In the medieval period, villages grew up in a line beneath The Ridgeway, where spring water emerged from the hillside. Each village controlled a long strip of land extending up and down the slope. Eight of these villages lie in the seven-mile stretch from Uffington Castle to Liddington Castle: Woolstone, Knighton, Ashbury, Idstone, Bishopstone, Hinton Parva, Wanborough, and Liddington. While each of these quaint old villages is worth a detour off the Ridgeway, the walk to Bishopstone is particularly rewarding. It passes a remarkable series of ‘lynchets’, the impressively large remains of medieval terrace farming conducted at the height of medieval agriculture. From the lynchets the path descends to Bishopstone, a collection of thatched half-timbered cottages gathered around a duck pond and two old pubs, The Royal Oak and The True Heart.

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During the Middle Ages The Ridgeway served as a drover’s track. In an era when roads were axle-breaking ruts or muddy quagmires, wagons were seldom used for long distance hauls. Farmers delivered livestock to markets on the hoof, driving pigs and cattle great distances to the markets in London and elsewhere. The Ridgeway was perfect for this sort of trade, passing over open grasslands with ready grazing, while avoiding the difficulties and tolls of settled lands. A remnant of the drovers’ era still survives at the Shepherd’s Rest, a friendly old drovers’ pub on The Ridgeway at Wanborough.

The drovers’ era of The Ridgeway ended with the coming of modern transport –first canals, then the railroads. Four miles north of The Ridgeway, Swindon became one of England’s great rail towns as the repair yard for the Great Western Railway. Today, the Great Western Railway Museum recalls those days. After the coming of the railroad, quiet descended upon The Ridgeway. With the drovers gone, The Ridgeway became the long, purposeful farm track, lonely and evocative, praised by writers and walkers since the late 19th century.

Today, walkers do well to venture on past the end of the National Trail into the Vale of Pewsey, to the tiny twin village of Alton Priors and Alton Barnes, at a red phone box by a country lane. Past the medieval chapel and the Saxon church lie traces of a track–the last faint signs of the ancient Ridgeway. A hundred yards further a footbridge crosses the restored Kennet and Avon Canal to a pleasant towpath walk. A short distance west is the local pub, The Barge, built for the bargemen two centuries ago–a good place to end a walk through time.

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