Discover a classic English woodland, a 12th-century chapel and an abbey founded by a Saxon king on this dazzling autumn walk, starting and ending at Milton Abbas, says Christopher Ridout
Christopher Ridout is a writer with a keen interest in walking, history and mythology.
WALK: Milton Abbas, Dorset
A legend hovers about the hills in which my grandmother grew up. A town so spoiled the view of the local lord that it was flooded to become a lake. He had the valley landscaped by the most famous landscaper in the land – Capability Brown – and built a new idyllic village on a hillside nearby.
Colourful beech, copper beech, ash and sycamore blend and flicker in an impressionist blur as a backdrop to the clean lines of the immaculately designed village of Milton Abbas. Arranged either side of a single, gently curving road are 36 thatched cottages that could have come straight from a fairytale.
Nearby Milton Abbey School occupies a Gothic mansion, built during the 1750s on the site of a Benedictine abbey at the behest of Joseph Damer. The Abbey Church still stands. Unhappy with the adjacent town of Middleton, Damer set about buying the town and demolishing it. Many of the residents moved to the newly built model village of Milton Abbas.
1 THATCH TO FOREST
Walk uphill from the Hambro Arms and take the bridleway to the left through the newer part of the village and into the fields. On a clear day, turn back where a track crosses the field for views across to Poole Harbour and Old Harry Rocks. Continue, crossing a driveway until you meet a lane and forest tracks.
2 AUTUMN LEAVES
Take the track on the extreme left. Note the effects of autumn on English woodland classics, oak, ash and hazel.
When the track joins a driveway, ignore the drive to the left and the forest track opposite it. Take the following woodland path to the right, passing between two boulders. Ignore the first two right turns. After the path makes a steady decline flanked by hazel and fern, take the next right.
3 CHAPEL PEACE
12th-century St Catherine’s Chapel sits
