Interlude: South Downs Way. Day 6: West Meon to Winchester 14.5 miles.

We wake up this morning and the rain is blatting down. We’ve had the full gamut of British weather on this walk (apart from snow as Rich points out). The Thomas Lord has been a lovely, luxurious stay though the stuffed ferrets and squirrels posed playing cricket above the bar are interesting breakfast companions. Thomas Lord was the founder of Lord’s cricket ground. He died in West Meon.

West Meon continues to delight as not only does it boast a well-stocked village shop, but this has a cafe attached where they make takeaway sandwiches to order. I’m beginning to wonder if I’m hallucinating this place after yesterday’s trials.

The chef in the cafe asks where we’re walking and we tell her we’re finishing the South Downs Way. “I did that in six days. I hated it” she replies. “I got windburn on one side of my face. You add four or five miles coming down off the ridge for a B&B then back up the next day. You think that you’ll eat and drink plenty then remember there are no toilets. People say what about the view? But you’re on a ridge all the time so it’s the same view”.

I have to agree with her on most issues but not about the view. Maybe it’s nostalgia because I’m a Downland girl. I was born in Mount Alvernia hospital on the edge of Pewley Down on the north ridge. When I look across, I see Leith Hill and Box Hill, where we went on biology field trips looking for bee orchids. I remember lying in bunkers on the golf course just off the North Downs Way with my school friends. My family used to stop for lunch at The Greyhound Cocking on our way to my parents’ house in Pagham. This sounds posh, but it was an end terrace on a 60s estate that my Dad bought with the life insurance money when my sister Vivienne died.

In Pagham, Dad and I swum in the sea in November if it had been a hot summer and I learned to sail on the lagoon. Helen and I went to discos at the campsite and, when she was studying for her A levels, I had to wake her up periodically as she was reading ‘Great Expectations’. She was also studying Tennyson and we sat in our parents’ bedroom as she read ‘Crossing the Bar’ out loud.

They were not always good times, however. I dropped a glass jar of Pond’s cold cream and it made a hole right through the bathroom basin. I got stood up on a date at the campsite for the first (and only) time. My Mum insisted we visited bargain shops in Bognor Regis on Saturday afternoons. For all these reasons, as well as its beauty, I could never tire of that view.

We take a gentle path that joins the Monarch’s Way in Warnford to lead us back up to the downs. It’s still raining, so we’re in coats and gaiters to keep dry. As we reach the ridge again, we pass a blacksmiths with a shark sculpture on the grass outside. We meet the Wayfarer’s Walk (a 70 mile Hampshire route from Inkpen Beacon to Emsworth Harbour) and leave the Monarch’s Way behind.

As we pass through a copse, we see signs warning of the risks of ash dieback. Most of the woodland seems to be beech trees, so perhaps the ash trees have already gone. The weather is now starting to clear and we stop for a pint of orange juice and tonic at the Milbury pub near Beauworth.

The path continues on a road and then a track and the renewed sunshine means that the cyclists are out again in force (another thing the cafe chef complained about). The landscape is more broken now as the ridge is petering out. The Way follows the best route, however. It looks higgledy-piggledy on the map, but uses the lie of the land brilliantly in practice. We pass through Holden Farm which has a campsite, a cafe and a beautiful milestone: only six and a half miles to go.

Storm clouds look to be gathering for a while, but they pass over without raining and the warm sun returns. We now enter the Matterley Estate, where there seem to be preparations for a huge festival. This is the innovative Boomtown Fair, held annually in the second week in August. Each area of the fair is set out as a different themed district of the temporary town. The venue covers 1,250 acres and nearly 90,000 visitors and crew are expected.

Part of the site comprises Cheesefoot Head, also known as as the Matterley Bowl. This is a large depression in the landscape shaped by meltwater during the last Ice Age about 110,00 years ago. This is where Eisenhower addressed over 100,000 allied troops before D-day in June 1944. The estate also has a South Downs Way amenity station with cycle repair tools, a pump and a water tap where we refill our water bottles and Richard cools off.

We cross the A272 and find a bench in a field that makes the perfect lunch spot. We climb up Telegraph Hill, at 124 metres the last down of the trip. It’s all downhill into Winchester from here. We then pass through the hamlet of Chilcomb and take a footbridge across the A31 and the M3 to enter the outskirts of the town.

The official end/start of the walk is the Old City Mill but we carry on, crossing the very full river Itchen, past King Alfred’s statue and onto Winchester cathedral, the true heart of the city.

Rich then decides he wants to go to the castle, as it’s almost on the way to the station and we haven’t visited it before. There’s a good reason why Winchester ‘castle’ is not a major tourist destination.

Winchester Castle

Then it’s on to the station where Rich gets a third off with his ‘Old Person’s’ railcard (when I pointed out that it’s Senior Citizen’s, he told me that he felt more old than senior). It’s time to return to the world of delayed trains and closed tube lines.

I definitely feel fitter after completing the South Downs Way and more ready for the last phase of the HoLEwalk. It’s highlighted deficiencies in our kit: I need new bras and I doubt my shorts and boots will last another 200 miles. Following a waymarked path is not as interesting as navigating our own route, but the scenery was stupendous and often seemed surprisingly remote. There’s also something deeply spiritual about walking a path that has been trodden for millennia. September, and the last chapter of the HoLEwalk, here we come.

Total distance: 106 miles