Today, we took a lovely 7 3/4 mile loop walk to see the Uffington White Horse, a 3,000 year old chalk horse carved into a hillside. Part of the route was on the Ridgeway walk, which has been used for at least 5,000 years, the oldest track in the UK. The Uffington Horse is a remarkably modern, kind of abstract looking horse carved into the chalk hillside. It’s maintained by the National Trust, who supervises the annual maintenance of the horse, accomplished by renewing the chalk surface with about 20 tons of chalk. It’s hard to see the horse in its entirety from the ground, so the above image is an aerial view, which makes sense since the horse was an offering to the sun, so we were told. It’s not lost on us that we visited an old pagan site on Easter, but we had a lot of company! The trail had many people enjoying the lovely weather.
We started the walk in Ashbury, parking just around the corner from a pub that we planned to visit upon our return. The village has lots of thatch roofed buildings and a very nice church, which we passed on the first leg of our walk.
But really, the big star of the day were the amazing fields of rapeseed flowers! Yellow overload! Rapeseed is grown for its oil, and is sold in the UK as vegetable or rapeseed oil and in the US as canola oil, due to the fact much of the rapeseed oil comes from Canada and canola sounds better than rapeseed. Marketing at work!
The villages we passed are quaint and picturesque, and it seems putting a thatch animal on the ridge of your thatched roof house is the custom.
On our way home, we stopped at the local pub in Woolstone for some refreshment and then along a public footpath through fields to our starting point in Ashbury.
Luckily, in England pubs remain open on Easter, while pretty much everything else is closed.
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