YOUR RIDES
MY FAVOURITE RIDE WILTSHIRE WANDERINGS
RiDE reader Shaun Napier takes us for a spin in Wiltshire, ending at the mysterious Stonehenge
WE’RE DUE TO meet at Blade Motorcycles in Swindon, and Shaun rumbles in on his R18 a bit flustered. Things aren’t going to plan. “I updated my phone and now it won’t talk to the bike’s Connected Ride system, so I’ve got no satnav. I’ll have to wing it, but then usually I don’t plan ahead much. I went to Dunkirk one day and ended up in Portugal.”
Hopefully we won’t get quite that far today, but let’s find out.
The ride
Through the middle of Swindon, negotiate the Magic Roundabout (which makes about as much sense as the original Dougal/Florence version), through the Old Town and then cross the M4 to the south, following signs for Marlborough.
It’s a fairly main road from here to Avebury but if you get lucky with the traffic it can be a blast – fast and sweeping, rising up to give panoramic views over the Wiltshire hills. There’s a white horse carved into the chalk hillside off in the distance at Hackpen. Or at least I think it’s that one – there are eight of them in Wiltshire. People tend to assume they’re ancient, but they’re all actually hundreds, rather than thousands of years old. If you want a genuine prehistoric chalky nag, you have to nip over the county border to Uffington in Oxfordshire.
No such confusion over the antiquity of our next waypoint at Avebury. This lovely village is built in and around one of the world’s largest prehistoric stone circles. Or what’s left of it, anyway – having stood for several thousand years, most of the original stones were destroyed a few hundred years ago and carted off to be used for building. What’s there now was mostly reconstructed in the 1930s and it’s fabulous – but what shame about that earlier vandalism.
We turn left by the Red Lion, running parallel to the long line of stones called West Kennet Avenue, then left at the bottom and on to the A4. It’s a main road, obviously – but still scenic, rolling and fun to ride, and Shaun’s rolling along happily on his R18 cruiser, borrowed f
