| Date: Location: Walk Leader: Participants: Distance: Parking: Lunch: | 22nd July 2015 Maiden Castle Ray Ray, Peter 7.7 miles Free Car Park Lambs Green Inn ★★ ▲ |
It was a funny old day with spells of bright and sunny weather followed by dark clouds that looked suspiciously like rain. We must have been lucky because it stayed dry all day. It was quite windy for most of the time but this made for comfortable walking.
This is a very pleasant walk with some good views over the coast from the South Dorset Ridgeway. This takes you up to about 625 feet above sea level so it is quite a steady climb from the car park. From half way up there is another good view back over Maiden Castle.
Shortly after we had stopped for our morning break we were surprised to see a short diversion taking us around some old burial grounds. The surprise was that in the middle of this area there were some quite ugly storage tanks. This is just by the Tumuli before Shake Holes. If you would like to see the whole route and have a look at this oddity you can download the file provided below the map and open it in Google Earth. We gained some unexpected sustenance from the all too few remnants of the pea harvest that lined the edge of this section of the path.
From this point the route is pretty much all downhill. It is quite straightforward apart from the area around Pen Barn Farm. We had a couple of attempts before finding the correct path that talk us through as gate on the right and up a short grassy path before leading us down to Grove Hill Bottom, past a small vineyard and into Martinstown. There are some lovely old buildings in Matinstown one of which can be seen below.
A short walk along the road and then we were back onto the made up path that took us past Park Farm and back to Maiden Castle.
This is a very pleasant walk with some good views over the coast from the South Dorset Ridgeway. This takes you up to about 625 feet above sea level so it is quite a steady climb from the car park. From half way up there is another good view back over Maiden Castle.
Shortly after we had stopped for our morning break we were surprised to see a short diversion taking us around some old burial grounds. The surprise was that in the middle of this area there were some quite ugly storage tanks. This is just by the Tumuli before Shake Holes. If you would like to see the whole route and have a look at this oddity you can download the file provided below the map and open it in Google Earth. We gained some unexpected sustenance from the all too few remnants of the pea harvest that lined the edge of this section of the path.
From this point the route is pretty much all downhill. It is quite straightforward apart from the area around Pen Barn Farm. We had a couple of attempts before finding the correct path that talk us through as gate on the right and up a short grassy path before leading us down to Grove Hill Bottom, past a small vineyard and into Martinstown. There are some lovely old buildings in Matinstown one of which can be seen below.
A short walk along the road and then we were back onto the made up path that took us past Park Farm and back to Maiden Castle.
| See an aerial view of the route by downloading the kml file and opening it in Google Earth. | 
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 Looking back after the start |  Martinstown |  Maiden Castle across wind blown barley |
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