The upper Lambourn Valley Way and Ridgeway - a circular walk from Lambourn
The Lambourn Valley Way is a delightful 32km (20 mile) mile walk, from the Ridgeway at Uffington Castle to Newbury. This circular walk goes from Lambourn to the Ridgeway past Ashdown House, along the Ridgeway past the ancient monuments of Wayland's Smithy and Uffington Castle, and returns to Lambourn along the Lambourn Valley Way. The route "The Lambourn Valley Way, from Lambourn to Newbury (with shorter options)" describes the continuation of this walk to Newbury.
A
Lambourn walk
posted on 01/06/22 by Berkshire Walker. Last update : 27/09/22
Description
(S/E) Starting at the Market Place, take the footpath to the right of St Michael and All Angels church. At the end, continue out of Lambourn on Upper Lambourn Road, then take a left turn along Folly Road to the end.
(1) Continue on the byway (this is bordered by bushes and trees of apple, elder, sloe, hawthorn, and dog rose). At the first crossroads of byways, turn right, and at the second crossroads continue straight on. The byway goes straight across the open grass of Near Down Gallops, then continues downhill as a track between hedges, fences or ditches. At the bottom of the hill it turns right sharply and continues as a broad track between hedgerows to a crossroad of byways.
(2) Turn left along the byway (the bridleway is currently blocked). When you are level with Botley Copse, turn right along a grassy vehicle track that skirts round the right of the copse (the start of this footpath is currently marked by a decrepit stile beside a section of flattened fence). When the path starts to climb, take the right fork towards the left of the trees on the skyline.
At the top of the hill, the path continues alongside the boundary of the Ashdown House estate, initially marked by an earth bank, and then by a stone wall or fence. Descend to the access road for Ashdown Farm, and your first view of Ashdown House on the hill beyond.
(3) Turn left onto the restricted byway, then almost immediately take the right fork onto a footpath that continues alongside the park boundary with more views of Ashdown House, to Alfred's Castle.
(4) After Alfred's Castle, continue along the park boundary to a gate in the corner of the field with a stile beside it. Go straight into the wood on a good path, until you reach a broad ride with another view of Ashdown House to the right. Turn left, and continue along the ride to the end of the wood. Turn right onto the path just inside the edge of the wood, and continue to the road (B4000).
(5) Take the restricted byway opposite that skirts round the left of the wood. At the end, turn left onto a grassy track between hedges. When you reach the wood just before The Ridgeway, take a narrow path on the right over a man made bank (it is more pleasant to walk through the wood than along the Ridgeway). It is well worth visiting Wayland' Smithy, so keep an eye out through gaps in the hedge on the left for a wooden gate and the signs to the ancient monument.
(6) From Wayland's Smithy, return to the wood, continue to the end, then join the Ridgeway towards Uffington Castle. When the track starts to climb, there is a stile on the left next to a National Trust sign saying "White Horse Hill". Climb over this and a second one to the right, and then climb directly up to the Castle.
(7) Walk round the embankment of the Castle, then aim for a gate back onto The Ridgeway. Turn right for short distance, then turn left onto a signposted bridleway that runs along the edge of a field. The path makes a small 'dog-leg' to the left, then continues along the edge of the next field and past a stand of beech trees to the right. The route then crosses Woolstone Down gallops, marked by wooden posts with black and white stripes (note that there is a stand of trees at the southern end that is not marked on OS maps).
(8) Go through the gap to the right of a gate and continue straight on for nearly 2km until you reach a complex junction with many tracks and gallops and a tarmac access road on the right. Turn left to a white gate; cross the gallops, through a second gate, and go straight ahead on the track. Where this track bends right, continue straight on for around 20m, then turn right onto a narrow byway under trees. This briefly joins the main track, and then separates again, until another narrow byway joins from the right.
(9) Turn right, then turn left onto a farm road. When this splits, take the right fork onto a smaller byway, which starts to descend and becomes tarmac surfaced. When you reach the farm buildings, turn left and slightly uphill. The road then turns right and downhill, to a bridge over the River Lambourn marked by a steel barrier on the left.
(10) A few metres after the barrier, go through a gap on the left into Lynch Wood. Bear left to the River Lambourn (which here is only a stream), cross over by a small bridge, and go up and to the right to reach the main path through the wood. Turn right along this path, which is marked by occasional small concrete posts on the right hand side. As you get close to Lambourn, the path bends to the left and rises, and you begin to see glimpses of houses through the trees; keep straight on, and you will leave the wood onto the road (Goose Green).
(The 'official' (and less interesting) route of the Lambourn Valley Way continues along the lane to the main road (B4000), then turns goes along this road into Lambourn)
(11) Turn right and downhill on the road, which crosses the river to reach The Broadway. Turn left, and then almost immediately right into Chapel Street. At the end of the road, continue along the passage, then turn left to return to the Market Place (S/E)
Waypoints
- S/E : km 0 - alt. 131 m - Market Square, Lambourn
- 1 : km 1.17 - alt. 178 m - End of Folly Road
- 2 : km 4.52 - alt. 157 m - Junction of byways
- 3 : km 6.83 - alt. 165 m - End of access road to Ashdown Farm
- 4 : km 7.51 - alt. 193 m - Alfred's Castle settlement
- 5 : km 9.26 - alt. 183 m - Road (B4000) at Honeybunch Corner
- 6 : km 11.36 - alt. 218 m - Wayland's Smithy
- 7 : km 13.43 - alt. 251 m - Uffington Castle
- 8 : km 16.65 - alt. 205 m - Path junction at S end of Woolstone Down gallops
- 9 : km 19.74 - alt. 183 m - Junction of byways near Hangman's Stone
- 10 : km 21.19 - alt. 136 m - Drain Hill (bridge over River Lambourn)
- 11 : km 22.02 - alt. 135 m - Goose Green (road)
- S/E : km 22.46 - alt. 131 m - Market Square, Lambourn
Useful Information
The footpaths and tracks on this route have a good surface and are well signposted (except for the final section through Lynch Wood). It is graded 'Moderate' because of its length, although the walking is easy. Several parts are along 'byways open to all traffic' (marked on the map by a line of green crosses), so you may meet off-road motorcycles or 4-wheel drive vehicles.
The continuation of the Lambourn Valley Way from Lambourn to Newbury is described in "The Lambourn Valley Way, from Lambourn to Newbury (with shorter options)" https://www.visorando.com/en/walk-/225719...
Car Parking
From Newbury, continue into the centre of Lambourn on the High Street (don't turn left, as signposted for all through traffic). There is a public car park on the left, immediately before the Lambourn Universal Stores, which is free without time limit.
Public Transport
Newbury Buses No. 4 runs from Newbury to Lambourn (Market Square). There is a bus roughly every 1 1/2 hours on Monday to Saturday (no Sunday service). West Berkshire Council service No. 47 runs between Lambourn and Swindon, with 4/5 buses a day on Monday to Saturday (no Sunday service). There is a stop on the Ridgeway at Ashbury Folly, 3km west of Uffington Castle.
Walking the Lambourn Valley Way in a day
A fit and enthusiastic walker can walk the full Lambourn Valley Way in a day - the challenge is to get to the start early enough. To do this, start this walk at waypoint 4, and continue to Newbury on the route The Lambourn Valley Way, from Lambourn to Newbury (with shorter options) https://www.visorando.com/en/walk-/225719...
There is a National Trust car park below Uffington Castle - the only road access is from the north, from the B4507 at Woolstone.
'At the time of writing, a No.4 bus leaves Newbury at 6.45am that connects with No. 47 bus leaving Lambourn at 8am, and a No.4 bus leaves Newbury at 8.55am that connects with No. 47 bus leaving Lambourn at 10am (check the latest times before setting out).
Walking the Lambourn Valley Way over two days
If you are walking the Lambourn Valley Way over two days, you will probably want to stay overnight near Lambourn. There is very little accommodation in the village https://lambourn.org/business-clubs-dire... so you could continue 5km along the Way to The Queens Arms at East Garston.
Always stay careful and alert while following a route. Visorando and the author of this walk cannot be held responsible in the event of an accident during this route.
During the walk or to do/see around
(D/A) The Market Place has a preaching cross dating back to 1446, when Lambourn was granted the right to hold a market, which was restored in the 19th century.
The earliest written record of a church at Lambourn dates from 1032, in a charter of Cnut, but there probably was a Saxon church several centuries earlier. The current church of St Michael and All Angels was started in the 12th century, with major rebuilding in the 13th, 15th, and 19th centuries. The church has a ring of eight bells, first mentioned in an inventory of 1552. The mechanism of the clock dates from the 17th century.
The impressive brick building on the right as you leave the market square is the The Isbury or Estbury Almshouses, which date from 1502 and were rebuilt in the 19th century.
(3) Ashdown House is an unusually tall and narrow country house, built in the Dutch style and topped by two massive chimneys and an octagonal cupola. It was created in around 1663 for William,1st Earl Craven, who was one of the richest figures of the 17th century. The Craven family has a tradition that he chose the site of Ashdown House as a refuge away from London (where the plague was rife) for James I’s daughter Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia. Unfortunately, she did not live to see the building finished.
(4) Alfred's Castle is a small Iron Age hill fort, started in the 6th century BC. What you see is the small enclosure, with a large enclosure only visible as a crop mark. In the late 1st century, a Romano-British farmhouse was built on the site. It gained its name through a doubtful association with the great victory by King Alfred against the Danes at the Battle of Ashdown in AD 871.
Wayland's Smithy is a neolithic long barrow, dating from around 5,500 years ago. It had two burial chambers of different ages - and the stone structure at one end is the reconstruction of the later one. It is named after Wayland, the Saxon god of metal working.
(7) Uffington Castle is a large Iron Age hill fort on the summit of Whitehorse Hill. It consists of a large enclosure, about 220 metres by 160 metres, surrounded by a wide chalk-stone bank or inner rampart that was formerly lined with sarsen (sandstone) stones, a grass-covered ditch and a further, smaller bank forming an outer rampart. The entrance was a causeway on the west side, which would have been closed by a gate. Postholes and pits found in archaeological excavations indicate the location of buildings, which would probably have been large round huts, each housing an extended family group.
Around 200m North East of the castle is the White Horse, carved into the hillside and filled with chalk. It has been dated to the late Bronze Age or Iron Age (around 3000 years ago), and its function is uncertain. The best views of it are from the villages in the valley below.
(8) The Lambourn Valley is known as “The Valley of the Racehorse”, with over 30 training establishments and several studs. Many of the gallops are owned by The Jockey Club Estates.
You can find more about these at https://lambourn.org/local-places/ , https://lambourn.org/st-michael-and-all-..., https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/ashdown , https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visi... and https://lambourn.org/horse-racing/
West Berkshire Council has produced a leaflet about the Lambourn Valley Way, which describes the landscape, wildlife, and history of the valley: http://info.westberks.gov.uk/CHttpHandle...
