• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.

Wiltshire

Kondoru

Beloved of Ra
Joined
Dec 5, 2003
Messages
10,639
Now I am back home I would like some ideas for when I can explore...

Not conventional Wiltshire, something a bit different.
 
Go to The Barge Inn and have a yarn with the bar staff ... if/when it reopens to the public after the current pandemic lockage.
https://www.facebook.com/thebargehoneystreet/
I give it a recommend too. Last time I was there they were serving green beer - no, actually green - and I had a fascinating conversation with a woman who had brought her two deerhounds for a drink. The canal folk are very interesting too, if you are at their end of the bar.

I do hope it survives the crisis.
 
I give it a recommend too. Last time I was there they were serving green beer - no, actually green - and I had a fascinating conversation with a woman who had brought her two deerhounds for a drink. The canal folk are very interesting too, if you are at their end of the bar.

I do hope it survives the crisis.

I presume the deerhounds had Stag Cider.

Stag007f.jpg
 
I presume the deerhounds had Stag Cider.

View attachment 31181
Quite possibly? They certainly were thirsty.

Before anyone jumps in, I don't approve of giving dogs booze, and most of my dogs wouldn't touch it anyway, although I did have a lady dog that liked a drop of cider if I was having any.

But on the other hand, in the first pub I was a regular in (The Spreadeagle, Prittlewell) there was an old bloke who used to arrive with his retired champion greyhound, who had his own silver (plated, probably!) bowl with his medals stick on round the edge. Not PC but somehow fabulous.
 
The Barge sounds good, there are some great pubs in Wiltshire, but the website isnt working.
 
I’ve probably mentioned this somewhere else, but before my sis moved to Wales, she lived in a little village called Clyffe Pypard. I used to dog sit for her often. Just off the top of my head:

Walking the dog one snowy night, by BIL saw what he still swears were perfect ‘little people’ footprints in the snow, like a lady’s shoes. Despite everyone insisting they must have been a bird or weasel etc, he holds by the fact that they were ‘pixie footprints’, and this man believes in nothing at all, really.

A wood nearby where my sister and niece heard ‘faerie bells’ and laughter (they bolted)
(There is a legend of the Tautha de Danaan being seen in woods at Clyffe Pypard in the years between the wars, I think)

The churchyard that has a public footpath through it. (I’ve been that way with her dogs myself) She was coming back through it one still autumn day when she heard galloping hooves that came nearer and nearer and felt like they were on top of her then seemed to whirl upward into the air and into the sky.

It’s a very quiet, sleepy little place but when I stayed there I did think it had a strange sort of atmosphere, not bad, but as if it was a bit of a ‘thin’ place.


Marked the woods where she and my niece heard the bells. (Church is marked)

E.T.A There’s also a buried stone circle somewhere close; this post seems to think it’s closer to Clyffe Pypard than was thought.

https://www.themodernantiquarian.com/post/22654/winterbourne_bassett.html
 

Attachments

  • A913A37E-62B2-4BFD-9495-0D43FE4CD22C.jpeg
    A913A37E-62B2-4BFD-9495-0D43FE4CD22C.jpeg
    757.6 KB · Views: 18
Last edited:
I've been to Clyffe Pypard a bit but I don't know it well.

Its right on the edge of the escarpment so that might add to the liminal quality.

I suspect there must be springs there so that might further add to it.
 
Now I am back home I would like some ideas for when I can explore...

Not conventional Wiltshire, something a bit different.
Monkey World and Bovington Tank museum - ok not strictly Wiltshire but I'd feed monkeys by day and feather-dust tanks by night, throw in some cats and a dog called Blue - the best life in the world.
 
Last edited:
You could do a lot worse than walk the Wessex Ridgeway - it's part of the prehistoric Greater Ridgeway, and crosses through Wiltshire on the way to (or from) the Devon coast (I think).

You'd be stepping out on a route that's been travelled for millennia, and travelling it in the same way.

There's magic in that, I reckon.
 
Last edited:
A nice walk to Swanborough Tump near Pewsey? The meeting place for Alfred (soon to be the first King of England) and his allies, before they beat the Viking Guthrum's forces. It's the site of Anglo-Saxon hundred meetings that were themselves located on the site of a neolithic barrow.

external-content.duckduckgo.com (Copy).jpg


More antiquarian than Fortean but I'd like to go one day :)
 
E.T.A There’s also a buried stone circle somewhere close; this post seems to think it’s closer to Clyffe Pypard than was thought.

This one?

Cliffe-Pypard-stone-circle-Fortean.jpg


From the OS 25" to the mile survey, 1899:

Cliffe-Pypard-stone-circle-Fortean-01.jpg


Drive WNW out of Winterbourne Bassett (0.64 miles from the White Horse pub) and the field is on your right.

maximus otter
 
Very interesting blogs @Kondoru .

Could you do an overview of "things", ghosts and other, which are attached to archaeological sites? I know that everything is an archaeological site but I'm thinking more of the Ridgeway than a town house...
 
Ill see what I can do.

I've found a nice `light` in Swindon. Nothing interesting though
 
Back
Top