If you’ve read my blog about our visit to Avebury, you’ll know that on our way back from Exmoor in August we stopped off for a few days in Wiltshire. Wiltshire isn’t somewhere that immediately springs to mind as being a country walking hotspot, but it has oodles of history and lots of great options for exploring.
I had grand plans for zipping up and down the county visiting prehistoric monuments all day every day – however, the Great British weather immediately put a stop to this on day one. With torrential rain pouring all morning and into the early afternoon, I ended up having to revise my plans to find a quick dog walk which I could comfortably manage in the brief weather window when the sun was forecast to appear.
I wanted a walk that I could do in 90 minutes or less, which had something interesting to look at along the way and which I’d feel confident tackling on my own. After a quick trawl of Google I found the National Trust’s Cley Hill, a hill fort which is also locally famous as a UFO hotspot. According to local legend Cley Hill was formed when a stone thrown by the devil fell short of its target – however it was formed, it’s a fab short walk and worth a visit.
There’s a small free car park near the foot of the hill. It must be quite a popular walk with people living nearby, as I was rather surprised to find the car park nearly full when I got there. It wasn’t by any means busy, just not totally deserted like many similar walks tend to be further north!
There’s a good track leaving the car park heading towards Cley Hill, before passing through a gate where the path gets much fainter. You can go left or right to contour around the bottom of the hill: I chose the path to the right, which starts to climb steeply once you get around the corner. Cley Hill is grazed by cows for some parts of the year, and while there weren’t any cows when I visited, there was plenty of ‘evidence’. Said evidence and the fact that I couldn’t really see too far ahead led to a sense of intense paranoia that a cow was going to appear at any moment, and so I legged it up the hill as quickly as possible – I’m not sure why I thought faster was better, when I thought I was potentially heading towards an undiscovered cow!
Climbing up the side is rather steep going, but it is at least over quickly as Cley Hill is rather tiddly at only 244 metres. This doesn’t affect the quality of the view, with sweeping views over the Wiltshire and Somerset countryside opening up before you. Walking along the top of the hill I reached the trig, where of course I had to stop for a few minutes to get some photos of Merry – did you even bag the trig if you didn’t take a photo of your dog on it?
Once I’d finished at the trig point I returned back to the start the way I’d come – it’s possible to loop around on a circular walk, but I could see quite a lot of other people heading the same way and I prefer a quieter walk if possible. Thankfully it didn’t feel as steep going down as it did going up, and it didn’t take me long to make my way back to the car. As I was walking back along the side of the field at the bottom, a red kite swooped down alongside the path and was clearly having a great time surfing on the currents. Probably my closest red kite encounter, aside from visiting feeding stations in Wales.
Dog friendly rating – 4/5. This is a stile free route with no road walking, but you may encounter cows/sheep and other dog walkers. However, as there were no cows grazing when I was there, lots of people were able to let their dogs have a good run off lead.
If you’ve enjoyed reading this blog today, subscribe below so that you never miss a post:
