The Old Road: Bikepacking the Old Chalk Way

The terrain that lines Dorset’s Jurassic Coast is notoriously steep. Something we’re abruptly reminded of as we take our bikes for their first walks of the journey. We struggle our way down nettle-lined waterlogged singletrack gullies, across rocky streams, pushing our bikes up through steep grassy fields and hauling them over wooden stiles. We’ve been riding for close to an hour, but we’ve travelled just 8km. We’ll feel every kilometre of the five hundred-odd ahead of us.

We make our way up beside the Iron Age hill fort atop the chalky outcrop of Pilsden Pen, the second highest point in Dorset, and the views are expansive. The chalk here is an outlier from the Cretaceous period [145 to 66 million years ago] sat amongst the Jurassic strata of marl and clay. Here on the border with Devon, it’s a fitting nod to the geographical context of our route. Our backs to the granite that forms the land westwards, we follow the chalk north-east.

Just 30 kilometres in, and I slump my already weary body onto a bench in the middle of the Beaminster village square and start an assault on the paper bag of baked pastry obtained on arrival. Unable to mask the hole left by the effort I put in to those first few hours, it’s not long before I’m back on my feet returning for more. We soon pass the Cerne Giant – perhaps Britain’s best known chalk figure, famous for its enormous phallus. The origins of the giant have been contested for centuries, and while still not 100% certain, recent soil samples suggest it was first dug out in the late Anglo-Saxon period.

Today much of the Greater Ridgeway is signposted as its separate designated trails, but like most prehistoric routes, it would never have been one singular track. Paths would have differed between the seasons and across successive ages. Various offshoots provided branches to forts, burial grounds and henges along the way. The pioneers of this route some 5,000 years ago didn’t have bikepackers in mind, after all.

If you want a taste of what medieval commuting might have been like, ride a bike over Salisbury Plain in a downpour

Whilst riding the full 550km loaded with all our food for the journey was indeed possible, it didn’t sound like much fun. And, unlike the traders, drovers and druids who went before us, we live in a world of convenience in the shape of of supermarkets and coffee shops. Detouring to Shaftesbury, we enter into the seemingly mandatory ritual of any bikepacking journey – sprawled across a supermarket car park floor, we make our way through a small mountain of calories to set us up for the day ahead.

From here, we head up over Cranbourne Chase, a high chalk plateau where the county lines of Dorset, Hampshire and Wiltshire converge. The downland here is scattered with Neolithic and Bronze Age monuments, as well as the remains of several Iron Age Settlements.

The flat gravel tracks traverse interlocking fields of rapeseed, barley and cattle. After waiting for a gap in a seemingly endless stream of traffic, we intersect the A303 parallel to Stonehenge. Rolling north, the clouds close in and the first few drops of rain lay down an unmistakable statement of intent.

With the red military flags of Salisbury Plain lowered to indicate no live firing is in progress, we cut across the training area: 10km of fast rolling, rocky, hard packed gravel. Here, out in the open we’re totally at the mercy of the wind and the rain; and predictably once we’re committed to the exposed plateau, both start right on queue. It takes just moments before we’re wet through. Our bikes, our bags and our clothes are splatted with the sand and mud from the now-saturated track. We grind our way across rocky paths alternating between tail and headwind, avoiding the kind of potholes which threaten the shape of our wheels. If you want a taste of what medieval commuting might have been like, ride a bike over Salisbury Plain in a downpour.

We take a moment’s rest at Avebury henge. Home to the largest megalithic stone circle in the world, this is where our route picks up the Ridgeway. Sat with my back against the stones, from deep within my frame pack I dig out the last remaining stragglers from a broken pack of yoghurt-coated raisins. Thick with mud, dust and dried chalk, you’d be forgiven for assuming our bikes had been uncovered as part of a recent archaeological dig at this ancient site.

Joining the first section of the Ridgeway, our tyres roll with a welcome lack of resistance across the firm chalk channels. We snake along the trail, weaving and hopping between confused grassy tracks as they connect and reinvent themselves. Enjoying the calm of the moment and the silence around us, we both come naturally to a stop. Noting the dark sky behind us, a solitary drop of rain splashes off my shoe. Followed by another, and another. I almost welcome it. In this quiet moment, the rain feels refreshing on my weary body.

The situation soon escalates. Forced into the trees to seek cover, we find ourselves on an intersection of several minor trails, all of which are quickly transformed into fast-flowing torrents of white water. We could be in trouble here.

As anyone who has ridden on it knows, sodden chalk is not the preferred terrain for a bike ride. We’re left pushing our bikes uphill through the inch of water flowing back down the hill against us. The downhill is worse. We slide from side-to-side, struggling to stay upright, and it’s made ten times worse by the weight of our loaded bikes. We hit the road and follow it downhill into the nearest town.

Waking the following morning in a small empty barn on the edge of Wantage to a perfectly crisp, sunny spring morning, we’re soon stuffing the context of our bikepacking bags back into place and any leftover snacks from the day before into our mouths. The air is cold, but the trails have mostly dried out.

Forced into the trees to seek cover, we find ourselves on an intersection of several minor trails, all of which are quickly transformed into fast-flowing torrents of white water

Famed by the white coastal headlands and spires rising from the waters of the English Channel, it was the warmer climates of the Cretaceous period that saw high eustatic sea levels creating shallow inland seas, resulting in huge quantities of chalk deposited across the county. Lasting nearly 80 million years, it was a period in which the Earth was free of ice when dinosaurs roamed the land, and these inland seas were inhabited by now-extinct marine reptiles. Much of the landscape of southern England is now defined by those large chalk deposits, an area of land which boundary draws almost a perfect line from the Dorset coast to Norfolk’s North Sea. Our ancient highway almost perfectly shadows this line.

Joining the Icknield Way, we trade the grassy chalk spine we’ve become used to for sandy gravel trails passing pig farms, huge grain stores, and open farmland. The bruised skies and muggy air threaten another change in the weather. Whilst the landscape here is still very British, somehow it feels more like we’ve entered the American midwest. Whether a reflection of the land around us or simply our own exhaustion, it all suddenly feels very cinematic.

Through the heather and pines of Thetford Forest, the sandy forest trails extend seemingly without end. The soft tracks make for fun riding, but thanks to the intermittent downpours, our bikes feel and sound terrible. They’re caked with wet sludge, mud, grit and sand once again. We’ve got more than 400 off-road kilometres in the legs, and my perception of time slips into the realm of the psychedelic.

Eventually we reach Thetford, stuff our faces with the quantity of food only familiar to these kinds of trips, and bed down in the wedding gate of a small rural church on the outskirts of town. In the morning, we’ll join the final leg of our journey: The Peddars Way will lead us all the way to the North Sea.

Widely accepted as a Roman construction, the original Peddars Way is likely to have preceded the time of the Roman conquest. As we join it, our direction shifts. Having ridden the past four hundred-odd kilometres consistently north east, we point our bikes almost directly north. The energy of the final push kicks in. With refreshed minds and refreshed surroundings, the final 75km is a breeze.

As we come over the brow of a hill, a faint silver line stretches across the sky: the North Sea. Side by side our pace quickens, the unmistakable skeletal forest of an offshore wind farm resolves into view. We wheel our bikes over sand dunes and through beach grass towards the shore.

Forming a transect from coast-to-coast, our journey had led us more than 500 kilometres across southern England; the continuous tread of our rubber tyres having followed the same lines forged by foot and hoof more than 5,000 years before us. The ghostly presence of the countless traders and drovers, druids, soldiers, and ramblers who’d passed along this way before us were never far away.