South Dorset Great Stones Way
Jason Goodwin explores Dorset
Like life, all great walks should start in one place and end at another, ideally accompanied by a great reveal, some prize, a great view of oceans, like stout Cortez on a peak in Darien, or a country pub. This hike has both: it’s a pilgrimage among the stones.
The Reformation put an end to formal pilgrimage and destroyed the great abbey at Abbotsbury. in Catholic europe, too, pilgrimage fell away. Thirty years ago, barely 2,000 people a year made the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela in Spain, but then, people started walking, for their health and peace of mind—last year, it was more than 250,000. in 2010, Pope Benedict XVI said: ‘To go on pilgrimage really means to step out of ourselves in order to encounter God.’
This is a quieter peregrination adopted as the South Dorset Great Stones Way by the British Pilgrimage Trust. it begins near Dorchester in the village of Littlebredy, where the church of St Michael and All Angels stands surrounded by large boulders, above the spring at Bridehead.
St Michael churches are always interesting, often sited on hilltops or, as here, on a site of probable pre-christian worship. From now on, you’re walking above the head-waters of the River Bride, which flows out to sea 10 miles away at Burton Bradstock; it’s Britain’s largest shortest river.
You might not guess, as you amble through this quintessentially english village, mostly modelled in the early Victorian period, that you’re moving into a prehistoric landscape, of Celtic field patterns, mysterious strip lynchetts and barrows long and round—the world’s highest density of Bronze Age round barrows, most of them unexcavated.
‘The valley is full of mystery, beginning with the huge sarsen stones themselves, scattered almost at random down the slope
To the east lies Maiden Castle, the finest hillfort in europe. Directly north is Poor Lot Barrows, a so-called ‘cemetery’ of 44 round barrows grouped in clusters; interesting, but not so pleasant to walk as here, past the sloping cricket pitch to the head of the valley half a mile away, to a grand curve of grazing known as the Valley of Stones. The valley is full of mystery, beginning with the huge sarsen stones themselves, scattered almost at random down the slope, some containing tiny rainwater pools, and the outline of what seems to be a large, manmade stone circle. At the top is a ruined barn of stone and brick, intriguingly cross-shaped: might it have been a place of prayer and sanctuary? The valley is protected and harbours rare lichens and spectacular wildflowers and grasses.
This walk is a lesson in the ways we have acted on and within the natural world. Over our shoulder stands the great tower erected to commemorate Capt Thomas Hardy, a son of Dorset and Nelson’s flag-captain, from where you can see across the county and out to sea, sweeping up the Fleet and Chesil Beach to Portland Bill and the distant cliffs of Purbeck. Closer stands the Hell Stone, an ancient quoit put back together in the 19th century and a good shelter if it rains.
Now, you’re out on the ridge, overlooking the sea, and a short hike westwards over Hampton Down brings you to a stone circle of impeccable modesty, flagged by a handsome rusting sign erected by the Ministry of Works. Across the lane, a track leads to two other megalithic monuments, the tumbled sarsens of the Grey Mare and Her Colts and kingston Russell Stone Circle.
Descending west into the romantically named Ashley Chase you’ll find the Chapel in the Woods. it’s an atmospheric fragment— an arch—of a Cistercian hermitage. Olga Milne-watson and her husband, David, who built the house in the Chase in the 1920s, are buried here beside their great friend, and supposedly her lover, forming a gentle ménage as you tramp up to Abbotsbury Castle, an iron Age hill fort overlooking the sea.
The village of Abbotsbury, with its absurdly quaint thatched cottages in a row and the ruins of the huge abbey poking out here and there are next, before the final hill to St Catherine’s Chapel, which stands sentinel, gaunt and Gothic above the Fleet. St Catherine, patron saint of unmarried women, is invoked in dozens of tiny scraps of paper rolled up and plugged into the gaps between stones, each asking for a nice husband.
That marks the end of the pilgrimage for some; others will consider the day well won only when they have tumbled downhill and straight into the ilchester Arms. They’ll even give you a bed for the night.