Glyn was hoping for an easy edit for this episode of the podcast as he had less time than usual to do it. This was all the invitation I needed to say exactly what I wanted knowing that Glyn didn’t have the time to cut it out! But being responsible podcasters we stuck to the brief. The main feature was a glorious walk we put together for Wiltshire Museum based around Hippenscombe Bottom, so beautifully painted by Eric Ravilious in 1937. And there was a special announcement at the end of the podcast.
But first we discussed our news since the last podcast.
In that podcast Glyn talked briefly about his visit to Bincknoll Castle and Broad Town White Horse. Since then he has written and posted a blog to the Hidden Wiltshire website about it. But apparently Bincknoll is pronounced “Bynol’ in Wiltshire! Which begs the question “how do pronounce Long Knoll and Little Knoll”?
Meanwhile I travelled to the far northwest of the county to the Cotswolds west of Malmesbury, for a walk around Brokenborough and Easton Grey. There’s a blog about this walk on the Hidden Wiltshire website. I have also written a blog about my visit to Bentley Wood, a collaboration with Hidden Wiltshire contributor Elaine Perkins, who suggested the route and provided a number of the photographs. You’ll find that on the Hidden Wiltshire website too.
Elaine also posted a description of her recent visit to Sherrington and Boyton, off the beaten track in the beautiful Wylye Valley, where she found some fantastic hidden treasures. We’ll be pulling that together as a blog along with some of Elaine’s lovely photographs in due course.
And whilst on the subject of the Wylye Valley, we mention the café and gallery at Langford Lakes Nature Reserve run by Wiltshire Wildlife Trust. The gallery and café is open from 10:00 to 16:00, Wednesday to Sunday. At the moment there is an exhibition there entitled “Woodlands” featuring art, photography and 3D work including the photographs of brilliant woodland photographers Stephen Davies and my chum Nigel Hudson. The exhibition is on from 2 April to 2 May 2022 and you’ll find a link with more details in the show notes for this episode of the podcast on the Hidden Wiltshire website.
This podcast’s main feature is the stunning landscape and history of Hippenscombe Bottom. I wrote a blog which was an amalgam of some five visits to the area which I posted on the Hidden Wiltshire website on 21 January 2022. This walk was put together at the request of David Dawson at Wiltshire Museum and we’ll be doing a guided walk with the museum there later in the year. There are many route options but the highlights of this walk are the tiny village of Tidcombe and its “humble” church, Tidcombe Long Barrow, Fosbury Camp (an optional extension but well worth the effort), Chute Causeway, the Devil’s Waistcoat and the glorious Hippenscombe Bottom itself. I discovered this bottom purely by chance following a momentary glimpse as I drove up Conholt Lane towards Chute Causeway a year ago. Screeching to a halt in the road above I grabbed a photo of the bottom that coincidently was from the exact location that Eric Ravilious painted it in 1937. Little has changed since 1937 although we suspect the shooting estate is now operating on a far more industrial scale.
Parking for this particular walk is a challenge. As shown in the shown in the January 2022 blog the walk starts from the church in Tidcombe but at best it is only possible to park three cars here. Scot’s Poor is a slightly better option with parking on the wide verge on the byway. The route map has been amended in the blog to include this location in order to provide alternative parking options.
As for the special announcement, we will be moving to monthly podcasts going forward, which will go live on the first Sunday of each month. The next podcast after this will therefore be on 1 May 2022. This will give us more time to explore new locations and to make more location recordings. We may even do some more filming. This is all being done to ensure we maintain a high quality of output.