91km Westbury to Illminster
Longleat House
Route Overview
There are times when as you ride, you catch yourself dreaming, creating a rural idyll in your mind of a life in this most exquisite of quiet landscapes. You might imagine yourself in a rose covered cottage built of honey coloured stone, near to a village whose church rings peels of bells which sound out across the green-grazed fields on a Sunday and from the nearby pub you enjoy good company, beer and food. This is the picture you’re left with at the end of a lovely day of riding. The countryside through which you ride from Salisbury Plain to the campsite at Knowle Meadows, would still be recognisable by the likes of Thomas Hardy and you rather imagine Tess or Jude appearing around the corner. There are mansions too, some of the most spectacular in the land, as well as great towers and Iron Age Forts. There’s even the legendary site of Camelot. The riding mixes tracks and bridleways with quiet back lanes.
Ride Practicalities
START/FINISH: Westbury/Illminster DISTANCE: 91km TOTAL ASCENT: 1200m TERRAIN AND SURFACES: A good mix of country lanes and bridleways which other than the first by-way up onto Salisbury Plain which requires some push-a-bike, all are rideable with 28mm+ tyres. Be aware that the MOD may remove access due to military manoeuvres and an OS map would be useful to help navigate any diversions CAFÈS/PUBS/SHOPS; Warminster, The Coffee Garden, Yeovil; Nine Springs Cafe, Hinton St. George; The Lord Poulett Arms, Horton Cross; The Five Dials Inn MAINLINE TRAIN SERVICES: Westbury and Tiverton Parkway LINKS TO OTHER RIDES:
To return to stage 3, click here
To to to stage 5, click here
Ride Notes
After a good night’s sleep under the watchful eye of the White Horse, you begin the day with a hike-a-bike return, up onto the Downs on a very rutted and steep by-way.
Back onto the Salisbury Plain
Back at the top, you are again overlooking what seems to be the whole of Southern England, with its cornfields, grasslands, wildflowers and skylarks. Mixed into this serene scene are the thuds and pops of the British Army who practice on the plain. Puffs of cordite smoke drift across the grasslands.
Salisbury Plain is a vast plateau grassy downland covering 300 square miles, making it the largest area of chalk grassland in Northern Europe. Not only is it a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI), but also a rare archeological landscape with more than 2,300 sites dating back to 4,000BC. The military, who have used part of the Plain since 1867, close off sections and raise red flags when there is firing and gates bar the way. However, on this journey, the whole route is on public bridleways which are open all year round.
Salisbury Plain
After a long and grin-inducing descent off the Plain, you ride through Warminster, with its busy High Street and into the Longleat Estate using a bridleway which has seen a lot of use over many centuries. After rain, it can be muddy. There’s a thrill when you arrive at the big sculpture of a lion, giraffe and a gorilla at the entrance to the Safari Park. You might wonder if you’re to be riding through their enclosures. You don’t - obviously - but that doesn’t stop you from having a quick wonder, for all the signs along the road point towards the Safari Park! To cycle through the estate is free. However, despite riding literally, past the front door of one of the great Tudor Houses of England, entrance is only permitted to those who’ve been around the Safari Park in their car. So without delay, you ride on up the huge drive to the gatehouse and out of the park.
Longleat
Once up the long hill which leads onto the Wiltshire Downs, there’s glorious ridge riding through woods. Alongside the road is a track, officially marked as a footpath, but used by horse riders and other cyclists, which rides up to King Alfred’s Tower. The triangular folly was built by Henry Hoare of the Stourbridge Estate (a World Heritage garden two miles off route), to commemorate the end of the Seven Years’ War (1756-63) and was built on the supposed site of Egbert’s Stone, where legend has it that King Alfred rallied the Saxons prior to defeating the Vikings as the battle of Edington. The tower is usually open on summer weekends.
King Alfred's Tower
From the Tower, the route continues through gentle Somerset countryside. Cows graze, rooks caw, stonechats and finches flit from hedge to hedge. The riding is gentle and the miles pass by in some sort of reverie until you arrive at North Cadbury, a picture of a village, whose shop makes very good rolls and has benches in the garden from where they can be eaten. Onwards, is Cadbury Castle, a massive limestone hill, the top of which has been used as a place of settlement, fort, refuge and even as a Saxon mint. It is also one of many sites associated with King Arthur’s Camelot. The riding continues through a gentle landscape of fields and hills and you ride through honeyed villages whose cottages are adorned with roses climbing up the walls.
After 63km of riding, you arrive in Yeovil. For over 300 years, it was the UK’s centre for leather glove making. In 1840 over 75% of the town’s population was involved in the trade. As recently as 70 years ago, the town was still making over 50% of England’s gloves. Today only one company remains, Pittards. As you ride along the old railways tracks which took the gloves to all corners of the UK, you’ll hear the blades of helicopters beating the air. Yeovil is the home of Westland Helicopters, which began trading in 1913 making planes to fly over the WWI trenches.
From Yeovil, you ride through a country with a succession of photogenic houses, churches and villages, all built with the local richly honeyed Ham Stone. Five kilometres off route, is Montacute House, a glorious Tudor house with one of the most spectacular Long Galleries in England as well as a garden which is hard to leave. In Hinton St. George, there’s a superb pub with rooms, The Lord Poulett Arms and you’ll have to decide whether it’s time to treat yourself, or continue to the planned end at Knowle Meadow Campsite, a further 16km further along the road.
Hinton St. George
Knowle Meadow was opened in 2023 by a lawyer from Bath, who’d had enough of the crazy working practices expected of his profession. He and his wife, bought a house and a field and set about creating a camp site and a wild flower meadow. It’s a lovely place to be, small, intimate but spacious too. Along with the large pitches, there’s a shepherd’s hut, a sauna, and luxury washrooms. It’s a bucolically lovely way to end today’s dreamy wander through Somerset.
Knowle Meadow Camping
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