaching 65 miles had turned under my wheels so I was quite pleased. A hot bath eased my aching limbs (and sore backside!). I also reckoned I had earned the double chocolate cheesecake I ate in celebration!
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