A Walk around Trent

For ages I'd marked a route round Trent and the Comptons, near Sherborne, and hadn't got round to walking it. Looking for a shorter walk nearer home last week, I decided the time had come to fill in a few squares in this northern corner of the county.

We parked in Trent, near the church, which was our first port of call.

Interior St Andrew's Church, Trent - ST5818

Funeral bier, St Andrew's Church, Trent - ST5818

Ancient Cross, St Andrew's Church, Trent - ST5818

Lovely sign inside St Andrew's Church - Trent - ST5818

St Andrew's Church - Trent - ST5818

The church and village have a lot of history, being associated with the escape of King Charles II in 1651. He escaped from  Cromwell's army after the Battle of Worcester and was offered refuge in Trent Manor House, where he allegedly complained about the noise of the church bells ringing out their peal of celebration after news of his believed death! For more information about this fascinating story,  see http://www.dorsethistoricchurchestrust.co.uk/guest2.htm.

Trent is a beautiful village with some quaintly named lanes and attractive thatched cottages, often adorned in what were now autumnal colours.

Abel's Lane, Trent - ST5918

Autumn colours in Trent - ST5918

We headed south across fields to Nether Compton, another attractive and rather sleepy village.

Footpath between Trent and Nether Compton - ST5918

Phone box and church, Nether Compton - ST5917

The Old Police Cottage, Nether Compton - ST5917

We visited the church before heading eastwards to Shelners.

Bell ropes, Church of St Nicholas, ST5917

Church of St Nicholas - ST5917

Rules for bell ringers, Church of St Nicholas, Nether Compton - ST5917

Scratch dial, Church of St Nicholas, ST5917

Harvest dress - Church of St Nicholas, Nether Compton - ST5917

Hymns and tapestrey, Church of St Nicholas, Nether Comtpon - ST5917

There are lots of contour lines around here and hills with no name. I'm going to name the one we climbed Kitton Hill as the lane leading up it is called Kitton Lane. It looked to be an old drove lane.

Kitton Lane - ST6017

Once at the top we walked a bit further before there was a break in the hedges affording a magnificent view towards Yeovil and beyond, where we sat against a gate with our cup of tea and afternoon snack, troubled only by the engine of a nearby tractor, which we hoped would not want access through our backrest!

View from Kitton Hill - ST6017

We descended the hill and turned right at Shelners, joining the Monarch's Way briefly before turning right again onto Oatcroft Lane.

Kitton Lane - ST6018

Kitton Lane - ST6018

 We suddenly remembered we had walked this way before and when I checked later I discovered it was February 2015. The colours now were beautiful, autumnal, contrasting with the vivid blue sky and wispy, white, delicate, innocuous clouds. Again the hill was not named on the map, so I have named it myself from the nearest name on the map.

Shelner's Hill - ST6118

Shelner's Hill - ST6118

View from Shelner's Hill - ST6118

Once on Oatcroft Lane, I sneaked across a ploughed field whilst Paul kept watch to bag a trigpoint which was just too tempting to resist.

Tucker's Cross trigpoint - ST6117

We met the tractor again at Tucker's Cross which kind of prevented us engaging in a prolonged search for any remains of an ancient cross.

Tucker's Cross - ST6017

We went straight across the crossroads onto Hart's Lane (presumably named after the archaic word for a stag), which was another ancient and attractive holloway.

Hart's Lane - ST6017

Hart's Lane - ST6017

The holloway ended at Stallen, where we joined the road for a short time before turning off again into another holloway, Gore's Lane.

Stallen cottage - ST6016

Ancient door to former Congregational Burial Ground, Stallen - ST6016

This holloway was the most impressive and creepy of all the ancient drove lanes we encountered today. There were some huge roots and an intriguing cave (too dark for a photo).

Ancient holloway, Gore Lane - ST6016

We were heading westwards now to Over Compton and Compton House and Paul was reminiscing about his many visits to the erstwhile btuterfly farm here, Worldwide Butterflies, started by Robert Gooden in 1976. Sadly the business was not viable and the mansion has been converted into flats. The extensive grounds have footpaths running through them and there is an exclusive shop on the premises, open only to members of the Trencherman's Club who can claim their free cup of coffee upon entry. Oblivious to this exclusivity and curious as to the existence of a shop in such a remote location, we entered, muddy boots and all and were warmly welcomed by the current owner and the shopkeeper, but I quickly lost interest once i found out we were not entitled to purchase anything without forking out our annual fee.

We walked round the church instead.

Trencherman's Club Shop - ST5916

St Michael's Church, Over Compton - ST5916

Compton House, erstwhile house of Worldwide Butterflies - ST6016

We made our way across the public footpaths, Paul still on his nostalgic trip to his boyhood, and returned to Trent as the dimming light cast beautiful hues over this lovely Dorset countryside.

Walking back to Trent - ST5918 

Number of miles: 6.8
Number of holloways - 4
Number of trigpoints - 1
Number of churches - 3
Number of exclusive shops - 1
Number of new gridsquares - 8

Beaminster to Stoke Abbott

I actually gained quite a few gridsquares over the weekend, but am finding it hard to keep up with all this writing so am restricting myself to the one with all the dappledness! One thing that Dorset has over Islay is the dappledness - and I feel sure there's a better word for it.

We parked at Beaminster, walked past the church, as we've done many times before, but this time headed south and then slightly west.

Beautiful and massive oak tree at the path's junction - ST4700

I'd heard a story about Knowle Farm, that James Daniel, a non-conformist in the seventeenth century, hid in the straw in a barn at this farm, and thus avoided capture by the King's troops. He consecrated the ground by the farmhouse and vowed to be buried there. We went to enquire at the farm about the place of burial but sadly  were not invited to look at the burial ground.

Knowle Farm - where James Daniel is buried in a private burial ground - ST4600

Looking slightly north-west the distinctive shape of Gerrard's Hill was prominent and remained so throughout our walk.

Gerrard's Hill

We continued south to Nethbury, where a swarm of honey bees were flying round their hives.

Near Nethbury -  the bees' hives - SY4799

I was quite excited about visiting Netherbury as I'd not been before and we stopped at the church for a cup of tea.

St Mary's Church, Netherbury - SY4799

There is a funeral bier inside the church.

Funeral bier inside St Mary's Church, Nethbury

We headed west form here, towards Stoke Abbott and were delighted to find a naturally carved bench overlooking Lower Woods Coppice. This would make an ideal picnic spot.It always seems that we find benches when we don't need one and don't find them when we do!

Bench overlooking Lower Woods Coppice - SY4699

Lower Woods Coppice - SY4699

By now the clouds over Gerrard's Hill were looking almost threatening - but didn't amount to anything.

Clouds over Gerrard's Hill

The footpath between Netherbury and Stoke Abbot is very narrow and was very overgrown so we got prickled by brambles and stung by nettles and thistles quite a bit! But hey ho, we didn't mind!

Narrow and overgrown footpath near Stoke Abbott - ST4500

Then there was a tree on the path.

Tree across path near Stoke Abbott - ST4500

Beautiful holloway near Stoke Abbott - ST4500

Bracket fungi on footpath near Stoke Abbott

I'd heard that Stoke Abbott is a lovely village, and indeed it is. This was our first visit to the village and we were intrigued to later learn that the church in the village is one of the few remaining in England to maintain the custom of ringing a curfew bell. Once rung at 5.30 am every day throughout the year, the bell is now rung by the same volunteer who rings it 100 times every day at 7 am, despite protests from some sources that it should be at least 45 minutes later. The villagers won the battle and the custom is maintained.

St Mary's Church, Stoke Abbott - ST4500

The weights for the bells in Stoke Abbott church - it must take some doing to ring them 100 times!

Also in this lovely village is a horse's trough, beneath a fresh water spring which, until 1961 was used as the water supply for the village. The lion's head spout and cup replaced a much older one in 1953.

Horse's trough and fresh water supply at Stoke Abbott - ST4500

Lion's head and cup, Stoke Abbott - ST4500

We left the village and headed back eastwards, past Horsehill Farm, through a forest of Himalayan Balsam which has sadly invaded the whole of this area. I've never seen so much of it.

Himalayan Balsam - ST4500

Fighting our way past the Balsam we headed south-east along Long Barrow Lane, down to the River Brit where there are a couple of footbridges to cross - or rather one which we crossed and one which we were grateful we didn't have to cross as there were cows guarding the other side of it.

Cow on the Jubilee Trail by the River Brit - ST4600

We were now at our crossing point of our basic figure of eight shaped walk and walked on the west side of Parnham Park, through dappled sunlight and trees back to Beaminster.

Dappled Jubilee Trail - ST4700

Miles walked: 6.5

No. of naturally carved benches: 1

No. of other benches: at least 2 (Netherbury and Stoke Abbott churches)

No. of horse troughs: 1

No. of churches: 2

No. of unhelpful people we met: 1

No. of new gridsquares: Actually only 4 (didn't realise that until I counted them just then!)